Sony vs Microsoft: The Ultimate Gaming Console Showdown - Essay Sample

Introduction

Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's Play Station 4 are both powerful gaming consoles. Sony and Microsoft have been competing over the years over which the company comes top with the most advanced gadget. It, therefore, does not surprise me that both the Xbox and PlayStation 4 are the best gaming consoles found currently in the market.

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Although the gaming consoles have multiple variants like the Xbox One S, Xbox One X, PlayStation4 slim, and PlayStation4 Pro, the companies have managed to differentiate the two consoles from one another with variety of interesting features.

The hardware and design are the first things you experience when you unbox your favorite gaming console. Currently, both the Xbox One and the ps4 has different versions gamers can buy. Xbox one has three while PlayStation 4 has 2. These gaming consoles are designed differently but with the same aim to look attractive. Xbox is shaped like a video recorder, while ps4 is slightly slanted for dynamism (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 42).Their designs are architectural, monolithic, and are designed to fit well in living rooms or under Television screens to command the attention of anyone in the room.

Technically the gaming consoles systems internal hardware are hugely similar, they both have eight-core processors with both running at a frequency of 1.6GHz, they both come with a 500G hard drive Xbox has a non-removable. In contrast, PlayStation 4 has a removable one, which means you can export your gaming data to another gaming device (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 44). The slight difference between the two gaming console hardware is the type of RAM each uses. Xbox One uses 8GB of DDR3 RAM, while PlayStation 4 uses 8G GDDR5 RAM, which is optimized for graphical throughput. Microsoft's Xbox one comes with ports, an IR Blaster, and two HDMI inputs, which allows one to connect the console to satellite boxes and cable television easily. Considering these ports are omitted in the PlayStation 4, Microsoft becomes a winner here (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 45).

The Microsoft Xbox controller resembles the older Xbox controller in appearance. There is the addition of a menu and view buttons, and users can recharge the controller using a universal USB cable (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 45). Microsoft also has an elite version of its controller that allows multiple triggers for different inputs variations and numerous customization options. While the ps4, on the other hand, is more prominent and comes with outward-curving triggers and a multifunctional light bar.

The PlayStation 4 dual shock controls have a game DVR share button, headphone jack, a stereo camera interface that can sense a player surroundings, a built-in mono speaker, a clickable touchpad, and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Only PlayStation 4 controllers connect through Bluetooth (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 45)

Connectivity of gaming devices is essential, depending on how your gaming setup is organized. The Xbox One console has three more ports on its rear compared to PlayStation 4, while both devices support the use of external hard drives; you cannot upgrade Xbox one's internal hard drive, but you can improve on the ps4 because it is removable. All the versions of the devices support Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet, so whichever method one settles for, they do not have to worry about network connectivity. There is a considerable difference in Bluetooth capability, and the only ps4 uses Bluetooth technology to connect console peripherals (Burroughs, Benjamin et al, pg.34). Other than controllers, PlayStation Move, and the headsets, the console can connect with Bluetooth keyboards and mouse.

In performance, both systems can play many of the same games. There is a slight difference in their performance, which is seen in Xbox x that is capable of running many games at a 4K resolution and 60 frames per second consistently, which outperforms Sony's PlayStation 4 console (Burroughs, Benjamin et al, pg.32).

The interface of the Xbox one looks similar to the newer Windows 8 PC operating system. It can be navigated using the controllers, Kinect, or voice commands, and it offers to snap application. The PlayStation 4 has a dynamic menu system that allows a gamer to select games while viewing their profiles and even see social media activities. The PlayStation 4 also has the ability to record games played online. Sony's ps4 has a graphics performance advantage, Xbox uses a 768 core chip while ps4 use 1152 core chip having a more graphics horsepower under its hood than Xbox one (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 49).

Both gaming consoles are limited to 1080p playback option. With streaming becoming the dominant way to consume data at home, both the gaming consoles can handle 4k streams from popular sites like amazon prime and Netflix. Xbox One console features ultra HD Blu-ray players, while ps4 has to rely on streaming for 4k content (Burroughs, Benjamin et al, pg.33). Xbox One has automatic backward compatibility that is growing so fast among gamers while ps4 offers backward compatibility only through PS now streaming services.

The Microsoft game subscription has allowed subscribers to choose among the hundreds of Xbox games from past and present, which brings a large number of Xbox titles to one platform. The difference comes when in Sony's PlayStation now services is a streaming service that will cost gamers money to rent games and also relies on streaming to mean the quality of your gameplay experience varies based on the speed of your internet connection.

In the era of fast-growing technology, both gaming consoles show that the future will not be much different. PlayStation 4 has plenty of upcoming games gamers can play only on PlayStation 4, and even with the PlayStation 5 console on the way, Sony does not show any sign to slow down.

Despite PlayStation boosting game libraries, Microsoft has a long-term vision for the Xbox gaming consoles. For instance, it has an idea of Xbox Play Anywhere initiative that will allow gamers to switch back and forth between their Xbox One and windows 10PC seamlessly. Microsoft also has a Project XCloud that will be supported on the Xbox One in the future with the inclusion of other devices like laptops and phones (Khanji, Salam, et al. pg. 47)

The appearance of the console, how the controllers feel, and the appeal of the games lists are among the differences that can make a consumer of gaming console decide between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Moreover, choosing between the two consoles becomes harder because both of them give almost the same satisfaction they are meant to bring. That is the ability to play games comfortably with joy.

Works Cited

Burroughs, Benjamin, and Paul Rama. "The eSports trojan horse: Twitch and streaming futures." Journal For Virtual Worlds Research 8.2 (2015). https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/index.php/jvwr/article/view/7176

Khanji, Salam, et al. "Forensic analysis of xbox one and playstation 4 gaming consoles." 2016 IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS). IEEE, 2016. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7823917/