Per Forbes :
The 5 Best Reasons For Buying An Xbox One Instead Of A PS4, 2014 Edition
The holidays are coming. For the video game industry, this is when things get real. We’re about one year into the console war and PS4 has a solid lead. That doesn’t mean Sony’s machine is the right decision for every gamer — Microsoft’s Xbox One still has a lot going for it, and the fight is a whole lot more interesting than it was last year. A lot has changed, some things have stayed the same, and both consoles are much more appealing buys for different reasons. With that, I’m looking at the most compelling reasons to go with either console, focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses. If we wanted to talk about weaknesses, for example, I’d mention how every single current-gen console has a bizarre and backward relationship to controller batteries. Seriously, why is that?
As with last year, I’ll be following this post up with the five best reasons to buy a PS4 instead of an Xbox One, and then a little coda from the Wii U.
Price:
Oddly enough, what was once the Xbox One’s greatest weakness has become its greatest strength. This time last year, the Xbox One cost a significant $100 more than the PS4, compounding Microsoft’s wave of PR problems and leading to a relatively straightforward choice for consumers: one problematic, confusing console for $500, or another that does basically all the same things for $400? It wasn’t hard.
This year, it’s a different story. The Kinect is once again an optional peripheral, as well it should be, and Microsoft dropped the baseline Xbox One to $349 for the holiday season. Combine that with a range of bundles that make it foolish to ever buy this console without a free game, and you’ve got a machine that has just about the same $100 price advantage that the PS4 has last year.
Games:
Still! Sort of! Kinect may not be a required add-on anymore, and it might be in a sort of developer hell where nobody will make games for it without an install base and nobody will buy it without games, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the weirdest entertainment products on the market. It doesn’t work half as well as we were promised, the games are odd, the voice
Software sells hardware, as they always say, and so far Microsoft appears to be making good on its commitment to provide a wide array of top-quality exclusives to its next-gen hardware. This holiday season alone we’ve got Sunset Overdrive, Forza: Horizon and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, all of them excellent, unique offerings well worth the price of admission. Microsoft has managed impressive quality so far, and it’s exciting to see what they might have coming down the line. While Sony has yet to bring out any big, Naughty Dog-shaped guns, it’s hard not to see Microsoft winning the content side of things so far.
Kinect: recognition is all sorts of shot, gesture control in the OS is non-existent, and yet I’ve been playing Fantasia for days and loving it — that’s something you can’t do anywhere but Xbox One, and Kinect is why. This might seem strange to include, given the hardware’s recent troubles, but Kinect wins points on pure uniqueness. It’s something you don’t see anywhere else, and in a third-party dominated video game ecosystem where two consoles look an awful lot alike, that counts for something.
Xbox Live:
Xbox Live and PSN are quite similar at the moment: they both offer free games (PSN still has a definite edge, here), and they both come with a subscription service. For my money, however, Xbox Live still has the edge in terms of stability, and Sony’s recent debacle with consoles refusing to turn on after firmware updates, further reinforces that Microsoft has a stronger back end. Frequent OS updates mean that improvements come more quickly and, so far, more reliably.
And while both machines offer the standard suite of streaming services that make up some absurd percentage of online video watching, Xbox has a wider offering of entertainment apps. It’s likely getting an HBO Go app soon, too, which is a big deal now that HBO will sell subscriptions outside of cable bundles. Also, Simpsons.
HUNGER:
Make no mistake: Microsoft is behind. The Xbox One stumbled out of the gate as the PS4 exploded, and there’s no telling if Microsoft’s machine is going to catch up. Microsoft, however, has made its commitment clear. Between price drops, bundles, ostensible millions thrown at exclusives and regular OS updates, Microsoft has shown that it’s willing to do what it takes to give the Xbox One a shot at success, and that’s a good thing for any and all Xbox gamers.
Over the course of the past year, Microsoft has proven itself remarkably agile and responsive when it came to improving the Xbox One, and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s been working. The Xbox One is a better system than it was a year ago, with a better chance on the market. It makes me excited to see what’s coming next.
It is near the end of the end....
