June 11, 2013

E3 2013: Conference Impressions

E3 2013 kicked off yesterday with some press conferences from some key publishers: Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and Sony. But the important ones were the console manufacturers. Here are my impressions of their conferences. These are just my opinions based on the type of games I prefer.

Games

The key to any E3 press conference is showing us, consumers, games. Both showed some exclusive games, and it really is up to personal preference as to which of those exclusives seem best suited for you. Personally, there are a lot of exclusive shooters for the Xbox One. Much showing the same mechanics we've already seen time and time again. Sony's PlayStation 4 had more variety in regards to the games they showed. So, personally I'm leaning towards the PlayStation 4.

Sharing and Resale

Much of the biggest controversy of Microsoft's debut of the Xbox One was the policy on ownership of games. For the XBO, you must have an internet connection to play games. You must connect at least once very 24 hours so that you system may communicate to the servers of the games you have installed and whether you're entitled to owning them. If one person on the console owns the game, then everyone on that console can play it. If you bring a game to a friend's house, then you must authenticate every hour. You can let a single friend borrow a game, and you won't have access to playing it at the same time. They can borrow the game for up to 30 days. After allowing one person to borrow the game, that game cannot be borrowed out anymore. Publishers are in control of whether the game can be sold back to retail. If anyone puts this kind of restriction on it (so far, publishers have been quiet), that game cannot be sold on Ebay, to Gamestop, or even rented from Game Fly or Red Box. In conclusion, there's a lot of restriction on what can be done with games. Oh, every game must also be installed on the XBO and then the disc becomes useless (other than reinstalling).

Sony was very quiet about their policy, and many assumed that they would have the same policy as Microsoft in regards to the PS4. At Sony's conference, they were very clear and precise with their messaging. If you purchase a disc based game, you can share it any way you want. You can sell it, rent it, let someone borrow it, etc. The game is yours. Clearly, PS4 wins out here.

Hardware

As for hardware, both systems' physical appearance is now available. You can look it up anywhere online. I was a bit dissappointed with XBO's appearance. There was no thought involved. With the PS4's appearance, they at least put some thought into it. In either case, I don't really care about the box, but the PS4 has a slight edge here.

Ecosystem

We know both systems will have the 3rd party games we all know and love: Battlefield, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, etc. We also know what exclusives they have. But what about the ecosystem? Sony showed off the recording, sharing, remote play, social interactions, play while downloading, etc. Microsoft showed that they can match some of those (recording, sharing that recording), but lacked in matching remote play, social sharing, and playing while downloading/installing. But they did bring to the table the snap windows and most importantly the Smart Glass (allows you to perform actions on your tablet/phone and control things in game). I think Smart Glass is the direction Microsoft should go. Extending the game play to your device would be awesome. It's a stronger story than Sony's remote play. Sony does have the advantage of Gaikai for game streaming (PS3 games on your PS4), but now they require PlayStation Plus to play games online. I still think the PS4 has the edge here as well, but this is too soon to tell.

Price

Ah, the awaited price. I though that Microsoft would have learned from Sony's mistake of pricing the system at $499 (and $599 for a higher end model) against then the Xbox 360's $299 (without hard drive) and $399 (with hard drive) models. But I guess they looked at the past and thought, "If Sony can sell the same number of consoles as us, but make an extra $200 in the process, why can't we?" As of this writing, the PS3 and the XB360 have sold about 74 million consoles each worldwide. Sony definitely learned their lessons, and had price the system well.

I thought it would have been a $349 for PS4 vs $399 for XBO. But in reality, that didn't happen. The Sony PlayStation 4 will retail for $399, and the Microsoft Xbox One will retail for $499. That's a $100 less for the PS4 while the PS4 is a more powerful system. Interesting choices... but explainable by this article: Spec Analysis: Xbox One. Clearly the edge is in favor of the PS4.
Now, bearing in mind that we fully expect PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to launch at similar price-points, how did this disparity come about? The answer to that comes down to a specific gamble Sony made that Microsoft could not - the utilisation of a unified pool of GDDR5 memory. In the early days of PS4 development, only 2GB of this type of memory looked viable for a consumer-level device. As higher density modules became available, this was duly upgraded to 4GB. By the time of the reveal back in February, Sony had confidence that it could secure volume of 512MB modules and surprised everyone (even developers) by announcing that PS4 would ship with 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM.

Conclusion

I wasn't expecting to be interested in either console this year. I would take the progress made this year and come back to this next year to make my console determination. However, that all changed with Sony's press conference. I'm now extremely interested in Sony's PlayStation 4 and what it has to offer. I may not buy the system this year (Christmas gift anyone?), but I most definitely will buy this system.

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