Next Generation Gaming Systems

Mr&Mrs

Ok I got our three sytems hooked up yesterday. Two Xbox Ones and one PS4. I will give a quick rundown of my first impressions and update again when I get some more stick time.

I will start with the Xbox because I have used it the most so far.

Home Screen:

The UI is fresh and does not take long to get used to. You can customize the color of your dashboard now which is a nice touch. The system also logs you into Xbox live when you wake it up by saying "Xbox" "On". It uses facial recognition to pick the correct account (that has previously been loaded). So this works for other accounts on the system as well. Multiple people can switch to their accounts dashboard by saying "Xbox" "My Stuff". Pretty cool if you ask me and is taking home entertainment to a new level IMO.

Kinect:

The new Kinect is solid, sleek, and no longer uses motors. The camera is a wide angle lens and uses smart zooming technology to follow the user's movements. You no longer need the lights on to play in the dark because the Kinect now sees in all light conditions. It also has a little more lient space requirement. One of my favorite new features is the ability to use QR code scanning to input redeem codes, no more pecking in 25 symbols! Almost all of my DLC used QR codes and I suspect it won't be long before that is the only way.

My concern about two Kinects working in the same room is exactly what I worried about. Though they recognize your face, it does not care who is talking. Making one or both dead in the water for voice commands when playing both systems simultaniously. Since my wife does not play as much as I do I turned off her wake feature so only my turns on by voice.

Xbox as a set top box???:

This was one of the features I looked forward to the most and though im a little disappointed I feel it is only the beginning. I have my DVR Cable box running through the Xbox. When I wake the system it powers on my TV, and the Cable Box itself. It welcomes me with a nice hello and I can navigate the dash board as I please. Once I bring up the TV by saying "Xbox" "TV" I can simply surf the channels by voice, snap to items, or seamlessly switch in and out of games, etc. I hope one day everything can be done by voice but for now to watch or use any features of the DVR the Cable Box remote must be used. A little bit of a bummer but not a deal breaker by any means. All said and done the feature works flawlessly so far and will be pretty fun to show off to family over the Holiday week.

Online Play:

As expected the Live network is smooth and responsive even more so than with the 360 due to better hardware. With that said this is also where I am having a huge issue. When creating parties it seems you can only play one game. Say 7 friends are in a party 3 friends are playing Forza and you want to play COD with 4 other friends. Someone will need to make a new party for that game. It gets worse!!! Starting a party is more intuitive than before and just does not flow well. We have only tried Killer Instinct and Dead Rising 3 online so far. Last night everything worked perfect, today it took over 1.5 hours to get into a game of Dead Rising with my wife. It kept saying player has joined game but she never did, and vise versa. I ended up clearing both our Mac Addresses which forces the system to reboot. I tried so many different options but this one worked. Im sure that is not the correct way though, not to mention it took like 5 solid minutes for the system to start back up. This is a serious flaw and needs to be patched soon or Microsoft will lose major cool points from me.

Who ever made the Party, Game Invite, Game Lobby what ever UI needs to be punched in the balls.

Graphics:

The graphics are pretty impressive for launch games as well so I cant wait to see what future games bring to the table. I cannot really fluff this to much they are better than the past systems but cant compare to todays gaming PC's.

PS4:

Sorry do not have much to say about this yet. I prayed my HDMI port wasn't damaged, downloaded the update, and was up and running.

Home Screen:

It seems to be simpler than before and runs very smooth. To me it does leave a little to be desired though, it is a little to plain. Maybe once I dig in a little more that will change.

I have not yet played anything online.

Two things that bothered me are: When the system is in sleep mode it has a constant white light that illuminates, and it will not charge anything once in sleep or turned off. I was hoping they would fix that with the PS4.

I have aso not tested the graphics but I do not expect it to be noticeably different than the Xbox.

I will report back soon with more thoughts and impressions.

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4r3s

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FortuneLSX-TT

Good review of someone who has both.

The PS4 does charge the controllers while in standby mode if you select that option in the settings.

Also, glad your Xboxs are working. As you expected, they have had their issues with launch hardware as well. There have been reports of disc drive errors, and update errors requiring the unit be sent back. This happens with any major launch though, quality control can only get so much and things happen. I think people have just waited for so long that when it does happen they get very upset and its plastered all over the Internet.

For me, I like the minimalist layout of the PS4. Personally, I prefer to focus on one thing and do not have the need to switch between tv and gaming or split screen them. I can change from video games to tv with the push of a button on the remote, so it hasn't really been an issue for me at least. I can also do a lot of surfing for shows and movies on my phone or tablet while watching a current channel. To me the ability to use a second screen to get more detailed information and surf around is more useful than the current Xbox1 media center functionality. So I prefer the PS4 for its core focus on games and its native 1080p vs upscaled 1080p. I just wish they'd released GT6 on both PS3 and PS4. I also think that the touchpad on the new PS4 controller could add a lot of new functionality once games start taking advantage of it.

Both are undoubtedly a step up from last gen and should make any owner very happy.

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