Xbox 1 or PlayStation 4 II

Well it seems like the media has made it clear that the choice for the upcoming generation has to be the PlayStation 4. After all, you can always trust the media. Can’t you? Maybe you can, but I can’t.

I don’t think anyone can debate that the media is providing skewed information. It’s nothing new. The video game media clearly prefers the PlayStation brand. It was obvious with the PlayStation 2. It was obvious with the PlayStation 3. It was expected with the PlayStation 4. When comparing these consoles, I will have to minimize media influence.

How am I so sure that the media is in love with Sony? You shouldn’t have to ask. In case you are completely oblivious to the antics of the media, I’m going to share some of the things I’ve noticed.

Let me start by talking about the Dreamcast. Personally, I thought that Sega did a great job on that console. The PlayStation 2 had more raw power, but the Dreamcast was designed more efficiently. It was also established that Sega had better development tools. When Sony finally started to show in-engine footage, it was a huge step back from what I had already seen on the Dreamcast. I remember Sony’s advertising relying heavily on pre-rendered graphics. They would throw in about a tenth of a second of actual in-engine that looked awful (anti-aliasing & VRAM were big factors).

During this time, it was revealed that Sega underestimated performance while Sony overestimated. With effects turned on, the Dreamcast had been reporting a possibility of 3 million polygons per second (the key spec people were referring to at the time). Reports were coming in that they were already pushing 4 million when they increased their estimate to 6 million. Sony was claiming 20 million polygons per second with effects turned on when developers started insisting that bottlenecks would keep them from 10 million. After all of this, I read an article on a website (I no longer visit the website in question due to their over-the-top bias) that insisted that Sony had a 20 million to 3 million advantage. The website wasn’t even getting the facts right.

Eventually, the media hype drowned the Dreamcast. Sure the Dreamcast actually had hardware advantages, more innovation, a lower price tag, and better games, but those things weren’t covered by the media as much as raw performance. While I’m at it, let me bring up Sega’s huge reliability advantage. At the time, the PlayStation 2 was notoriously unreliable. Apparently, reliability isn’t newsworthy.

Like I said, Sony was being heavily praised for the performance advantage of the PlayStation 2 over the Dreamcast. Sega had a huge lead in software, but nobody was talking about software. Then Microsoft announced the Xbox, which absolutely blew away the performance of the PlayStation 2. The same media sources who were previously downplaying software in favor of hardware insisted that Microsoft’s advanced hardware proved that they didn’t know that the industry was all about software. It was a complete 180 by the media within the generation.

Another criticism of the Xbox was the large physical size. I never heard that gamers were worried about console size before, but they insisted that the large size of the console was more proof that Microsoft didn’t understand what gamers wanted.

The media changed their mind again on the value of hardware performance with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Even though the performance was much closer (performance was roughly even overall with tradeoffs between the two), Sony had one key advantage that the media was drooling over. Performance became a huge selling point.

Another advantage the PlayStation 3 had was reliability. I’m not writing to be a fanboy defending what turned out to be a big mistake from Microsoft, but this was another huge change for the video game media. After downplaying reliability issues of the PlayStation 2, they put a heavy emphasis on reliability. They acted as though everyone should have known that Sony would make a more reliable console even though the only previous generation that offered a comparison had the Xbox proving more reliable than the PlayStation 2.

Judging from the media of the previous generation, the PlayStation 3 being larger than the original Xbox was a huge disadvantage. It actually wasn’t. This generation, I have struggled to find actual dimensions. I found one person who used the size of standardized components (USB) to make a guess for the Xbox One. Overall, it seems that the Xbox One is a little smaller than the PlayStation 3. Since it’s larger than the PlayStation 4, the media is emphasizing product sizes again. What were the odds that the largest of the consoles of the last three generations didn’t get as much criticism for its size as a couple other large (but still smaller) consoles?

During that generation, the console manufacturers occasionally drew from each other. Nintendo introduced avatars called Miis with the Wii. Sony decided to make their own version. Nobody criticized them for copying Nintendo. Microsoft created their own avatars. They were criticized of copying Nintendo and Sony.

Bias is also showing for the upcoming generation. On one video game website, polls were revealed regarding readers feelings of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1. The numbers shared didn’t appear to be that different (although I don’t think they gave us the raw numbers from their poll, allowing them to pick to better serve their purposes). They posted two articles. One was about why gamers were planning on buying the PlayStation 4. The other article was why gamers were passing on the Xbox One.

There’s one article that I read from a non-gaming website that was explaining how you could use HDMI to connect your Xbox 360 to your Xbox One. The article made sure to emphasize that this was the only way to play your old games on the Xbox One because the new console lacked backwards compatibility. I’m fine with them pointing out the lack of backwards compatibility. What bothered me is that the writer insisted that the lack of backwards compatibility was one of the reasons for gamers to go with the PlayStation 4 instead, and he conveniently forgot to mention that the PlayStation 4 also lacks backwards compatibility.

One announcement that Microsoft made that had the media tearing them apart was that the Xbox One would require gamers to go online every 24 hours in order to keep games active. The criticism seemed overblown since digital distribution is clearly expanding. Music is now primarily digital, and movies are turning more to digital distribution. Thanks to Valve’s Steam service, we have seen that a lot gamers are willing to accept this approach with games.

After the media made the 24-hour check-ins out to be a huge blow to gamers, Sony talked about their long-term plans. They want to evolve into a streaming platform. This would require an always-on internet connection. The media didn’t seem nearly as critical of requiring a constant connection as they were of Microsoft’s 24-hour check-ins.

Microsoft addressed the media criticisms. They changed their policies to what influential sources insisted they needed to be. How did the media respond? By criticizing Microsoft. They insisted that listening proved that Microsoft was spineless.

Things got even more bizarre with how the media viewed Microsoft’s handling of Kinect. Initially, Kinect had to be connected at all times for the Xbox One to function. While the system was sleeping, Kinect was supposed to be active in order to wake up the console. It also has a camera. People started jumping to the conclusion that Microsoft designed the system to spy on gamers while the console was off. I hate to break it to the Sony fans, but Microsoft did not design the system to stream video at all times. They wouldn’t waste the bandwidth, they have no reason to store that kind of video, and they aren’t going to invest in looking through millions of hours of video everyday.

Once again, reliability is a story. Even before either console had been released, reliability was one of the selling points that the media was praising Sony for. Keep in mind that in head-to-head comparisons, Microsoft and Sony are tied in creating the more reliable console. Sony has never made a reliable console. They have never seen any backlash. There is no motivation for Sony to concern themselves with reliability. Microsoft got slammed last generation. There’s a lot more on the line for them. I see absolutely no reason to assume that the PlayStation 4 would be more reliable. Everything coming from the media prior to launch was baseless speculation.

We are now seeing the actual reliability problems for both. The PlayStation 4 launched with serious problems. Sony reported the following to IGN prior to launch:

"A handful of people have reported issues with their PlayStation 4 systems. This is within our expectations for a new product introduction, and the vast majority of PS4 feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We are closely monitoring for additional reports, but we think these are isolated incidents and are on track for a great launch.

There have been several problems reported, which leads us to believe there isn’t a singular problem that could impact a broader percentage of systems. The number of affected systems represents less than .4% of shipped units to date, which is within our expectations for a new product introduction."

I always expected most people to fixate on the “.4%,” but I thought that someone out there would have actually read what Sony was saying. They were talking about pre-launch hardware failures as a percentage of all consoles shipped less than a day before launch. In other words, if 1% of all units shipped were available pre-launch, they would have to record a 40% failure rate in the pre-launch batch. Taken in context, .4% is not impressive.

The problem with this is that nobody in the media paid attention. Everyone reporting on these comments from Sony has actually reported it as an expectation that only .4% of all consoles would turn out faulty after launch. Sony has since revised their spin to less than a 1% failure rate that only hardcore Sony fans find plausible.

Microsoft has had more problems than I expected, but there are no signs that they are any worse than Sony. My best guess is that the Xbox One has a failure rate somewhere between 1% and “1%.” Could you imagine if Microsoft claimed a 1% failure rate? It’s kind of weird that we are comparing the number of reports against one company to a percentage from a source that isn’t exactly neutral (and it seems more people have been reporting problems with the PS4).

All of these things make comparisons difficult. I have to find information for the basis of my decisions, but the source of the information is unreliable. Since every form of media I have encountered has an insane amount of bias, I have developed a tendency to read between the lines. I will try to extract the facts from the opinion pieces. Hopefully, I can be at least somewhat objective when I’m told that I should maintain a blind loyalty to Sony.

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