I think it matters less to general audiences on specific games than “gamers” would like. For example, the 900p vs 720p on Battlefield 4 for PS4 and XBONE issue didn’t mean jack to the casual shooter fan. Most people looking at a 720p video game couldn’t tell you it was 720p instead of a higher resolution just by eyeballing it. Now, put the versions side by side, and I think you get a slightly different amount of people that can see the difference. I’m not sure how much influence it would have on purchasing, but people would probably notice that one game looked sharper or whatever.
I think it became an issue when EVERY multiplatform game had the resolution/power difference. Even casual gamers heard “the PS4 is more powerful” even if they didn’t exactly know why or how. MS tried to frame the issue as a tradeoff for the features of Kinect, but that didn’t resonate. Especially not for $100 extra dollars.
Considering BF4 has sold better on PS4 and has more active players than XB1, I think maybe it did matter.
That’s inconsistent logic. They sold a lot more PS4s than xbones. You would need to look at copies sold as a proportion of consoles sold.
You can’t hold that up against Telefrog’s point, you don’t know if BF4 players bought it for PS4 because they cared specifically that BF4 was 900p vs 720p, or if they bought it for PS4 because they just heard from everyone, about every game, “The PS4 version is better.”
I mean, Telefrog is speculating too, which is fine, but sales figures of BF4 don’t refute his theory.
The PS4 in general sold better. I would expect them to have more BF4 players, as well as more players for any multiplat game.
Like I said, if it was only one or two games, “resolutiongate” wouldn’t have been a big deal. The issue was that it was across every multiplat game. It was so common that the narrative turned into “every game runs like shit on XBONE because Kinect uses up too much power.” After awhile people didn’t even ask if there was a difference. They just assumed the XBONE version of whatever 3rd party game was gimped.
I still maintain that the $100 price difference is really what hurt them.
Edit: Also, I’ll add that I don’t think the $100 price difference going away this holiday will be enough to push them over the PS4’s lead. I think the narrative against the XBONE is too entrenched to move the needle much for most prospective consumers, plus the PS4 now has the bigger multiplayer community. They’re in a tough position. Maybe they’ll pull forward next year. They’ll have to work hard to get momentum after the botched launch.
I completely agree, people are much more sensitive to a $100 difference than you might think.
Moore
5335
Especially when there is ample evidence the cheaper item is better.
Even if they recover to parity in America - which is certainly possible - they’re at something like a 3:1 disadvantage in the EU. Ouch!
So is it confirmed that the xbone is now as powerful as the ps4 after getting rid of the kinect? I’ve seen all of this talk on how it will allow xbone games to use resources formerly used by the kinect, but that doesn’t mean too much.
No, going on pure technical specs the xbone will never equal the PS4. The PS4’s GPU has more physical cores, and it uses GDDR5 rather than DDR3 memory. It’s arguable how much those technical specs truly matter, but the specs themselves are not in question.
No. There is still a fundamental and significant performance gap in the actual chipsets selected for each platform. It remains to be seen whether that gap can be narrowed by their respective architecture choices (ie how effectively Xbone ESRAM can be leveraged), but that is likely to take time as developers gain experience on the platform and MS continue to improve the SDK. Edit - and is probably unlikely anyway as the same is true for those working on the PS4 platform.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, it was a generation of Microsoft shoving things down my throat I didn’t want/need. Having to pay for gold, the price of gold, the abundance of ads, the horrible interface changes to further try and shove their awful kinect/windows 8 looking interface at me, the difficulty in trying to stop your service or status with them, and the list goes on.
I wouldn’t buy an Xbox if it was half the price and a better machine at this point, because I don’t like the way Microsoft treated me as a customer. I can’t be the only person that feels that way.
That being said, I’m having a hard time figuring out why anyone would buy either one of them at this point. Given the price, and how few titles are available on either one, it just doesn’t add up to me. I’ll probably buy a PS4 in a year or two when there are some titles, and the prices come down, but Microsoft would basically have to send me a free Xbox to get me to use their console at this point.
TLDR: I think for some people, there are other factors that have turned people off to Microsoft beyond their strategy of the moment.
P.S. That being said Stusser, I do completely agree that if someone is on the fence or ambivalent about either console, that 100 bucks is more than enough to sway the choice.
Sure. We all have different price sensitivity. I’m not price sensitive at all. I didn’t buy an xbone or a PS4 because neither had an exclusive I cared about. I’d pay $600 for a xbone if Dragon Age 3 was exclusive. I only truly care about hardcore RPGs.
I’ll probably buy an alienware alpha, if it lives up to their promises. My HTPC is due for a refresh and I like the idea of playing sitting back in my lounge chair. Pity they couldn’t get the price down to $50; that windows license put them over that mental limit.
olaf
5342
Can anyone explain to me how there is no hbo.go for the xbone yet?
Editer
5343
They announced it’s coming by year’s end. (App release has a lot to do with the provider, it’s not just MS driving the release cadence.)
olaf
5344
Yeah I get that, its HBO in the driver’s seat…but wasn’t it a 360 exclusive in the last gen? Wasn’t it advertised as a launch day app for the xbone? Its crazy to me that I can use my PS3 for hbo.go, but not the current gen MS console.
Can you use it on a PS4?
The PS3 app came years after the 360 app.
olaf
5346
Yeah that was part of my point. It seems like MS must have paid HBO for exclusivity…so what happened? This seems like something that could have been ready for launch day, easily. And its 8 months later and nothing.
No one knows. My guess is that behavior changes (more people using the app, people seeing it as a must have app) meant a new round of negotiations with HBO.
Teiman
5348
Are the TV industry retarded?
Imagine having to buy one TV to watch this channel, but a different TV for a different channel.
