Uh oh! I cannot believe I am writing another of these "Why I will not be going..." posts on my blog and again this one points at another Microsoft product. This is the third product line that I have now ditched. Back in October 2012, I mentioned my dislike for Windows 8 after running the beta for months and experiencing the release candidate and then I mentioned my hatred for Windows Phone which I had been using for 18 dreadful months too long.
I was a Microsoft fanboy throughout later primary school and all throughout secondary school. Since about 2011, I have started to completely change that, now following companies like Google and Apple a lot more. Today, nothing has changed, well actually, it has. Microsoft has pushed me further away from them.
I am not going to start saying that I was going to purchase myself an Xbox One any time in the near future, but I had been planning on it when it had saturated it a bit. So today, I started to think to myself, is it really that bad? Well, the answer is actually a lovely great big yes. Which now officially confirms that I have ditched Microsoft. Even after family members were Microsoft employed for a while, receiving invitations for events like the Xbox One release (but didn't go, these were mainly whilst I was in the hospital - thanks for that Microsoft, you know when to fire out the events!) and all the rest, I dislike how Microsoft are now. That company has ruined itself.
In my opinion, all of it went downhill when we lost Bill Gates. Nobody can deny that his last release of the operating system, Windows Vista, was a software bloat and in turn a huge mistake, but it cannot be said that it was down to his work that it failed. I'm sure that under Gates' management skills, we could have seen a similar operating system to Windows 7, which remedied all of the problems created by Vista. But Gates also maintained a stronger position for the company as a whole. The Xbox 360 had some real games on it and had a decent user interface (I dislike the constantly new updated dashboards on the Xbox 360 because I feel that they get worse and worse), the PC still ran on a desktop operating system, not one designed for both tablets and sort of on desktops, and they had Windows Mobile, which ran on PDAs and SmartPhones but felt like a basic version of Windows, not Windows Phone.
Looking at Microsoft's current Windows 8 market share of 4.27% as of June 2013 and Windows Phone market share of 2.0% as of May 2013 people clearly do not care for Microsoft products the way they used to. I am within that group now.
The main point of this post was to describe the Xbox One and its pros and cons. Somehow the Xbox One has been another one of these disasters in my view. It seems like Microsoft wants rid of their company in my eyes.
Price
Xbox One: £429
Wii U: £299 - £349
PS4: £349
Winner: Wii U, lowest price
Disc format
Xbox One: Blu-Ray disc
Wii U: Proprietary Wii U Optical Disc (based on Blu-Ray), Wii Optical Disc
PS4: Blu-Ray disc
Winner: Xbox One and PS4 as they can also play Blu-Ray and DVD films
CPU
Xbox One: Octa-core (8 cores) AMD
Wii U: Tri-core PowerPC
PS4: Octa-core AMD with two quad-core dies
Winner: Xbox One, a single octa-core almost always performs better than a dual-die system
GPU
Xbox One: AMD 768 shader modules at 800MHz
Wii U: AMD 320 shader modules at 550MHz
PS4: AMD 1152 shader modules at 800MHz
Winner: PS4, most shaders at the same clock frequency
RAM
Xbox One: 8GB DDR3 2133MHz RAM (5GB for games) giving a system bandwidth of (8 x 2.133) x 2 lines per clock x 2 modules = 68.256GB/s
Wii U: 2GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM (1GB for games) giving a system bandwidth of (2 x 1.6) x 2 lines per clock x 2 modules = 12.8GB/s
PS4: 8GB GDDR5 5500MHz RAM (7GB for games) giving a system bandwidth of (8 x 5.5) x 2 lines per clock x 2 modules = 176GB/s
Winner: PS4, the highest RAM frequency due to GDDR5's higher bandwidth (GDDR5 also is better at dealing with larger requests than DDR3 which copes better with small requests) and also has the most free memory for games and the highest memory bandwidth.
Storage
Xbox One: 500GB hard drive which is non-replaceable
Wii U: up to 32GB of non-replaceable flash storage
PS4: 500GB hard drive which is upgradeable
Winner: PS4, 500GB hard disk which can be upgraded against the Xbox
Output resolution
Xbox One: 4K
Wii U: 1080p or 2K
PS4: 4K
Winner: Xbox One and PS4, they both support 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 or 2160p) whereas the Wii U supports just 1080p
Input methods
Xbox One: Xbox One Wireless Controller, motion controls with Kinect, voice commands with Kinect, SmartGlass app for iOS and Android
Wii U: Wii U GamePad, Wii Remotes, Wii U Pro Controller, Wii Classic Controller, Wii Nunchuk, Wii Balance Board
PS4: DualShock 4, motion controls with PlayStation Move, PlayStation Vita and the PlayStation app for iOS and Android
Winner: Wii U, there is no app for tablets, but it makes up for it by supporting 5 players on one console with a variety of different inputs that mostly come from existing Wii hardware.
Constant online connection required
Xbox One: required to be connected to the internet every 24 hours on the primary console and every hour on a secondary console
Wii U: none
PS4: none
Winner: Wii U and PS4, you do not need a constant internet connection
Region locks
Xbox One: region locked
Wii U: region locked
PS4: no region lock
Winner: PS4, there is no region lock
Backward compatibility
Xbox One: none
Wii U: NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Commodore 64, MegaDrive, TurboGrafx, NeoGeo, Master System through Virtual Console and Wii Optical Disc support
PS4: an online service that will permit the streaming of previous-generation games
Winner: Wii U, the most varieties of games
Connectivity
Xbox One:
-
2x HDMI (one in and one out)
- 3x USB 3.0 ports
- Wi-Fi
- Kinect port
- b/g/n wireless
Wii U:
- HDMI port
- 4x USB 2.0 ports
- SD memory card
- Bluetooth
- Near Field Communication (NFC)
- AV Multi Out (composite, VGA, component, SCART support)
- Sensor bar port
- a/b/g/n wireless
PS4:
- HDMI port
- 2x USB 3.0 ports
- Bluetooth
- PS4 Camera port
- b/g/n wireless
Winner: Xbox One or Wii U, the Wii U features an extra USB 2.0 port which means you can plug in more devices but at the cost of speed (480Mbps vs 5Gbps). No matter what, the PS4 is the loser here.
One more thing...
I have actually begun to get even more annoyed because I read that at E3 Microsoft did not even demonstrate the games they were showing on an Xbox One. In fact, they were shown on a PC. Read this.
