The Xbox 1 is purposely oversized

[plip.plop]

I honestly believe that MS did the smart thing by making the xbox1 a little bigger for better heat dissipation, it really is meant to do more than just play videogames. One of the biggest problems all electronics will have to deal with is lead free solder. That was the weak point on the xbox360, and to a lesser extent wii, and ps3. those systems would sometimes run real hot causing the solder around the GPU to soften, and when they cooled down, cause cracks in the connection. This is why the fix for the 360 was to reflow or reball the gpu.

It was clear that MS built a console/media hybrid system to be left on, long after you finished playing games. With that kind of thinking in place, they had to go the way of Nintendo, and create a system that only has visible, and not audible cues that it is on. I read up on the xbox1, the logo dims in low light conditions, so it does not distract you while watching movies. The Kinect is able to tell if you leave the room, or set down the controller, and sends it into battery saving mode. It can even tell if you picked up a different controller while playing a game.

I also get people that hate MS for having removable batteries, but it's not a dealbreaker to me. I prefer phones, and other electronics that have replaceable batteries. Since batteries degrade over every charge. it is nice to have them easily replaceable, even with rechargeables. My beef with my PS4 is that the controllers life is pretty bad, I suspect that frickin flashlight, and speaker (to a lesser extent) is the cause. Most state that it is no big deal since they can charge it while playing. With that in mind you don't even need batteries for the Xbox1 controller at all if you want to run a long micro usb instead.

It's clear MS decided to make a system that was meant to be put in the living room, or wherever family and, friends congregate. I personally like both systems alot. and both look right at home next to each other under my TV.

Also the metal inside the PS4 is aluminum. All consoles systems have them. they absorb heat really well by pulling the heat away from components, but this is just passive cooling, these systems are so GPU dependent need active cooling. I wonder who the manufactures of the fans were for both systems, Im guess ing with all the extra space in the Xbox1 if you wanted to you could run sound dampening material in there to make it even quieter. but the only thing that makes any kind of noise is the blu ray drive when it spins up.