The Hardware
Theres really no point dragging this section out or debating, Sony didnt show the box so Microsoft wins the box debate thus far. Thats not to say the Playstation 4 wont look good, I predict it will, Sony always make cool hardware. (Excluding the banana controller). From the teaser Sony released the day before the Xbox One reveal, the system is obviously black and silver with several fans. From the tiny portions of the console we were allowed to witness it looks sleek and cool with both matte and metallic finishes. Also, although some werent happy with not seeing the box, that was clearly by design. Sony will show the box whenever theyre ready, I was disappointed at first but I had so much to take away from the Sony conference a piece of hardware didnt seem all too important. Plus showing the console seems like a nice way to open or close Sonys E3 conference on June 10th. The technical specifics of Sonys box were apparently impressive, (not my area of expertise), with its AMD Jaguar processor and its GDDR5 RAM, which is more powerful than Xbox Ones DDR3. Which doesnt mean a whole lot as the PS3 was fairly more powerful than the 360 but not often could you tell, besides in exclusive titles that could utilise that bit more power. Regardless, both systems should run smoothly and produce some top-notch graphics, which is all I ask for. The Xbox One is a very pretty system. I noticed some people arent fans with the console design but I like it. It looks a lot like the Xbox Elite S system, only lying down. The metallic black finish with cheque-style design is really cool.
The innards of the Xbox One are really similar to the PS4, which everyone predicted beforehand, meaning both systems will run pretty equally. The Xbox One comes with an unchangeable 500GB HDD, which sounds like a lot but if this generation sees the foretold death of physical discs then 500GB will be filled pretty quickly, meaning external storage devices will be purchased by many. Sony have yet to unveil the size of their HDD, preferably it will be 1TB but if not it will be 500GB as well. Im interested in how big these next two systems are, Microsofts box looks a nice size but pictures dont tell the whole picture. I highly doubt well end up with anything the size of the original Xbox. Given that we havent seen Sonys we can only speculate the size but again I cant picture it being the size of the original PS3s, they were pretty big and heavy. The PS3 redesigns, like the matte slim version, were very nice machines. The other hardware area is the controllers. The Dualshock 4 was a redesign of the PS3s Dualshock 3, which is inherently similar to the first ever PS1 controller, this line of heritage should not be changed. As someone whos been there since PS1 the Dualshock always feels really good to me, really natural.
Sonys classic design is a great controller that fits well in hand, the layout is simple and it just looks cool, none of this seems to have changed with the Dualshock 4. With the implementation of the touch screen, light bar and share button, as well as redesigned analogue sticks and triggers, the Dualshock 4 looks to be an improvement of an already great controller. The Xbox 360 controller was widely considered one of the best ever, if not
the, and Microsoft kept a very similar design for the Xbox One version. The new controller looks awesome with a sleeker black finish, tread-like grip on the analogues and less colourful buttons. The one aspect of the 360 controller I never understood was the necessity for batteries, thats insanely annoying and expensive over the course of 8 years. I fully expected them to adopt Sonys USB charger for the Xbox One controller but it seems they have not and this just baffles me. In short the Xbox One is a damn good looking system with a slightly, albeit for the better, redesigned controller. Sony will showcase their box at E3 and it too will probably look awesome and we already know the controller has several new features whilst mainting its lineage. Both systems are sure to look great but Microsoft will have the lion share of hardware talk for the next few weeks. Lets just hope neither system sounds like a lawnmower this time around (heres looking at you 360).