First of all, leave hate outside of the thread and debate in a civil manner. You can have negative opinions but put it across without being a dick. I'm going to start saying this every thread because some snakes on here disguise their 'opinions' as a way to flame, troll and derail. This statement isn't part of the debate in this thread so PM me or post on my wall if you have an issue with it.

So to the topic! 

Two companies, two consoles, two strategies! What do you think of Xbox One S and PS4 Slim and what do you think of the direction each console is going. How does the Neo and Scorpio play a role in this?

My opinion,

First of all, I think it's amazing what MS have achieved with the Xbox One S. A console at $300 with a 4k player is sick. Out of the 2 I'm more impressed with what MS have done than Sony's wizardry in slimming consoles. 

I'm interested how this pans out, on one hand the Xbox One S has a 4k player but on the other hand Sony now have a cheap PS4. The Xbox One struggled to compete with the PS4 being $50 cheaper and now they have to go up against a PS4 Slim that has the potential to undercut the Xbox One S price by a good margin. I'm not sure if 4k will be enough. 

I'm writing this on phone and will expand more once I get on laptop. 

Discuss away, debate with no hate.

I think the Xbox one S is better for people who want to upgrade. Its also obviously great for people who want 4k playback, but a portion of those buyers will probably not take Xbox live Gold subscriptions and will buy less games.

Its a hard bag because the Xbox one S needed to be better simply because the original mode (for many) looked undesirable, I think this is the biggest selling point, it looks amazing.

Overall PS4 was always a good looking console and more powerful it just makes sense for PS4 to improve less, also, the Neo arrives much sooner then the Scorpio so it looks like they are expecing people who want 4k advantages will spent a bit more money, we will see how that pays off.

Obviously I cannot really make any real conclusions untill we know the pricing of the PS4 Slim but I do believe both companies made decisions with their slim models that makes the most sense for them.

It will be very exciting, what will the Neo's finall specs be, how will the Scorpio look next year, its going to be great! ^_^

I think price is king.
If the PS4 slim comes out at 249$ its going to sell more than the Xbox One Slim, even if it doesnt have Ultra HD Blu-ray playback.

I dont think there is a right or wrong approach, they just choose differnt routes with their slims.

Xbox One Slim : People dont like our Xbox, lets make a slim thats slightly better in every which way.
PS4 slim : We need to get people useing PSnow, PSplus, PSvue, and buying PS VR headsets too, lets make it cheap.

I can understand both approaches.

Great topic.

I think MS did very well with the Xbox One Slim in that it is very good for the consumer. It looks better, is much smaller, has HDR and 4k video playback at a very good price. However I think Sony's strategy, whilst less favorable to the consumer, will work out better in that the PS4 Slim won't cannibalize sales of the potentially more lucractive PS4 NEO as none of the supposed Neo features(other than essentially playing PS4 games and 1080P blu ray) are found in the PS4Slim.

In this sense, it's "you want a 4K blu ray PS4, you have to buy a Neo". Where casual gamers will likely not care for such a feature and just want the market leader to be as cheap as possible. I personally would have preferred a 4K enabled PS4 Slim but we shall see what the Neo ends up looking like. If they end up getting those specs into the PS4 Slim(doubtful) then it won't matter.

How people think that at this point anything that Sony or Microsoft(or Nintendo) do will have any meaningful impact on the current sales trend is beyond me.

People who don't have an *insert console* yet and don't want to wait or spend too much money on *insert next console iteration* will buy the Slim. There is nothing more to it. No one buys any slim model just for its features.

PS4 Slim is targeting the right audience; people who don't want to spend extra for 4K options. I'm willing to bet they dropped the 4K support so they could beat the S in price, whereas people who want 4K will likely get the Neo.

Do I wish they added a UHD drive? Yeah, but I understand their reasoning for not doing so.

4K is a decent feature and one that MS thought was worth adding. Now there's 2 reasons they thought it was worth adding, to add value to maintain $300 price tag and/or to make their product a more attractive purchase over the competition. 

Too bad that neither price or hardware features will make people buy it that weren't already planning on buying an Xbox.

4K is about as much added value as adding an additional USB port. Anyone who cares about 4k will already have the means to playback their media and will certainly not make this a main deciding factor for their purchase.

A person trying to decide between PS4 and Xbox and then going for Xbox because 4k is something that does not exist.

The Xbox One also has better framerates in games, overall its 7% faster then the original console and has HDR support, 4k upscaling, UHD and 4k video streaming (netflix etc). Also it has an intigrated power supply instead of a power brick (was a issue to some).

I think that sums up the changes, the ps4 slim looks to be 100% identical but cheaper to produce, smaller and lacking a optical audio out but its pretty much the same console.

I think people are highly overrating the 4K blu ray player........there's barely any 4K movies out there to buy, most of them are year old movies not made in 4K.......and the stores that do have them......no one is buying. Hell most still buy regular DVDs. Most people who have the slim (like me) probably don't even have a single UHD DVD lol
The rest of the "4K features".....4K Tvs do them it's selve with the need of a system with the services they have.
You can't even buy a 4K movie from the Xbox store to play digitally.....you have to use your tv to buy one digitally. But yeah a 4K player....is rather pointless considering most aren't spending 30 on a DVD.

As for PS Slim.....I think it's rather pointless. The system is already small....just make it more efficient.