This seems very linear but in reality it’s more like:
Xbox One < PS4 <<<< PS4 Pro << Xbox One X
In short, get an Xbox One X if you have the funds.
It really depends what your friend wants to play after he’s done with RDR2? X or Pro are the best options in each ecosystem atm though.
For me, this kind of question mainly comes down to three considerations. First, does it have the games I want to play? If you have a reasonably beefy PC, you can play almost anything that comes to Xbox on your PC (RDR 2 being a notable current exception). I don’t have a terribly powerful PC, so my Xbox tends to be my AAA game machine. Secondly, do I have friends that play on that platform to play with? My friends and I had been on 360 and decided to stick with the Xbone this time around. If my friends had gone PS4, I probably would have too. And the third consideration which may not apply to you, is that many of the games I bought digitally last generation are still available to play on the Xbone through backward compatability, and even a few original Xbox games. As a dude who loves his classic and retro gaming, this is pretty big for me. May not be for you.
Agreed. A One X for the highest performance and Gamepass are an awesome combo.
You get a large back catalogue, new MS releases and the best 3rd party performance. Then there all the backwards compatible titles, some of them enhanced, you get for free if you still have the discs or bought them digitally. That’s a lot of gaming.
The PS4 Pro and Sony exclusives are a tempting prospect too though. So it’s worth thinking about what the “friend” really wants to play beyond RDR2.
I’d add a 4K Blu-Ray player as an additional consideration, though you do technically get than on an S. I really don’t see any good non-financial reason to get anything other than an X if you’re going Xbox though.
Skipper also mentioned being a current Xbox Live Gold member for his 360 still. Which might also mean he’s got a lot of Xbox One Gold games waiting for him if he gets an XB1.
Personally, I’d get an Xbox One X if I didn’t have an Xbox One already. It will play even your 360 backwards compatible games at a higher resolution.
That sounds pretty neat.
I noted a lot of my 360 marketplace games don’t appear supported. Sad Panda, I guess. But the account can be used off both platforms if I understand, so maybe some of them are ported?
- Xbox Live Gold is associated with your account, not the console so your 360 subscription carries over.
- The official list of backward compatible titles (can be sorted by “Arcade”).
- If you have decent credit consider the Xbox All Access plan. $35/mo for two years. Essentially an interest-free 2 year loan for an Xbox One X with 2 years of Xbox Live and Xbox Game Pass.
Game Pass and Backward Compatibility make the Xbox One X the value leader right now. You can get inexpensive 360 games from numerous sources and enjoy them. You get all the first party titles with Game Pass plus a nice selection of other games. You also get the most powerful console for multi-platform titles.
I think he meant the free games with Gold. Every month you’re subscribed you get three of them.
I’ve bought them all except for the PS4 Slim. Of the 2 Xbox units currently for sale, the $500 X is awesome and priced like it. Paired with a 4k TV it’s damned impressive (one plus for you might be that the original RDR is now playable in 4k). It may also be the quietest system I have. High price, high performance, future proofing.
The $250-$300 S is more affordable and has decent performance. Even if a game has to render in 900p, MS’s upscaling is very good. It’s very odd that Amazon shows a lot of [discontinued] after the systems currently for sale, but that appears to be the bundles and current SKUs being phased out in favor of the new holiday SKUs about to be released into the channel. Mechanically, it’s a solid system and pairs nicely with a 1080p monitor. The 500gb hard drive on a lot of models is pretty small (only around 350gb available for game installs), but all consoles now allow easy storage expansion with a USB 3.0 external hard drive. You don’t have to spring for the slightly more expensive “official” drive, any will do.
The original PS4 is the noisiest of this generation, hopefully the Slim fixed that. The base PS4 is a great console with a lot of good exclusives if you are into amazingly good-looking single-player experiences (Spider-Man, HZD, DQ11, the Yakuza games, GOW, Uncharted). Xbox is more multiplayer-focused and it shows in the catalog. The PS4 Pro is pretty much a better base PS4 with more horsepower.
In sum, neither system sucks and you can’t pick a truly bad option. Then there’s the subjective stuff, totally my take on these things.
Xbox advantages: controller feel and layout, menu system (I prefer higher density of information), online systems such as automatic cloud saves (PS4 are opt-in and not automatic except on your ‘home’ PS4), backwards compatibility, achievement system, Xbox game pass.
PS4 advantages: controller headphone support with no adapter needed to hear game sound, availability of VR, Japanese developer support.
One final bit of advice, if you want to go with a base model console, wait until the Black Friday sales. They’ll never be better priced. RDR2 isn’t coming out until 10/26 anyway, and the online won’t be out until November.
You can do this on the Xbox as well. It’s in the Xbox popup menu, all the way to the right under “audio”. Something like “headphones play game and chat audio”. Only appears when a pair of headphones are plugged into the controller.
Good, that was not the case at release and I’ve been pretty pissed at my son for taking my adapter to college with him.
If you have the launch Xbox One controller you need a hardware adapter to play audio to standard headphones. If you’re stuck with one of those controllers the most flexible option is to buy the add-on keyboard, which includes a headphone jack.
Or buy a new controller. There are some very nice ones, especially the $150 Elite controller.
Yeah, my gripe with the Elite is the terrible shoulder buttons, which broke after a month or 2. Good thing I prefer the paddles.
There were a lot of quality control issues with the early Elite controllers it seems like. Lots of anecdotal issues. I have three and haven’t had a problem with any of them.
My elite controller is a lemon. Bad shoulder buttons, the rubber grips fell off, and because they expanded from use it makes it so I can’t even glue them back on. And now my d-pad double-clicks 50% of the time, which has gotten me killed more than once. Expensive piece of shit.
EXCELLENT advice on the sale. I should have thought of that. Probably better anyway because I’m sure there will be a post-release patch for RDR2 not long after it drops.
As for controllers, I have SO MANY 360 controllers. And I had recharger packs on all of them and over time the batteries in those packs simply stopped recharging. This led to a frantic evening not long ago when I could find left of the actual ‘put two batteries in it’ packs was one in a drawer somewhere.
I’m sure even the stock Xbone controllers would be fine, as long as I have two.
I’m more of a Playstation guy in general, but the Xbox One X is my favorite console hardware ever and it’s not even close. It’s massively more powerful than the PS4pro (which I also have and enjoy). I’ve gotten a ton of value out of playing enhanced 360 games like 4K Red Dead Redemption and Gears of War 3 (the only 3D game for this generation of consoles, it seems).
Probably so, officially releases next week:
Been wondering about the X and pro lately, do they make that big a difference if you only have a 1080P TV?