I wouldnāt get too far ahead of yourself Pap, thatās just the XBox One Slim I believe. They also have a boosted version coming out next year and its spec is much more powerful than the 4K PS Neo. Currently Sony are streets ahead in terms of units sold worldwide, but in the UK I believe figures are much closer. Itās interesting to consider what might change with the release of the boosted models, but itās unlikely the XBone will ever close the gap significantly worldwide.
For what itās worth, Iāve always been a Playstation man. Owned every version since the original and already have the Titanfall 2 pre-alpha downloaded after opening weekend last week. Iāll PM my PSN so feel free to give me a shout if you see me online.
For months, Sony has been coy about its updated PlayStation 4, acknowledging its existence but refusing to give any solid details. Today, the wraps finally came off, and the console-formerly-known-as-Neo is officially the PS4 Pro. Along with a slimmed-down version of the basic console, Sony confirmed the rampant rumors by announcing the Pro is powered by an improved CPU and GPU, features support for 4K, HDR and higher frame rates, and will be out sooner than expected.
Releasing slimmer, less expensive versions of a console is standard practice at around this point in their life cycle, so it comes as no surprise that the PS4 Slim will soon be joining Microsoftās recently-released Xbox One S. According to Sony, this model is 30 percent quieter, 16 percent lighter and 28 percent more energy efficient than the current one, and is cheaper at US$299. A couple of small ergonomic tweaks have been made to the controller as well, and thereās now a small light bar in the central trackpad.
One of the series Iāve missed most since not buying an XBOX One is undoubtedly Forza. Originally Microsoftās answer to Gran Turismo, I think it has become a better game than its inspiration. Not only that, but the series spun off into something even more up my street, Forza Horizon. I played the original on the 360, didnāt get to play the second because of its exclusivity. Iām playing the third now on PC.
Oddly enough, when I bought it, I also bought the XBox One copy. Itās part of a new initiative from Microsoft called XBox Anywhere, sort of like Playstationās cross-buy facility. I donāt actually own an XBox One, but I have at least one game if I ever do.
Pretty glorious stuff. One of the compromises that the original had to make was a locked 30 frames per second. 60 would be the gold standard. Itās running at 4K @ 60FPS on my machine. Itās very nice.
Truly open world. Things arenāt walled off, making for some breathtaking jumps. Itās like a large scale Burnout Paradise. Itās got the rewind function from Forza, the handling is bloody lovely. There have been a few occasions this morning when Iāve had to rewind, just taken the characteristics of the car, such as drivetrain, etc, and known exactly how to sort it.
Fantastic stuff. Already being feted as the best driving game ever. Not sure about that, but it is bloody gorgeous.
Only on XBOX One*.
* Not really, and itās better on PC.
OK, if I havenāt got a UHD television and have no plans on getting one, is it worth paying the extra for the PS4 1gb Pro? Or should I stay with the 500gb slim?
Sounds boss, and it is good to see them trying to evolve. I really like this idea.
The second new feature headlining the PS5 controller is adaptive triggers, incorporated into the L2 and R2 buttons at the top rear of the controller. The resistance of these triggers can be programmed by game developers to have more or less āgiveā depending on the action. So drawing a bow and arrow should feel different to firing a gun, for example, or accelerating a vehicle off-road might take more effort than doing so on a clear patch of asphalt.
You get a lot of white elephant ideas on consoles. Cough. Cough. Kinect.
This is a simple, feasible modification using technology that has been around for years and most importantly, is going to be pretty damn easy to program in to every game.
The rumble on the Switch really is decent, so the haptic feedback (again, something else that has been around for years) is going to be cool too, assuming Sony are operating with similar or better tech available.
For me, theyāve got to do one thing. Make a machine that can do UHD at sixty frames per second. That is going to be the standard for a while. UHD is fucking decent, and while bigger resolutions are on offer, at gaming range on a reasonable sized screen youāre really not going to need any more.
Football on UHD is still blurry, I have a good tv and it canāt handle it, not convinced gaming in UHD on certain games will work at the moment, tearing, freezing are still all too apparent in this format, theyāre sending out apologies and patches before the release of games nowadays so Iām not hopeful. They have never got to grips with the PS4 to be honest.
And resistance triggers is a great way to update your controller every 3 months.
The next generation. The Series X looks like a PC. Donāt like the look of the PS5 dev kit. This is likely to change before release - if only to bring down the bill of materials cost.
Certainly true of this generationās base models. Not as true in other comparisons.
The original XBox was a more powerful machine than the PS2 it was competing against.
The PS3 was more powerful than the XBox 360 in theory. In practise, the only places Sony beat out Microsoft were the exclusives and a lot of the better Japanese studios, such as Namco and Square Enix. In most cases, the 360 version of a multi-platform game looked better because Western coders had trouble getting all the power out of Sonyās Cell processor.
The XBox One X is more powerful than the PS4 Pro. The XBox One S canāt compete with a PS4 on game image quality, but it does play 4K DVDs.
I suspect youāre right on this one. General rule is first to market is technically inferior.
To compare the PS/2/3/4 with any other games console regardless of capability (that means nothing as that is merely what it can do and not what a programmer can do with it) from the same generation is like comparing Russ Abbotās greatest hits to a Bridge over troubled water.
Theyāre shit.
The best looking PS3 games crapped all over the best looking 360 games. As I said, the first party stuff and Japanese houses were the exception. I think Burnout Paradise was one of those rare Western exceptions where the PS3 was the lead platform.
The 360 was lead platform for most multi-platform games, while with PS3 versions being something of an afterthought. Weāre not just talking lower resolution than their XBox equivalent. The PS3 version of Skyrim had a game-breaking, unfixable bug that kicked in after youād invested about 30 hours of playtime.
I agree with you. Pound for pound, the PS3 was the better machine on a hardware level. The problem was that only a few studios really knew how to get the best out of it.
One of the advantages that the 360 had was that it was very much like a PC, devs knew how to program for it and had worked out some neat tricks during its period of exclusivity.