The Daily Dose

Power

While no-one can definitively say that the PlayStation 4 is more powerful than the Xbox One, a number of cross-platform games show that Sony’s machine has a slight edge. Here are the facts: Call of Duty: Ghosts runs at native 1080p on the PlayStation 4, but only 720p on the Xbox One. Battlefield 4 runs at 900p, versus 720p. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag runs at 1080p, versus 900p. Across several titles, the PlayStation 4 is running at a higher resolution than the Xbox One.

Graphical fidelity isn’t the whole story, however. Performance can be attributed to many different elements, including frame rate, scale, physics and latency. It’s also possible that developers will, over time, adjust to both hardware platforms and the differences between the two will become even more marginal.

Nevertheless, the PlayStation 4 is now considered to be the more powerful console. For comparison, Sony based the PlayStation 3 on Cell architecture, which led to a few early cross-platform games looking better on the Xbox 360. This time around, Sony went for the more familiar x86 architecture and in these early bouts with the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 is taking the win.

Twitch streaming

Sony has a small, but growing group of customers that are promoting the PlayStation 4 for free. The console supported Twitch, the most popular live streaming platform for games, at launch with a refreshingly simple interface. Just press the share button on the controller, followed by the ‘broadcast gameplay’ option and you’re all done.

Streaming has become a hugely popular and influential part of the gaming community. In the past, broadcasting and recording footage from a console has been notoriously difficult, effectively capping the number of people that could get share their gameplay experiences.

With built-in Twitch support, anyone can stream a game – and have a potentially large audience watch them for free. For next-gen exclusives such as Knack and Killzone: Shadow Fall, that’s an extremely effective and organic marketing tool for gamers. If you’re wondering about the Xbox One, it’s expected to land sometime in the early part of this year.

PlayStation Now

PlayStation Now is Sony’s wild card at the moment. The idea of a Netflix-style video game streaming service is incredibly appealing, but as firms such as OnLive have found out, delivering it with an effective business model can be wrought with difficulties.

Although Sony has already shown PlayStation Now in action – a beta program is currently underway – a number of questions remain unanswered. How much will it cost? How many games will be available? What will the latency be like?

For the PlayStation 4, the service could give the next-gen console an unprecedented number of older games for players to enjoy. Given that the system has no backwards compatibility, that means top-tier PlayStation 3 exclusives such as The Last of Us, Uncharted and Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch would be available to customers who may have only bought an Xbox 360 in the previous generation.

Although it’s not available just yet, the promise of PlayStation Now will have been enough to tempt some customers into picking up a PlayStation 4. Another wise move from Sony, it would seem.

Future exclusives

While Titanfall will almost certainly help Microsoft to shift a bucketload of Xbox One consoles, Sony has its own share of platform exclusives in the pipeline including Infamous: Second Sun, Driveclub, The Order: 1866 and a fresh instalment in the Uncharted franchise.

Sony has been upfront about the first-party video games that it has waiting in the wings. In the previous generation, the PlayStation 3 had a strong line-up of exclusives – arguably more so than the Xbox 360 – and if can maintain that perception, players will continue to buy PlayStation-branded hardware.

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