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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epyclytus - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
wow. your dream console is might not even be that much more powerful than what is already in the ps4. and, your vram configuration is worst since it only has 1GB of GDDR5.i went for the fences with my specs because it is all made up of dreams.
Subyman - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I wonder how the rise of DDR3 prices has affected MS? I'm sure they purchased contracts at fixed prices a while ago, but going forward it seems DDR3 prices aren't much better than GDDR5 right now. The cost savings may not have been worth it looking at the current marketplace.Morawka - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
i'm so tired of these companies making a big cache on the chip's die to negate poorly chosen memory interfaces.apple did it with the A7 in the iphone and ipad, and now Microsoft is doing it with the XBone.
Just spend the die space on a beefy memory interface and call it a day. Sure the memory interface is going to take up more space on the chip, but its better than wasting even MORE space on eSRAM/Cache.
Apple could have just put a beefy memory controller and call it a day, instead they put 4 MB of cache which takes tons of die space and served as a stop gap solution
Microsoft could have just went with GDDR5 and call it a da, but instead went with ddr3 and wasted tons of die space on esram
sigh, just beef these things up and call it a day, especially if these are going to be on the market for the next 8 years.
blacks329 - Saturday, November 30, 2013 - link
While your complaints are valid, Apple will probably address them within 12 months with the A8, so I don't see it as that big of a problem for them. On the X1 side, they gambled wrong and we're kind of stuck with it until ~2020.Braumin - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I wonder how much of the cross-platform comparisons are just that due to time constraints, the Xbox just didn't get optimized very well. Unfortunately it looks slightly harder to code for.I'll be curious to see how this goes moving forward. Do games like Forza 5 also have the aliasing problems? Other reviews have just said that it looks great.
Also - Anand - you've outdone yourself. You're preview is better than most reviews I've seen.
GTVic - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
"One" or "the One" is not a good shorthand/nickname. I prefer XBone or X-Bone.piroroadkill - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I thought it was Xbox 180 after all their U-Turns...djboxbaba - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
hahaha awesomemikato - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
Why is everyone abbreviating "box" and not "one"? Like XbOne or XbO or Xb1. And the capitalization. All I read when I see this is "X Bone". I'll just call it that now. I guess there are difficulties with confusion with the original Xbox? The Scion xB? lol. I have an xB and owners call the current model the xB2.prophet001 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
"Those concerned about their privacy will be happy to know that Kinect isn’t required for use."As opposed to those people who don't care about a video camera watching their living room 24 hours a day.
My word people. Wake up.