Where’s the Microsoft that hailed the Xbox One as the digital, “all in one” future of our living rooms? Now that the gaming console is available without Kinect, it’s a future that feels increasingly out of reach.
Granted, decoupling Kinect is a shrewd decision to spike sales and reach price parity with the PS4. And with fickle voice commands and a virtually non-existent Kinect gaming lineup, Microsoft hasn’t justified Kinect’s required bundling. Yet I’m worried this is a short term business call that could hobble the Xbox One in the long run.
With Kinect originally bundled with every Xbox One sold, Microsoft had a multimedia and convergence angle over the PS4. The accessory adds voice control, motion gaming, an IR blaster to control your cable box, Skype, interactive fitness classes and much more. While much of its ambition wasn’t realized on day one, the long term potential is enormous; it’s Microsoft’s trojan horse of a gaming console to win over a larger general public. If traditional core console gaming falls out of favor long term, Microsoft would be far better equipped to pivot with a Kinect attached to every Xbox.
Now without Kinect, the PS4 pulls ahead of the Xbox One in several tangible ways. First, raw performance, as evidenced by better frame rates and higher resolutions across several multi-platform titles. It’s a tiny, even negligible factor for every day consumers, but a potential selling factor among core gamers. Also the PS4 trumps Xbox on indie releases as well; Microsoft has been playing catch up with their ID@Xbox division, but their releases are less notable and diverse than Sony’s.
Finally, there’s the user interface, an underrated factor among a mainstream audience. While the PS4 “horizontal ribbon” style UI is a bit simplistic and lacks customization, it works effectively for launching games and tracking online activity. The XBox One’s comparatively complex UI was designed around voice for primary navigation; using just a controller is often awkward. Microsoft is claiming any controller navigation shortcomings will be addressed in future system updates but for now this puts a Kinect-less Xbox at a disadvantage.
In short, power, indies, UI and sales momentum all favor the PS4. What’s left are games. Microsoft will likely focus heavily, if not entirely, on gaming for their E3 keynote this year. They’re betting on their financial strength to shore up more first and third party exclusives than Sony.
Granted, exclusives have spiked consoles sales historically, most notably in the form of Wii Sports several years ago. This being 2014, I wonder if we’re in a changed gaming landscape. Like other forms of media, modern gaming user bases are now heavily fragmented across multiples tastes and platforms. I suspect big budget exclusives – the Halos and Mario Karts of the world – are losing their impact. Titanfall is a prime example; its twist on the multiplayer shooter genre was critically lauded upon release, but the game’s online community is far smaller and less active than the Battlefield and Call of Duty releases from previous years. The incentive for AAA publishers to go multi-platform has never been stronger: as budgets escalate, spreading a release among as many platforms as possible makes strong financial sense. Both the PS4 and Xbox One have similar, PC-like architecture which makes porting easier than previous console generations.
Even if exclusives are still the system sellers they once were, what if Sony comes out of this E3 swinging with a strong showing of their own? What moves does Microsoft have left?
It didn’t have to be this way. Perceptions of momentum aside, the Xbox One has time to catch up without gutting the Kinect this early; Xbox One sales, while significantly less than the PS4, are still strong with at least five million units shipped as of a month ago. The XBox One is even beating the original Xbox 360 sales by 76 percent when comparing each console’s first six months at retail. There are a lot of smaller, yet substantial actions to chase the PS4 on price; they could have packed in a few free games, a year of Xbox Live Gold, or just slashed the console’s price by $50.
Overall, the Xbox One could have been a device with a unique, even visionary ambition if Microsoft had stuck to their initial ambitions. However, sans Kinect, it’s a console without a strong voice and differentiator from its competition.
I can’t remember another transition that has felt so half-hearted, so conservative, so burdened by a reluctance to place proper, major bets on new technology…Despite the fact that the Xbox 360 and PS3 had been at the forefront of one of the longest generations I can remember, there was the sense that no-one had faith in the next generation of consoles.
Everyone was in a secure, definitive holding pattern.
As Mark goes onto write, both the Xbox One and PS4 have been selling very well, far better than a lot of the naysayers predicted. The results:
Now we have millions of new console owners with brand new boxes in their homes and nothing to do with them. Because development is long term game. It’s a big arse ship on the open sea and it takes an incredible amount of time to make an about turn.
It’s here that I think there’s more to the story. It’s true that pivoting fast is extremely difficult for AAA titles – true big budget PS4 and Xbox One exclusives (as in, not on any other console platform) should remain few and far between for this reason for a pretty long time, at least another year or two. You’re going to see a lot of cross-gen games with upgraded graphics on the Xbox One and PS4 and little changes elsewhere. Not only are big budget titles hard to switch up mid stream, the very nature of it being high budget and thus high risk makes it important to keep the sales base as wide as possible across multiple platforms.
But I do think indies, will fill out the release calendar significantly. It’s already the case with my PS4: this is the first console I’ve ever owned where smaller indie games like Resogun, Pinball Arcade and Mercenary Kings have about as much combined play time as the more traditional, big budget AAA releases like Assassin’s Creed 4 and Infamous: Second Son.
Yes, it’s arguably a lot of PR boilerplate over at this PlayStation Blog post. But I’m linking to game studio Housemarque’s holiday card because they are behind Resogun, a legitimately great launch PS4 game. These guys are the embodiment of almost everything I wanted from the PS4 on day one; a simple fun showcase for the PS4 graphics with addictive gameplay. It’s perfect for a short break away from my day job. If you do have a PS4 over break and haven’t given Resogun a try, do so. It’s free on PS+ (which you should have for at least 30 days as part of your new console) and even a la carte at $15 it’s well worth its entry price.
There’s been a lot written regarding the PS4 post paunch, but a lot, especially the much hyped (and scored) review over at Polygon was far too premature. We’re just too early to know how these consoles will shake out. But Dan Solberg over at Kill Screen Daily has the right balance. There’s a few soft statements on what clearly stands out (e.g. the PS4’s focus on gaming, sharing, the inconspicuousness of the hardware) and a great analogy: buying a PS4 today is like “sitting in a waiting room”:
To purchase the console at launch is to subscribe to a patient stakeout with the promise of payout sometime down the line. A new Uncharted game has been announced, and both The Witness and the new Infamous game show tremendous potential, but you can’t play them this year. It’s no wonder that devotees are whipped up in a religious fervor about the new “console war” when they’ve chosen sides based mostly on faith.
There’s been lots of hype around both the PS4 and XBox One regarding the state of launch titles. Ars Technica gaming reporter Kyle Orland presents the numbers on each side, divided by exclusivity, genre, and more. It’s a helpful guide and a potential factor in deciding which console to pick up.
Sam Gibbs writing for Gizmodo UK (sourcing data from a lengthy Eurogamer article):
It turns out that despite having 50 per cent more power in the GPU department, the in-game graphical performance of the surrogate PS4 only managed around 25 per cent faster frame rates, like-for-like in the gaming benchmarks. The interesting thing here is that the homebrew Xbox One test rig kept up with the PS4-like kit if the resolution was turned down from 1080p a smidgen, which makes me think that on the whole the two are going to be very evenly matched.
Pretty much all tests, signs and evaluations we’ve heard is that at least out of the gate you won’t notice much difference between the two systems in terms of raw graphical performance. But years down the line as graphical needs get pushed further upward I’m curious if the extra PS4 power will make a noticeable difference, at least on first party games.
The upcoming PS4 versus XBox One fight could easily be won over policies instead of games.
Console exclusives will dominate conversation out of the gate but I expect a stalemate a year from now; the incentive for cross platform gaming is especially strong this next generation. The XBox One and PS4 share a similar, PC-like architecture which makes ports from one console to another easier. In addition, rising PC and mobile competition should translate into fewer overall consoles sold. It’s smart business sense for games to launch on as many platforms as possible.
However, digital sales will be dominant on consoles sooner than many skeptics think. A digital sales policy that’s straightforward, permissive and consumer friendly will move sales more than any game exclusive will. Just look at the massive success of the iOS App Store, Steam and Netflix; clearly content fuels the majority of sales, but a strong digital policy is an integral part of each platform. For instance, Netflix has a single flat fee and few account sharing restrictions. The iOS App Store utilizes iCloud to auto download app purchases to every iPhone and iPad registered to a single user.
To Microsoft’s credit, their original XBox One E3 DRM policy anticipated a digital future. But they reversed, and as of now we’re largely in the dark on both Sony’s and Microsoft’s digital sales policy.
Each company should start by emulating Steam’s policies:
All console purchases should be tied to a user account, not a single or set number of devices, with unlimited downloads to a registered console.
Sales should be common with game prices fluctuating often. Older titles should be eventually marked down to meet lower demand.
Allow customers to pre-download games in a locked state at their leisure, before launch day. Then offer a quick unlock code when the game is released.
But that’s just the first step. The disc market for console games still has some clear advantages over digital: A strong used game market, multiple vendors competing over prices, the speed of a disc install versus a huge, multi gigabyte download. To address these, a digital market should provide further incentives like:
Digital downloads available a few days before a game shows up in stores.
XBox/PSN credits or other incentives (e.g. extra subscription time, themes, bonus content) for “trading in” digital downloads.
A true digital used market where gamers can buy and sell games (albeit with likely heavy restrictions.)
Granted, the previous suggestions would require massive coordination with game publishers, vendors, and the gaming public as a whole. Even reaching digital parity with Steam is an ambitious goal for the short term. Yet, much like we’ve seen in the music and app markets, digital sales isn’t just an option, soon it will be the dominant option. If Sony or Microsoft introduce a strong digital rights policy before their competitors, I’d expect it to be a huge factor in terms of which company “wins” this gaming generation.
The short answer by Ars Technica is “no”. Frankly I don’t know what’s more interesting, the notion that PS4 and XBox One are a relative bargain, or that a new Neo Geo would cost $1111 in today’s dollars.
It’s an older article but is worth revisiting now that the dust over Microsoft’s DRM stance has somewhat settled. AnandTech’s Anand Lai Shimpi goes into some expected serious depth here:
Differences in the memory subsytems also gives us some insight into each approach to the next-gen consoles. Microsoft opted for embedded SRAM + DDR3, while Sony went for a very fast GDDR5 memory interface. Sony’s approach (especially when combined with a beefier GPU) is exactly what you’d build if you wanted to give game developers the fastest hardware. Microsoft’s approach on the other hand looks a little more broad…It’s a risky strategy for sure, especially given the similarities in the underlying architectures between the Xbox One and PS4. If the market for high-end game consoles has already hit its peak, then Microsoft’s approach is likely the right one from a business standpoint. If the market for dedicated high-end game consoles hasn’t peaked however, Microsoft will have to rely even more on the Kinect experience, TV integration and its exclusive franchises to compete.
I’m far from a “hard core” gamer, but a mere two days after E3’s start this year, I preordered the PS4. I’m bullish on Sony for two main reasons: indies and focus.
The indie developer factor
E3 pressers lean on the tried and true: AAA first person shooters, racing games and sports. These are the Hollywood blockbusters of gaming, big budget games that rarely deviate from an expected template to avoid alienating fan bases. I’m not above partaking in AAA franchises with better graphics and AI, but those games will always be there. At this point diversity and originality matter more and it’s increasingly smaller budget indie developers that fill this need.
With development and distribution costs dropping, indies are a rapdly growing presence on most gaming platforms. Mobile gaming is dominated by small developer content, and indie games have become huge sellers on Steam. And it’s not just sales; some of the most critically acclaimed games last year (The Walking Dead, Fez, Journey) were decidedly indie.
Despite this, the XBox One seems tone deaf to the indie movement. The XBox E3 presser gave indies five minutes to hustle through two quick trailers, a total afterthought. Microsoft also forces indie distributers through a lot of red tape. For instance, there’s no self publishing and XBox Live often charges expensive patch fees (often prohibitively expensive for smaller dev teams) to keep games updated. It’s bad enough that several smaller studios have dropped XBox One development entirely.
In contrast, Sony has a more indie-friendly approach: a showcase of eight indies in the middle of their worldwide E3 presser. Self publishing. Aggressive courting of indie studios with PS4 dev kits. The results are almost 30 indie game console exclusives to be released by end of 2014. Sony still has to ensure their online stores are set up so gamers can discover indies easily (a major problem on the current gen XBox 360) but overall Sony has an impressive start.
Focus
Sony appears very disciplined, an about-face from their aloof stance during the PS3 debut. They’ve lined their top ranks with gaming veterans like Mark Cerny, Shuhei Yoshida and Shane Bettenhausen. The heavy gaming thrust of the PS4 is also realistic and practical. Don’t battle against Apple TV, mobile platforms or the many other web browsers and Netflix players in the living room; coexist and focus on what you do best: games.
Contrast that with Microsoft where both the personnel and vision is all over the place. Exhibit A: the DRM PR mess that’s followed Microsoft around from E3 to its 180 flip flop last week. There’s also been little added support or push around Kinect’s gaming benefits, even though it’s the main reason the system carries a $100 premium over the PS4. And XBox One’s split screen, live/cable TV focus feels dated. It’s Google TV all over again, tech effectively dead on arrival.
Smaller issues
Issues that have dominated gaming discussion online are pretty overrated. XBox and PS4 disc DRM is now on even terms and within a year or two I suspect digital downloads will be the default anyway. Microsoft’s pre-E3 vision of an all digital future isn’t just fantasy, it’s an inevitability (the rest of the tech industry – most notably Steam – have already moved this way.) While neither Microsoft nor Sony have revealed their next gen digital download policy, I’d wager they will start on similar footing.
I won’t give either system an edge on hardware either; Sony’s supposed superior gaming architecture could easily be nullified by XBox Live’s cloud computing. That leaves the launch lineups exclusive to each console, both of which are fairly weak (though Microsoft’s Forza 5 looks incredible.) And based on previous console gens, it’s a folly to extrapolate launch titles out to the quality of a console’s library years down the road.
Regardless of what happens, the future of console gaming is uncertain as mobile and PC gaming continue to make inroads. The PS4 could soundly “win” over the XBox One in sales for its first year and still be a failure. But if I’m betting now, I think Sony will start out of the gates ahead on Microsoft.