PlayStation 4 Punches Xbox One In The Mouth

By Rob Boggan

After a couple hours of letting everything digest, This was the only thing I could think of. After taking it’s bumps and bruises for the better part of 7 years, it appears Sony has learned from it’s previous mistakes and is going straight for the heart of gamers around the globe. After watching both the Microsoft and Sony press conferences from E3 yesterday, one thing is clear: These two giants are out for blood. It appeared that while Microsoft is wanting their Xbox to be your “One and only”, and provide you one device to rule your living room, Sony wants to appeal to the gaming purists. In one of the coolest moments I’ve seen at an E3 in years, Sony announced that the PS4 would support used games and the audience absolutely went nuts. Genuine excitement around something that seems so novel. Another big moment came directly after that announcement was when Sony also revealed that it would not require an Internet connection for you to play your games. That’s big in the sense that even though there’s only a few left, there are still gamers who don’t care for the multiplayer aspect of games, or those who simply don’t have an Internet connection, but may still want a next-gen console.

It really felt like last night Sony had a more potent counter punch for everything that Microsoft had announced earlier in the evening. While Microsoft had it’s major announcements as well, it seemed like the night belonged to Sony. There was tweet after tweet after tweet covering Sony’s press conference, while the hype surrounding Microsoft’s was dead. Hell, I’d even say Sony stole some of the spotlight from yesterday’s iOS 7 announcement (yeah, I forgot that was yesterday too). Microsoft will have its share of exclusives and this is in no way declaring Sony supreme, but as far as the first punch being thrown, Sony swung and it connected like a left hook from Tyson.

So here’s what we have so far:

• PlayStation doesn’t require an always online connection, Whereas Xbox One requires you to log in at least once every 24 hours.
• Both sport a 500GB hard drive.
• Xbox has mandatory game data installs, PlayStation 4 does not.
• Neither system is backwards compatible.
• Existing PlayStation Plus accounts will transition over to PS4, Xbox One will require a new subscription to Xbox Live.
• PlayStation 4 supports Bluetooth, Xbox One does not* (*As of writing)