The Xbox One - Mini Review & Comparison to Xbox 360/PS4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 20, 2013 8:00 AM ESTImage Quality - Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4
This is the big one. We’ve already established that the PS4 has more GPU performance under the hood, but how does that delta manifest in games? My guess is we’re going to see two different situations. The first being what we have here today. For the most part I haven’t noticed huge differences in frame rate between Xbox One and PS4 versions of the same game, but I have noticed appreciable differences in resolution/AA. This could very well be the One’s ROP limitations coming into play. Quality per pixel seems roughly equivalent across consoles, the PS4 just has an easier time delivering more of those pixels.
The second situation could be one where an eager developer puts the PS4’s hardware to use and creates a game that doesn’t scale (exclusively) in resolution, but also in other aspects of image quality as well. My guess is the types of titles to fall into this second category will end up being PS4 exclusives (e.g. Uncharted 4) rather than something that’s cross-platform. There’s little motivation for a cross-platform developer to spend a substantial amount of time in optimizing for one console.
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Let’s start out with Call of Duty: Ghosts. Here I’m going to focus on two scenes: what we’ve been calling internally Let the Dog Drive, and the aliasing test. Once again I wasn’t able to completely normalize black levels across both consoles in Ghosts for some reason.
In motion both consoles look pretty good. You really start to see the PS4’s resolution/AA advantages at the very end of the sequence though (PS4 image sample, Xbox One image sample). The difference between these two obviously isn’t as great as from the 360 to Xbox One, but there is a definite resolution advantage to the PS4. It’s even more obvious if you look at our aliasing test:
Image quality otherwise looks comparable between the two consoles.
NBA 2K14
NBA 2K14 is one cross platform title where I swear I could sense slight frame rate differences between the two consoles (during high quality replays) but it’s not something I managed to capture on video. Once again we find ourselves in a situation where there is a difference in resolution and/or AA levels between the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game.
Both versions look great. I’m not sure how much of this is the next-gen consoles since the last time I played an NBA 2K game was back when I was in college, but man have console basketball games significantly improved in their realism over the past decade. On a side note, NBA 2K14 does seem to make good use of the impulse triggers on the Xbox One’s controller.
Battlefield 4
I grabbed a couple of scenes from early on in Battlefield 4. Once again the differences here are almost entirely limited to the amount of aliasing in the scene as far as I can tell. The Xbox One version is definitely more distracting. In practice I notice the difference in resolution, but it’s never enough to force me to pick one platform over another. I’m personally more comfortable with the Xbox One’s controller than the PS4’s, which makes for an interesting set of tradeoffs.
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djboxbaba - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Let me rephrase your first statement for you: The best part of all this IS PC gaming. haha :)mikato - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
I agree. Now only if they let Call of Duty PC gamers play against their console counterparts in multiplayer, aaahahaha, no mouse, sorry your soldier has a hangover today and has to turn slowly.Hrel - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
"Support for external storage is apparently on its way, as the Xbox One doesn’t allow end user upgrades of the internal 500GB hard drive. I have to say that I prefer Sony’s stance on this one."What IS Sony's stance on this one? I have no idea, haven't heard anything.
nikon133 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
My understanding is that HDD on PS4 is user-replaceable, but no external storage at the moment. Will they introduce external storage in future, and is there limit to HDD size (with current firmware), I don't know.Owls - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
2TBCommentfairy - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
What the..?! Xbox and ps4 just got released and already reviewed? I come to this website everyday for a month to look for MacBook retina 15 inch review as I hold off buying one, yet Anandtech never posts any review? This is weird don't they review MacBook all the time....??Hrel - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
it's not the full review, that's forthcoming. If you had read it you'd know that.I would assume mac product reviews are forthcoming as well. Not that reasonable people care.
errorr - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I would expect that review sometime later this week. An and admitted somewhere that he was putting the 15" Mac at the bottom of the pile of things to review.Now I only need Klug to tell me how great my decision to buy a Nexus 5 was....
Hrel - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
"If Sony’s price tag didn’t nerf the PS3 last round, it’s entirely possible that Microsoft’s Kinect bundle and resulting price hike won’t do the same for the Xbox One this time."Wat? Not sure what you're trying to say here. Sony's price tag last gen hurt their sales. It's entirely possible that Microsoft's high price tag won't hurt their sales this round. That's my guess, but it's worded very strangely. Also, if that is what you're saying I don't agree. The fact that it's an extra $100 for something the vast majority of people consider not only useless but intrusive can only hurt them further.
For my part I'm done with Microsoft. They fucked up Windows 8 to the point that it's unusable. They fucked up Xbox Live by banning everyone who has fun. (trash talks) and they built a console with sub-par hardware in the hopes that a fast cache would compensate. We won't notice the inferiority early on, but in 2-4 years it will become obvious that the PS4 is vastly superior.
I'm really a PC gamer now, and don't expect to have enough time to also be into consoles. But if that does happen down the road I'll be going Sony only for the first time ever. Only other console of their I have is the PS2. To play a PS1 game I like and a handful of PS2 exclusives I wanted to try. Shadows of Colossus being the primary one. But I got that, and games/accesories, off ebay for $70.
Hubb1e - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
lol complaining about getting banned for trash talking...