Hello again Bonnyville. After taking another couple of weeks off from column writing duty, I've come up with a topic that might spark some debate amongst the gaming crowd here in town.
Since the E3 Gaming Convention came to an end a couple of weeks ago, everyone and his dog has been screaming from the rooftops at how much better the Playstation 4 looks than the Xbox One. While the console specifics may indicate that Sony has finally got one over on archrivals Microsoft, I'm left wondering why it was even necessary to ‘upgrade'.
I put the word upgrade in apostrophes because I'm not sure how much of an upgrade there could be. I'm the owner of both an Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3, and I must say I'm more than happy with the quality of the systems and indeed the quality of the games released for them.
Both Microsoft and Sony babbled on incessantly at this E3 gathering, trying to one up each other with several announcements regarding the new ‘earth-shattering' state-of-the-art technology implemented in each of their systems.
For example, the Playstation 4 packs an 8-core computer made by Advanced Micro Devices (the best in the business). It will also contain a 500 GB memory, as well as an optical drive that reads both Blu-Ray and DVD discs. Supplementing that, there will be three USB and auxiliary ports, along with the usual assortment of Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI, analog and digital outputs.
The Xbox One will also run on an AMD chip, and will provide eight times the power of the Xbox 360 – I'm not sure what good that will really do, but that's just me. It will also hold a 500 GB hard-drive, a Blu-Ray drive that supports 4k output, gigabit Ethernet and GameDVR, which records your play constantly so you can share video highlights whenever you like.
For those of you that don't understand ‘technology talk', basically each system has done a little bit of an upgrade to their computer in order to make the console more powerful.
In my eyes, those improvements don't look too ‘earth-shattering'. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that there really won't be all that much difference in the quality of picture and gaming between the current generation of consoles and the next generation.
With the Xbox One coming in at $599 and the Playstation 4 coming in at $499, these are expensive devices that we expect to see huge upgrades for. So far, the standout for me is Playstation developing a ‘party chat' and Xbox… well, I'm struggling to come up with a standout feature for the Xbox. On top of those costs, it's been estimated that games are going to cost a whopping $100 each, although I do expect that price to drop closer to release day.
It's all just a cash grab at the end of the day. Sony and Microsoft both have their loyal followers, who I'm sure would jump off a cliff should they be asked to do so, so both consoles will obviously be giant successes.
But it's all the mind games that get to me – the companies give this idea that they've worked on something spectacular and new, but just how much better can a console get than the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360?
I certainly won't be one of the people foolish enough to splash $500 or more to find out.
