Now that the both players have shown their cards and we're only weeks away away from the release of the next generation of consoles and most of the immediate vitriol surrounding the announcements has died down, I thought it'd be a good time for me to attempt a summary of my thoughts on the upcoming machines. I'm most likely going to end up owning both the Xbox One and the PS4 at some point during the next year or two, but at the moment I'm really only drawn towards one of them and those who've read my forum posts during the last months probably know which one that is. I'm not going to talk about the Wii U firstly because I don't really consider it to be a next-gen console and secondly because writing about Nintendo's potential future or demise would distract me from the topic. First off though I think that a short summary of my console history is in order.

I started my gaming hobby with the NES and PC back in the early 90's. Back then I had no real grasp of the advance of gaming technology. My dad had bought me an NES at some point in my early childhood and a few of my friends had Amigas, C64's and I vaguely remember a Sega Genesis at a cousins house. However when I first saw footage on TV of the PlayStation I soon realized that videogames could look a lot better than they did then, and that I simply had to have a PlayStation to play those games which at that time looked practically photorealistic. The first PlayStation really cemented my love for games and when the launch of the PS2 loomed I was finally ready to buy my first console at launch and the feeling was glorious. Getting your hands on that shiny, or rather matt black, box as soon as it was available and getting to blow my mind regarding graphics once more with SSX and Fantavision was fantastic.

I'd never thought of buying anything else than another PlayStation before I started reading about the Xbox. Having had some limited experience with online games on the PC and once again seeing the graphical bump over the PS2 made me get that system on day one as well. I started to spend more and more time playing online with my friends on Xbox Live and the PS2 with its more limited graphical and online capabilities slowly started to gather dust. That's why by the time the Xbox 360 rolled around it was really a no-brainer for me to buy it and not wait for the launch of the PS3, which I did end up buying later on with the release of Metal Gear Solid IV. Oh and the Wii. I bought one of those at launch as well I guess, but was able to sell it off to a friend after a couple of years. Yes I was one of those suckers that got drawn in by the promise of motion controls, but I'm not making the same mistake again. Or am I?

You see the Kinect is probably the most interesting part of these upcoming consoles. It's the one main differentiator between the two platforms and even though I know a lot of people who got burned with the first iteration a couple of years ago I remain optimistic regarding the opportunities of the sensor. I can't really even give examples of the things I'd like to see done with the Kinect and maybe that's the thing. The Kinect remains to be something quite unknown, sort of like the vague promise of the Cell architecture on the PS3 or having an Ethernet port on the Xbox. I mean, who would ever need an Ethernet port on a console? Am I saying then that I'm buying the Xbox One because of Kinect? Of course not, that would be totally daft. Beyond the Kinect I'm mostly concerned with the three things I consider most important when choosing your console right now. Exclusive games, internet services and ecosystem.

First of all the most important component, exclusive games. Even with their diminishing numbers game exclusives matter a whole lot to all of us. As someone who's owned both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 these past few years I can easily say that the exclusives on the Microsoft side of the table simply appeal to me more. The past two Forza Motorsport games are likely my most played games of this generation and even though I've tried and bought them on several occasions, games like Gran Turismo and Need for Speed don't quite scratch the same itch for me. Another huge Xbox exclusive is of course Halo, a franchise which I've obsessed over in one capacity or another ever since I saw the first snippets of footage of Combat Evolved. On top of those there's stuff like Gears of War, Titanfall and the partnership with a game studio I adore above all others, Remedy.

Sure there's a lot of amazing stuff on the PlayStation side of things as well and games like Journey, The Last of Us and Uncharted 2 were some of the best games from their respective years. If Naughty Dog does continue being a Sony exclusive studio in the future then their next game may be what draws me to buy a PS4 if I don't buy one sooner. And there are a lot of great looking indie games coming out on the PS4 which is great and I admire Sony for finally bringing those games to the forefront. However most of those games are ones I've already had the chance to play on my PC or will be able to buy through Steam in the future. And yes I do understand that games like Titanfall are also coming out on PC, but the difference is that my current PC will be able to comfortably run an indie game like Transistor but not something as graphically demanding as Titanfall or Watchdogs for example. Not at the same visual level as on these next-gen consoles anyway.

I want to be excited for the PS4, but I'm just not. I still haven't cancelled my pre-order and who knows the launch mania may be enough to drive me into a store to buy one but right now nothing about the platform seems appealing to me over the Xbox One. Out of the launch lineup Knack is probably the only game that interests me and there isn't an exciting hardware difference to drive me to buy one like the Wii did. The DualShock 4 seems to fix almost every issue that I had with the SixAxis and DualShock 3 and admittedly the raw hardware performance seems beyond that of the Xbox One as well. That doesn't really matter however if those technically prettier games are not ones I would be interested in playing in the first place.

During the last months a lot has been said about Sony's trustworthiness among gamers versus that of Microsoft's. Frankly I've had a much better customer experience with Microsoft than Sony these past years, especially when it comes to online services. Sony has made huge leaps in catching up what Microsoft has to offer with Xbox Live and some could rightly argue that with PS+ they have surpassed Live. But the reliability of Live has still been much better than that of PSN, and to me reliability is a huge thing because of the dependence on the internet that both of these coming consoles share. And before you ask, no I haven't had a 360 red-ring on me. On top of that I haven't had very many great experiences with Sony on the software side of things. Now I'm not talking about games but operating systems and ecosystems. The PS3 UI is functional, but would be better suited for a BluRay player than a somewhat complicated gaming machine. On the flip side I'm writing this on a Windows PC and I've got a Windows Phone sitting on my desk. The ecosystem benefits of SmartGlass (however annoying the marketing around that may seem at the moment) and Xbox ecosystem on PC and phones is something that Sony simply doesn't have.

It's absolutely true that the majority of marketing on Microsoft's behalf has not been squarely aimed at gamers like us, but frankly I feel that it is healthy for the industry to throw a wider net this time around with the uncertainty of the current model of making big budget videogames and all. Features like TV and fantasy football which honestly don't interest me at all are sure to catch the attention of the dads and moms who will after all be buying a large portion of these consoles for their families. On the other hand that marketing benefit is being all but nullified at the moment with the 100 dollar/euro/money price difference. For me the price difference doesn't really matter on a console where I'll probably end up spending hundreds of euros on games and services in the coming years, but I do understand how a lot of people will end up looking at the price of the initial investment alone.

I'm starting to ramble here so maybe it's time to draw this mess to a close. I ended up writing this thing in two chunks over a two month period, so my apologies to whomever suffered through this. I just felt like I had to reason through this for my own sake. I'm still not cancelling that PS4 pre-order but I do think that I'd rather spend that money on a trip around southern Europe for example and buy the console when there are games out on it which I actually care about. Luckily for all of us both of these upcoming machines seem like really great value propositions despite which side of the court you are at right now. And because things are so cutthroat right I'm sure that both console makers will keep piling on value on these systems to compete with one another. And with the increasing reliance on internet services the consoles may very well end up looking wildly different in two years time than they do right now. Who knows, but at least I'm excited and it seems like a lot of other people are as well. Let's just hope that that excitement translates to profit and success for both Sony and Microsoft.