The Xbox One - Mini Review & Comparison to Xbox 360/PS4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 20, 2013 8:00 AM ESTImage Quality - Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4
This is the big one. We’ve already established that the PS4 has more GPU performance under the hood, but how does that delta manifest in games? My guess is we’re going to see two different situations. The first being what we have here today. For the most part I haven’t noticed huge differences in frame rate between Xbox One and PS4 versions of the same game, but I have noticed appreciable differences in resolution/AA. This could very well be the One’s ROP limitations coming into play. Quality per pixel seems roughly equivalent across consoles, the PS4 just has an easier time delivering more of those pixels.
The second situation could be one where an eager developer puts the PS4’s hardware to use and creates a game that doesn’t scale (exclusively) in resolution, but also in other aspects of image quality as well. My guess is the types of titles to fall into this second category will end up being PS4 exclusives (e.g. Uncharted 4) rather than something that’s cross-platform. There’s little motivation for a cross-platform developer to spend a substantial amount of time in optimizing for one console.
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Let’s start out with Call of Duty: Ghosts. Here I’m going to focus on two scenes: what we’ve been calling internally Let the Dog Drive, and the aliasing test. Once again I wasn’t able to completely normalize black levels across both consoles in Ghosts for some reason.
In motion both consoles look pretty good. You really start to see the PS4’s resolution/AA advantages at the very end of the sequence though (PS4 image sample, Xbox One image sample). The difference between these two obviously isn’t as great as from the 360 to Xbox One, but there is a definite resolution advantage to the PS4. It’s even more obvious if you look at our aliasing test:
Image quality otherwise looks comparable between the two consoles.
NBA 2K14
NBA 2K14 is one cross platform title where I swear I could sense slight frame rate differences between the two consoles (during high quality replays) but it’s not something I managed to capture on video. Once again we find ourselves in a situation where there is a difference in resolution and/or AA levels between the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game.
Both versions look great. I’m not sure how much of this is the next-gen consoles since the last time I played an NBA 2K game was back when I was in college, but man have console basketball games significantly improved in their realism over the past decade. On a side note, NBA 2K14 does seem to make good use of the impulse triggers on the Xbox One’s controller.
Battlefield 4
I grabbed a couple of scenes from early on in Battlefield 4. Once again the differences here are almost entirely limited to the amount of aliasing in the scene as far as I can tell. The Xbox One version is definitely more distracting. In practice I notice the difference in resolution, but it’s never enough to force me to pick one platform over another. I’m personally more comfortable with the Xbox One’s controller than the PS4’s, which makes for an interesting set of tradeoffs.
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nikon133 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Yes, you usually win war with weaker hardware, bundled with generally unwanted accessories, which pre-orders significantly worst than competitor, even on local US turf. /sHere in NZ, all chains I have checked have PS4 pre-sold until late January to mid-February. Coincidently, every shop tried to sell me XO instead. "We have plenty of those", they said.
Great win for XO. They will own shop shelves in the next 2 - 3 months, at least ;)
douglord - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
The weaker console almost always wins the war. Sega always had a hardware edge on Nintendo. Same with everything vs Gameboy. PS1 vs Dreamcast? Wii vs PS3 and 360. DS vs Vita.xgerrit - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
"The weaker console almost always wins the war." You're the first person I've seen suggest the Wii U is going to win this generation... interesting.blitzninja - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
He's going in the right direction but lacks the real reason why.You guys here on AnandTech need to realize that you live in your own little bubble and while you may know a lot about the consoles, the casual consumer market (which makes up most people) have different priorities. So why did Nintendo products beat it's competitors with the Wii while having horrible specs? The experience.
Yes, there is a performance difference between the PS4 and the XO but what really matters is how the console feels and does what people want it to do. This is where the Wii comes in (the Wii U was a flop because they actually went backwards in this regard). Most of the console market is made up of casual gamers. Casual gamers like to invite their friends over and have a LAN party or party game, play with their family (this includes younger audiences), watch movies together and play music at times. The Wii dominated the market because of it's new control interface(s) that added the missing point to this market, it was extremely versatile and made playing it all that more fun than the other consoles.
This is why Nintendo didn't really beef up the Wii U, they just added the extra power to allow for more advanced and precise gesture computation.
So why isn't the Wii U dominating again? Well for starters, most people who have a Wii are satisfied with it and are not out to buy a new one, the Wii U doesn't add anything spectacular that would make the majority of it's target market want to upgrade.
The reason the higher spec console ended up losing is because when the company developed the console, they focused their resources on the performance and as a result cut back on the usability and experience aspect. But that isn't necessarily the case, it all depends on what the focus experience of the console and how well polished that experience is.
If Microsoft want's to win the war it needs to pander to the needs of the casual market, not to say it should copy Nintendo but it has another market. The all-in-one, that is to say make the XO a future PVR, set-top-box, media/streaming centre. Replace the HTPC with a low cost alternative. Most descent HTPCs fall into the $500-$700 market for those who want some light gaming too. The XO would absolutely destroy this market with the proper hardware and software support. Being a console for mid-high end gaming while still being a multimedia powerhouse that does a multitude of things. This includes the voice recognition, a killer feature if done right. If I could say "latest episode of the walking dead" or some other show and it worked, then gg Sony, you just got rolled.
ydeer - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
"I'd say that, sad as it is, MS won that war. Their box will be perceived as "good enough"."This ranks very high on my list of "most hillarious console war comments 2014".
douglord - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
The jump in TFlops gen to gen is usually 10x+. 50% more is not a big deal.bill5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
btw, xone has a few spec advantages too, 9% more CPU speed, 7% more geometry setup, and 54% more peak gpu bandwidth.Revdarian - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Actually, on digital foundry MS admitted that the useable GPU bandwidth in real world scenarios was of 140-150GB/s, while the developers of ps4 games have reported useable bandwidths of ~170GB/s.The 9% gpu is useful until you remember that you need to set aside power for Snap, and that you are running 3 OS's.
Da W - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
The best hardware has always lost the war. Genesis, N64, Xbox, PS3...Death666Angel - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Genesis wasn't superior to SNES neither was the N64 to the Playstaytion. Xbox and PS3 I agree.