PS4 or Xbox One

As we approach the release of the PS4 and Xbox One in a week and two weeks respectively, consumers are taking to decide which one to buy. Unlike the release of their predecessors, this time it is much less about the games but the overall experience of entertainment. To be honest, I couldn't name you many of the titles that will be available on release that isn't one the current generation of consoles; and I don't think one console has an advantage in those titles. Exclusive titles will probably convince gamers to choose one system over the other.

Those dedicated Microsoft Xbox fans will definitely see much more of a performance upgrade than PS3 users just because the share dominance PS3 had over Xbox 360 and the fact that Blu-Ray won the media-disc war. Specifications are nearly identical with 8 cores, 8 GB of RAM (PS4 DDR5/Xbox One DDR3), and AMD Radeon GPUs but the PS4 is more powerful solely based on hardware. Though the Xbox One may get more a boost in the future of cloud computing. And the Xbox One has an interesting HDMI-In port.

Microsoft has a much larger umbrella to cover the cloud with their other products and services like Skype. Microsoft made take advantage of their mobile and desktop systems to increase interaction between products. And Microsoft also seems to have more meaningful exclusive support including ESPN and the NFL. But the PS4 has exclusives like NBA (for now), NHL (for now), and more important to me, Amazon Streaming. Of course, the main players in streaming content are supported in both. The Xbox One will come with the Kinect for movement control but the PS4 has an optional camera accessory, Eye ($60, still less than the $100 price difference between the two).

None of the two consoles support backwards compatibility. There's one thing the Wii U did right.

So which console should you get? Both consoles will be great and it just depends on what content you enjoy the most. Maybe just buy which one looks cooler. What will I be buying? I probably won't be buying either since there are no upcoming games I'm eager to play. And I have my ChromeCast to stream content easily to my TV. But it'll be interesting to see if any Google products/services will end up on either of the consoles. It's stunning how YouTube isn't on either.