Microsoft and Sony set new sales records
Was there a pent up demand for a new gen console? Duh, you think so? Prior to the announcement that MS and Sony were going to do a gen 8 console, shortly after Nintendo announced the Wii U, console sale dipped even further. Who would buy an old box when a new one was coming? And then in the last seven days or so, over two million of them went flying off the shelves—Sony sold over a million units in just 24 hours and a few days later Microsoft repeated the accomplishment; that’s about a billion dollars between the two of them in a few days.
PlayStation 4 (PS4) may have out sold the Xbox one (XB1) since the PS4 was released only in the US and sold 1 million consoles, whereas the XB1 was launched in 13 markets; but hey, a million boxes is a million boxes.
The really good news is there are dramatically different systems from the last generation.
The generation eight consoles open up incredible new opportunities in the gaming industry
The combination of the move to x86, with gesture, voice recognition, and high-speed web access will unleash game developers, let them get to market sooner, and give them almost free cross-platform capability.
The living room is now pwned by the consoles!
Now one box does it all in the living room – music, TV, games, web browsing and downloading, and media distribution to companion and adjacent devices.
The cable and satellite companies are under a bigger threat than before and become landfill. The mini boxes such as Apple and Roku will be cute archeological finds in the closet, PCs, which never really had a foothold, will slip back into the office, and smart TVs will go back to being dumb displays. At last, a central controller that works and does it all. What’s more, it’s smart and can learn. With each new rev you’ll love it and depend on it more.
The XB1 costs more than a PS4 because it comes with the Kinect gesture sensing system, while SoftKinetic will be providing a skeletal analysis and gesture recognition functionalities for the PS4, with Just Dance the first motion sensing title. To play the game with gesture recognition, gamers have to buy the PlayStation Camera for the PS4, which costs an additional $60. The basic XB1 sells for $499, while the PS4 is $399.
What do we think?
Life is good and getting better. The PS4 and XB1 will settle once and for all which platform is faster/better, whatever. The consoles are today equivalent to a mid-range gaming PC, and not even close to high-end enthusiast gaming PC. And that’s fine. The console game developers have demonstrated they can squeeze all the performance out of a console there is and they will do the same this go around. That means the high-end PC games will be even better. With new CG software techniques like Subdiv, Tessellation, and TressFX (to mention just a few) the realism in all x86-based games is going to extraordinary. 2014 is going to be the year of the gamer.