So recently I decided that I really needed to connect with the community and really find out what they were looking for in games, that they weren’t seeing come from AAA games. So on my way home from work I decided to stop by my local Best Buy, and browse the game section, and maybe talk to a few folks about games. Turns out I chose the worse time of day to go because the Best Buy was fairly empty, and there wasn’t really anyone in the Video Game’s section of the store. So I’m going to plan this task for a later date. But I figured as long as I was there, and there was no one in the Video Game section, that I’d give both the Xbox One, and PS4 a go.

Please note the opinions I have formed of these consoles is strictly based off the demo displays at the store, I have not had the opportunity to play on either of these consoles otherwise, and can’t afford to just go out and buy the latest and greatest console, so if anyone wants to donate one of each to me that’d be awesome. (Just kidding!)

The PS4

So I decided to start with the PS4 when I went to start playing with these new consoles. The main reason being I am already biased to liking Xbox over PlayStation, the only reason I’ve ever wanted to get a PlayStation is for the Kingdom Heart’s series and Little Big Planet.

The PS4 is basically the PS3 with some changes, and minor upgrades. I played a game called Knack, it was the only demo that looked fairly interesting that was available to play. The graphics were decent though not consistent throughout this particular game, such as the main game models like the characters and enemies looked nice, but prop models like cars were lacking in detail. Not the fault of the console but of the developer of that particular game.

My big complaint with the PS4 was the load time, it literally took a good two minutes to load the demo, I almost just decided to not playing all together. Another complaint is the controller, I’ve never been a big fan of the PlayStation controllers, I’ve always thought they were to wide, and just made for awkward gameplay. Now the PS4 controller doesn’t seem as bad as past controllers it still feels awkward playing in my opinion.

Overall graphically, while I feel the system itself was probably capable of more, I think that the demo I played was definitely lacking graphically all together. Gameplay wasn’t bad, again choice of the developers not the console itself. In the end I would probably play on a PS4 if I had one, I could adjust to the controller, and I know there are games out for the PS4 that I would play.

The Xbox One

Now as I said before, I was already biased towards Xbox in general. So I decided to try out the Xbox One, the controller while different from the 360’s is similar enough that I was comfortable with it immediately. Again like the PS4 the system lacked in demo options, so I ended up playing the latest Forza game. (Side note, I am huge fan of the Need For Speed franchise, and was quite good at Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, and Under Cover, just ask my co-developers and friends!)

So I loaded up Forza, again the load time wasn’t ideal, it was really slow like the PS4, maybe I am just use to fast load times having done mostly PC gaming with great PC rigs, but I feel like when I sit down to play a game, I’m sitting down to play, not wait for it to load…

Graphically Forza looked a lot better then the game that I demoed on the PS4, though I’ll admit this isn’t a completely fair comparison because the games are different in style, developers, etc. While I am a huge NFS fan I’ll admit that I really enjoyed playing Forza as well, the gameplay was great, though took a little getting use to with the driving mechanics.

Overall at this point I am still very biased towards the Xbox console.

Other Notes

Like I said before, these opinions are based on demo displays in a Best Buy, what would be nice is to get the same game, on both consoles, and play them one after another to get a true feel of the difference between the consoles, graphically, and mechanically.

Why we’re not developing for consoles?

As Weeping Studios enters into major production for our first game project Allotrope Eclipse, we’ve had a lot of decisions to make. One being what platforms are we taking our game to? Our decision has been to only take Allotrope Eclipse to PC and MAC platforms upon release. We have several reasons for this choice.

So in the long run, while we’re not currently pursuing development for consoles, we may someday in the future decide to explore that path!