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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tipoo - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
http://www.conductunbecoming.ie/wp-content/uploads...bill5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
there is a guy on neogaf with access to wii u official documentation that more or less confirms 160 shaders, even though it's never explicitly stated (for example it refers to 32 alu's, which would be vliw 5 in this case, meaning 160 shaders). combine that with the die evidence and it's clear. 8 tmu's, 8 rops also.some people will never accept it but there's no real doubt for me personally, it's 160.
tipoo - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
A 1:1 ROP to TMU ratio is quite strange. TMUs are usually double. Not doubling it is another weird limitation. Nintendo sure does have a lot of head scratchers in there.djboxbaba - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Wii U is almost decade old hardware packaged for todaytipoo - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
The PowerPC 750 its based on is from the 1998 iMac G3 :PBut I know, that's like saying the Core 2 is based on the Pentium 3.
dgingeri - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
For the first time since the Atari 2600, I actually want a particular console: the Xbox One. I don't even play console games. I want it for the voice control for the apps. I watch Hulu Plus and Netflix instead of TV, and this would make it easier to watch than using a Win7 PC like I do right now. It also uses less power than the PC I use right now. In addition, I would like to have the Skype app so I could talk to certain family members face to face, sort of, who are too far away for me to visit. The games don't attract me to the console so much as the other uses.Hubb1e - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I agree with you. The $500 price doesn't even scare me that much because my young girls and wife will probably like the casual kinect games.However, Microsoft has made a HUGE mistake with requiring a $60 yearly subscription. This isn't 2008 anymore. I can get a Roku streamer for $50 that will play netflix and Hulu for years to come. Kinect really appeals to the casual gamer and I'd get one myself for the steaming and the occasional console game session, but the $60 a year charge that can't be canceled easily (as I found on my 360) makes the XO a non-starter for me.
mikeisfly - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Hubb1e I hear you but how do they make up for the cost of the console? How much do you think a sensor like the Kinect 2 would cost on the PC? How do they continue to make money to make the network better so things like voice recognition get better and to make the investments to get the network closer to the end user to reduce latency? I'm willing to pay $60/year (one night out with the family at the movies/diner) to get a better experience.Owls - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Couldn't you get a $35 Chromecast dongle for your TV? Or does your TV not have a USB port? It just seems so odd shelling out $500 for watching TV. Heck, you could probably spend $500 and get a fairly decent smart TV with Skype, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime!mikato - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
Seems like voice command is the only reason he can't do something like that, or just continue using his Win7 PC or an XBMC. I'm still leaning toward making a new APU based HTPC for XBMC myself.