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Ask Slashdot: Xbox One Or PlayStation 4? 375

Posted by Soulskill from the console-wars-v219.12 dept.
An anonymous reader writes: I'm looking at getting the kids a new gaming console for Christmas this year. I'm stuck trying to decide between getting an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4. I'm really wary on the PlayStation because of the 5 PS2s with broken optical drives sitting in my garage; none lasted more than two years. On the other hand, I'm also wary of buying a Microsoft product; I'm a Linux user for life after getting tired of their crappy operating system. I've also considered getting a gaming PC, whether Linux or Windows, but it's more expensive and game reviews show most are not as good as a dedicated game console. The kids want Fallout 4, and I want Star Wars Battlefront and any version of Gran Turismo. We currently have a Nintendo Wii and a crappy gaming PC with some Steam games. So, which gaming console should I get that will last a long time?
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Ask Slashdot: Xbox One Or PlayStation 4? More

Ask Slashdot: Xbox One Or PlayStation 4?

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  • Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21, 2015 @05:55PM (#50977307)

    This has no place on Slashdot. At all. Period.

  • Ask your kids. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sylak ( 1611137 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @05:56PM (#50977317)
    Seriously, ask your kids. You seem to have plenty of negatives in the direction of both consoles, but you should ask your kids so that they can be able to use the device which better matches with their own social circles, since that doesn't seem to be a factor on your part of your decision.

    Also I agree with the First Poster. This doesn't belong on an Ask Slashdot.

    • No brainer. Kinect is the future.

    • Re:Ask your kids. (Score:5, Funny)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @06:03PM (#50977371) Journal

      Seriously, ask your kids.

      My kids can play with Lincoln Logs just like I did. The Playstation is mine, dammit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sylak ( 1611137 )
        That's different then, OP seems determined to find reasons not to buy anything new despite his clear desire to. Not everybody can use the same advice.

    • This is the only answer that matters (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @07:37PM (#50977831)

      If this is for the kids, then they need to make the choice. Mostly because online play tends to only work in console. So if all their friends have an Xbox one and they have a PS4, then they can't play games together.

      If you want any kind of technical considerations or the like the PS4 is faster than the Xbone because of details with hardware design so it will end up rendering things at a higher resolution and so on. Also the controllers feel very different in the hands, and some people have a strong preference. I like the Xbone controllers much better and they are what I use with my PC (I have a PS4 controller as well).

      Really though what matters is choosing the one that has the games you want, and that plays with the people you want to play with. The rest is secondary.

      • Sorry I don't have mod points today.

        I'd say the kids' social considerations come first (if the whole reason he wants the console is to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 9492 with his buddy Jim, and Jim has an Xbox One, then that's the console), and game choices comes second. Graphics and such come third.

        I tried to talk my kids into a Steam Machine, but their friends are all on Playstation 4 or Xbox One or both, they don't know anyone that plays Team Fortress 2, or DOTA 2, or Counter Strike. The game they

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

          Well, here's my obligatory plug for the 2-headed dual-GPU nVidia box I built for my kids' Minecraft PC a few years ago:
          http://trumblings.blogspot.com... [blogspot.com]

          Bought all the parts used from Craigslist ($400 for the system, $150 for each video card, and $5 each for a 21" CRT), and it's still better than my gaming PC. There's enough Minecraft mods on it to keep them busy, but they also each have their Steam account on it that they can use for Altitude, Alien Swarm, Portal 2, DOTA, etc. And sometimes World of Tan

          • Nice! I didn't realize setting up multi-seat for Linux was so straightforward. I've seen a demo of a single Fedora setup with some USB and Bluetooth gadgets so that six or eight people could use a GUI, keyboard, monitor and mouse at the same time for productivity and web browsing. But a two setup for gaming is pretty cool. I also appreciate kidtimer. I wrote a very primitive bash script on my kids' machines that just runs every three minutes by cron and powers the box off if it's between 9 PM and 6 AM.

        • So if I make them follow my FSF-aligned beliefs, I'm just going to alienate them from me and from the ideas of the FSF.

          Then it becomes a question of whether I hate patent-wielding, FUD-spreading, monopoly tactics, proprietary operating system Microsoft more than I hate insecure customer data, insecure company servers, kings of DRM and bad rootkit DRM Sony.

          At least the PS4 is running BSD.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Slashdot has always had articles about games. Get over it

    • Exactly. Your kids probably already have friends on one of the two networks, so that might determine your choice. You don't want your kids to be the only one of their peer group with the wrong console, unable to play with their friends.

    • Which platform-only games do you want to play? It's a console. It's not about the uberhertz or septapixels, it's about the games. Which games do you want to play?

    • Seriously, ask your kids. You seem to have plenty of negatives in the direction of both consoles, but you should ask your kids so that they can be able to use the device which better matches with their own social circles, since that doesn't seem to be a factor on your part of your decision. Also I agree with the First Poster. This doesn't belong on an Ask Slashdot.

      I agree w/ this. The platform chosen would depend on the games being played. Other than that, since he expressed a preference for Linux and a disdain for Microsoft, that would seemingly make it a no brainer. However, if the games his kids like are only there on Xbox, get that.

      Gaming PC - he could get a PC and install SteamOS and fire it up. I myself am waiting for PC-BSD 11 so that the SteamOS jail gets included w/ it, and I can install it and play.

      And I agree w/ the last as well - this que

  • Extremetech treatment (Score:5, Informative)

    by Esteanil ( 710082 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @05:58PM (#50977337) Homepage Journal

    Extremetech had a decent article about this a couple of days ago (currently at 1013 comments and rising)

    Link [extremetech.com]

    Full disclosure: I have no kind of attachment to extremetech, other than enjoying their articles which appear to be rather more insightful than most of the tech press out there

    • Re:Extremetech treatment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dynedain ( 141758 ) <slashdot2 AT anthonymclin DOT com> on Saturday November 21, 2015 @06:10PM (#50977421) Homepage

      The specs don't matter. The gameplay and titles do. That's why the Wii wiped the floor with sales over Sony and Mcrisoft when it came out. It was woefully underpowered, and didn't have any HD capability yet far outstripped the technology leaders in sales, and even with the joke of a name. Why? Because they focused on gameplay.

      Which modern system has the best portfolio of games and upcoming releases? That's how to pick which console to buy. The hardware should be meaningless in this decision. The hardware only matters when you play the same game (with same platform tuning) and try to compare. That's going to be a limited set of titles to worry about since most of them are really only tuned for one platform and a basic port to other platforms leaves them less than optimized.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Assoluto ( 4277481 )

        The specs don't matter. The gameplay and titles do. That's why the Wii wiped the floor with sales over Sony and Mcrisoft when it came out. It was woefully underpowered, and didn't have any HD capability yet far outstripped the technology leaders in sales, and even with the joke of a name. Why? Because they focused on gameplay.

        This simply isn't true. The gameplay offered by most Wii games was utterly abysmal, and the real reason it succeeded was because it had a very marketable gimmick that appealed to non-gamers. People saw the tennis, bowling and golf games and instantly understood what the console offered.

        After playing with the console for a short time people realised that there was no gameplay in most Wii games at all, and as such the console met with a quick death. While it was hugely successful for a few years, the sales

  • Pick based on the games you want: (Score:5, Informative)

    by David M Manning Sr. ( 4343105 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @05:58PM (#50977343)
    You seem to be leaning towards PS4 since you want Gran Turismo (they are Sony exclusive). It is a great system and Battlefront has some extras on it that you can't get on Xbox. Fallout also runs a little bit smoother on PS4, but you can't get Fallout 3 on it (Xbox One can play it now with backwards compatibility). I own all of the major systems and don't have a dog in this fight.
  • I went through a similar analysis recently. I had no particular loyalty or bias to any one platform, though I began to lean towards the XBox because of Forza 6, which is the type of game that most interested me. After looking at capabilities, I settled on building a PC for about $1000. That's a lot more money than either console, but you get way more power and an upgrade path that will likely keep up for the next five or more years. The ability of the games on the PC is just better than either console, and

  • Get them a Dreamcast, N64, Saturn, 3DO or Jaguar or any other old skool console. Dreamcast is awesome though event though I'm a die hard Jag fan.

    • Get them a Dreamcast, N64, Saturn, 3DO or Jaguar

      You said "Jaguar". Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 have a 64-bit AMD Jaguar CPU. DO THE MATH.

      More seriously: Why is AMD reusing previous game console names for its technology code names lately? Jaguar was an Atari console, and GCN was the official abbreviation for GameCube.

  • The consoles are, basically, the same. There are a few exclusives on each but the major franchises play the same on both. The biggest consideration when picking between the two is to get the one most of their friends use, so they can play online with them (and they will, even if you swear now you will never buy PSN/Gold).

    • Re:What do their friends play on? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @06:32PM (#50977539)

      This. My gaming friends and I are not hard-core gamers, so we went with consoles. A couple of them have been on Xbox Live since the original Xbox first came out, so we went with 360s years ago and are now moving to XbOnes.

      If you are going with a gaming setup to play solo, look at what supports the most games you are interested in (since there are exclusives on PC, Xbox, and Playstation). If you are gaming with friends, see what they're getting.

  • PS4 (Score:3)

    by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @06:28PM (#50977527)

    Get the PS4... It's the faster machine, can run games at a higher resolution, and has a bunch of exclusives purely by dint of the developers not being able to make it work fast enough on the Xbox. There's something like 100 more games available for it.

    • That's ridiculous. First, I don't know of ANY 720p games where they are 1080p on the PS4. The situation you often get is that the games are 900P on the Xbox One, but with a higher and more stable framerate than the PS4. If you can tell the difference between 1080p and 900p, I salute you...because I can't and I game on a 50 inch tv from about 10 feet away.

      There are more than 100 games available for both consoles. As far as exclusives, they both have them.

      The Xbox One will allow you to watch TV in a window sn

  • I'm really wary on the PlayStation because of the 5 PS2s with broken optical drives sitting in my garage; none lasted more than two years.

    There was actually a defect found, and due to a class action suit you could have gotten some or all of those 5 PS2s repaired free of charge (regardless of warranty status or even if you bought it third hand).

    I bought for $20 a used PS2 in exactly this condition, knowing about the waived fee repair. There even were answers to the scripted questions the Sony rep would ask online so that you could streamline getting the repair approved (boiled down to saying "it says disc read error" "still says disc read err

    • IIRC they did charge a small fee under certain circumstances. I think I had to pay 20 bucks to get one fixed, but that might have been a 39001 rather than the 30001 series with the DRE defect.

      They don't charge a lot to fix PS3's either and they actually FIX it, you get you your same PS3 back. I have a CECHE model PS3 that was having graphical glitches and freezes.

  • If you only care about graphics, get a PS4. Of the two, it is simply the most powerful console (though a mid-end PC or better will easily beat it. However as we have seen with Ubisoft games and more recently, Arkham Knight, PC game ports are more likely to be unoptimized and buggy if not outright broken.) PS4 is the most popular console at the moment and will probably have the superior ports of multiplatform games. It also has some great exclusives like Uncharted, Gran Turismo, Infamous, and LittleBigPlane

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      As a note, if you have Wii-U, your kids (or you) can play the games on the pad while the TV is used to display whatever romance dramedy is totes pop, or whatever.

  • I just purchased a 1TB Xbox One a few weeks ago. I typically purchase most major consoles per generation (although I'd tend to buy for Xbox if it wasn't exclusive), but wasn't impressed enough with any of the new generation until Fallout 4 pushed me over the edge. Here's why:

    * I'm an Xbox gold member, and they recently started offering me free Xbox One games, so I already had a library building up
    * Xbox 360 compatibility means I may be able to ditch my 360 sooner
    * I prefer the Xbox style controller

    That's

  • Go with "which platform has more of your friends using it" and "which controller do you prefer".

    The irony with this generation of the console wars is that the fanboy bitterness is greater than ever, but the differences between the rival platforms have never been smaller. Yes, there are some minor spec differences, but for the most part, you need a magnifying glass to spot them. And single-platform exclusives are in decline; the cost of making games these days means that most games are multiplatform.

    My first

  • For an RPG like fallout 4, I'd say children should be at least 12-14 yrs old to grasp the full meaning of it. I remember my 10-12 yr old nephew playing GTA 3 back in the days, an he didn't get the whole open world / mission aspect of it.
  • In the same situation I ended up going for the PS4. All in all they seemed pretty similar but the PS4 seemed marginally better performance wise. It's smaller size was also a factor for me.

    The swinger though was probably Morpheus/Playstation VR. Obviously it's not out yet, but I've been waiting for decent VR since I was a kid (ie for over two decades) so the possibility of it coming to a home console holds a lot of excitement. Whether I end up getting it depends on reviews etc but, with all other thing be

  • Don't buy a console like you would buy a PC.
    Consoles are not general purposes machines, they are appliances to play games. So you should focus on the game experience rather than the back end (hardware and OS). Sure, the back end has an influence but it is just a mean to an end. In your case, it's easy : Gran Turismo is a Playstation exclusive, and the other two are multi-platform, so that's PS4.
    As for reliability, just because the PS2 had a notoriously failure-prone optical drive means nothing about the PS4

  • Get them an Xbox One and spring for a copy of Rare Replay. They'll have fun for months.

    If you were just talking about older teenagers, I might say a PS4. But, the Xbox One has growing backwards compatibility and more and more games for kids. A PS4 might have slightly better graphics, but really you don't notice the difference while playing and, if graphics mattered THAT much, you'd be getting a PC instead of a console anyway. But, the Xbox One is much better for media AND offers backwards compatibility with

  • I personally went for a PS4 as an "upgrade" to my PS3, but if looking at blankly recommending either, I'd still say PS4 at this point:
    (cue people calling me a shrill)

    * Larger game library (currently)
    * minutely better HW specs
    * upcoming VR headset (H1'16)

    There are a few exclusive on XBox that people would be interested in (HALO?), though on the topic of exclusives it is a matter of checking out what games you want to play. The XBox-unique Kinect is dead in the water currently, as are the Playstation's PS-Mov

  • Parenting failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Saturday November 21, 2015 @08:09PM (#50977975) Journal

    The kids want Fallout 4

    Why am I not surprised that on Slashdot all the comments are just about the technical merits or whether the kids will grasp the game play of Fallout 4? The game is rated M. That's like an NC-17 movie.

  • I first started coming to Slashdot because this site had some good articles about video games. I might not be an expert sysadmin, I'm a little bit fuzzy about the difference between Vi and Emacs, but I know a thing or two about the video games. Given all that we currently know about both consoles, I'd recommend the PS4. Most multiplatform releases are available on the PS4, and there are a number of upcoming impressive exclusives on the PS4 that aren't available on the Xbox One. In terms of hardware, the two

  • Time and time again, with each console generation, the answer is the same: what games do you (or in this case your kids) want to play? Buy the console that has them.
  • The notion of a console "that will last" is laughable. The manufacturers make money off the assumption that you will buy one, and replace it in 2-3 years with the new generation of the same. High fault rates might not be engineered in, but longevity most certainly isn't either.

  • When shopping for any new gaming console, NEVER pick the hardware first. Since this is for some kids, figure out which games the kids are going to want to play. If any of them are exclusive to one console or the other, then your decision has been made for you. If Gears of War or Halo is on the list, your getting an XBox. If Gran Turismo or Ultra Street Fighter IV are on the list of games that they want to play, get the PS4.

    If the games that they want are multi-platform, then the next things to consider

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      If the games are multiplatform, you buy the more powerful hardware or the one with more units shipped. The PS4 is both of those, so for a multiplatform game it is correct just on that.

      The games will be designed for the most powerful platform or the one with the more units shipped. The other platform will receive ports of varying quality.

  • Just get a PC, PS4, and XBone -- that way everyone is happy, and you can properly evaluate which one was the better investment down the road.

    Note: PC kick console's asses to the curb and back. Consoles barely do 1080p @ 60 Hz, PC gaming is doing 4K at 120+ Hz. There are tons of Budget PC Gaming Rigs [reddit.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      It's worth considering a PC, for the reasons you list. But PCs are also a pain in the dick in the way that even a console that wants to always communicate to the mothership can't touch. Never had a video driver error an any console, for instance. Star Wars Battlefront on my PS4 is a video game- on a PC, it insists you install Origin, which does god only knows what (it used to literally scan your drive and upload parts of it to EA), and spams you with ads. PC gaming supports split screen gaming terribly a

      • Every platform has its strengths and weaknesses. There is no such thing as an "perfect" platform.

        I've been custom building PC since the 90's and haven't had driver issues on PC in **years.** Stop buying cheap-ass parts. Go with nVidia, Intel, Asus, and Corsair. For ordering parts: Newegg, Micro Center, NCIX, Amazon have all great prices, and most importantly: ratings. i.e. Don't buy a part from NewEgg if the 4/5 and 5/5 eggs combines have a score of less then 80%.

        PC
        + Mods
        + 4K resolution
        + 120+ Hz framer

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cfalcon ( 779563 )

          > I've been custom building PC since the 90's and haven't had driver issues on PC in **years.** Stop buying cheap-ass parts.

          Dude, parent is talking about budget PCs, and you say not to get cheap parts. If you have to do a huge amount of research to get your video drivers to work correctly, that's an argument in favor of consoles for this application.

          The whole thing is about gaming in a living room and whatnot, and you're suggesting a HOTAS setup? Yes, if you fucking need Elite Dangerous, you need a god

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Lumpy ( 12016 )

          + 4K resolution
          + 120+ Hz framerate

          Not a chance in hell ANY PC gamer is getting 4K at 120HZ or higher framerates. you can't even BUY a display that can go higher than 60 and most guys with $2000 in video cards are having trouble staying anywhere near 60hz at 4K.

  • PS4, but... (Score:3)

    by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Saturday November 21, 2015 @11:24PM (#50978641)

    Of the two, I'd recommend the PS4.

    Here's my reasoning:

    1)- Sony is not very evil right now. Sony supports the gaming industry. Even most of their evil is in part dedicated to the continuance of the business practice of many smaller studios.
    2)- Microsoft is at peak evil right now. Microsoft tried to kill off the revenue streams of all the local mom-and-pop stores (and of course, Gamestop), they tried to have an always on camera be required, they tried to eliminate disks, they tried to make the Xbone dial in every day to ensure it wasn't being used in an unauthorized manner. They also have just a shit ton of ads. Just so many fucking ads.
    3)- The PS4 is more powerful than the Xbone and has sold a shit lot more units (so many that Microsoft stopped reporting consoles sold). To a lot of people this doesn't make sense- you may not care if something is slightly more or less powerful, and you may not care about graphics, and you may not be concerned about who ELSE is playing which console. But in the console world, this has HUGE ramifications, because it controls what gets ported, what is the core product, etc. If the more powerful console is the most powerful, it means that games will be designed for it (or PC) and ported over as an afterthought, losing stuff in translation. It's not about who is better, or how many pixels you get to pix- it's about the games being designed and tested on the primary gaming machine, which is without question the PS4.
    4)- Better hook to the Japanese developers. Microsoft doesn't have much presence in Japan, and treated them as an aftermarket, which means that the J developers give them the cold shoulder- the products will appear on the PS4 and be very well supported.

    But let me say this: for powerful games, the PC is the way to go. For portable games, a tablet or a powerful phone is the way to go. For unique games, a Wii U or portable Nintendo is the way to go. The PS4 and the Xbone are both fighting over the "I'm your blu-ray and I play PC ports plus a few system specific titles". In that niche, I think PS4 does it right, and Xbone takes it on the chin. If Microsoft can go two console generations without trying to "embrace, extend, extinguish" all of console gaming, maybe I'll give them a second chance. But Halo isn't worth giving up the host of system specific titles that PS4 has, and Halo isn't worth giving up all of console gaming to Microsoft's ecosystem.

    But do consider the Wii U. The games it has are not that common, but they are truly excellent.

  • Depends on your kids. Personally, I got the XBox One primarily because of Kinect; I wanted something that would encourage physical activity along with playing, rather than just sitting on a couch. Unfortunately, my kids are probably too young for anything other than Nintendo (4 and 7) - Xbone games are really aimed at older people. So they basically just watch Netflix on it. A nice thing I've set up is facial recognition (which works extremely well) so they can't watch Netflix unless the XBox first sees my

    • My 7 year old loves Viva Pinata via Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. She also plays several of the other games in Rare Replay. She loves LEGO Marvel Avengers as well as a few other lego games. They just added all the Sonic the Hedgehog titles to backwards compatibility as well, so I'll get those for her soon. There are plenty of games on the One for seven year olds....not so much a 4 year old.

    • The entire Android store's selection. Games are cheap (and avoid any 'pay to play' ones).
    • Load it full of emulators or MAME.
    • It'll be a Kodi box for media streaming.
    • Intstall Lil' Debie [guardianproject.info] and have a full Debian chroot environment.

    My Android STB has 8 cores, plays 4k content decently well. My wife's Christmas present is going to be a Bluetooth NES controller so we can play the games we grew up with.

  • Now get off my lawn!

  • ps4 (Score:2)

    by unami ( 1042872 )
    it's faster, better exclusives, and they've sold much more than xbones - so there will be a far bigger used games market and more of the kid's friends will have compatible games/accessoires. plus playstation plus is pretty awesome. the only reason to get the xbox is when you have lots of friends with one

  • Dont worry, they dont want you using that drive anyways, download everything to get rid of the scumbags that would dare to buy or sell a used game.

    Real patriots buy everything new and in download form that is easily controlled with DRM.

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