Microsoft needed X360-to-X1 lock-in and they pulled that off perfectly

By giving 2 free games per month to GOLD subscribers they killed the second hand market for X360

and made switching to PS4 expensive (as multiplayer on PS4 requires subscription)

It means for existing X360 gold subscribers it is cheaper to buy an X1 at $499 than PS4 at $399

Because buying PS4 means either paying for 2 subscriptions or losing out on $500 per year of games ...

As many X360 subscribers have saved up for X1 by not buying games for last year (see xbox financials)

the X1 is essentially free-of-charge

the PS4 gameplay showed so far at E3 was either not impressive or plain ridiculous

I think Sony definitely appeals more because of their price. That's the thing that really oversold the console compared to the Xbox One.

After having thought about it, I'm not sure the higher price point is a terrible idea. It will cost them some good will, but they'll probably still sell out for 6 months, and an early price drop when they aren't supply limited anymore would probably make up for it.

I was thinking that they were totally boned for a while last night, but I was thinking in terms of a non-realistic infinite supply of consoles world.

I'm probably going to hold off till next year and softly weep as Watch Dogs releases unless the Xbox One lets me watch the NFL in Canada anyway.

welp, guess i gatta eat my own words. I didn't think microsoft would price their's more than sonys console, but here we are. =-(

It somewhat makes sense that the X1 costs more because it has the Kinect.

* Crimson Dragon airplane shooter

Just a nitpick: It's a dragon. You possibility were referring to the mechanics, but being a fan of the Panzer Dragoon I just had to set the record straight for folks reading this thread. I'm digging fact that one of the composers from that series is reprising her role because it just wouldn't feel right any other way.

The things that Sony professed that they could/wouldn't do (i.e. 24-hour check ins, no possibility of trading games, etc.) probably did the most damage to Microsoft, second to only, maybe, the price difference.

I guess the server switchover last night ate my comments.

Sony's announced price at $399 means they're eating manufacturing costs with both fists as a loss leader then asking for seconds, but its a significant issue for Microsoft. Sony's come out and clearly laid out their plans, and they're offering more silicon for $100 less. Frankly, I think Sony was as surprised as anyone when Microsoft set their price at $499. Granted, Sony's SKU doesn't include their camera system (that's $59 extra), but many gamers don't care for that anyhow. Sony also revealed their hard disk size to match Microsoft's 500GB, and that its user-upgradable.

My take is that Microsoft's BOM forced Sony's hand at pricing, but when it turned out that Microsoft wasn't pricing aggressively, they found themselves with an unexpected win. Now, MS faces the hard choice of staying the course on the murky licensing situation and price (they may sell out initially regardless) at the cost of good-will, or backpedal on DRM and drop the price pre-launch, admitting that Sony clowned them for 90 straight minutes last night.

But the real problem, I think, is that Sony can add cloud resources to their platform, or developers can run them in the mean time -- they've traditionally been more open to third-party network services anyhow -- but Microsoft can't add more silicon to their box now. If they've got the thermal headroom, they might reach for a clock advantage of 16.5% over Sony (so, 932hz, vs 800Mhz if rumors are to be believed), which would completely close the rendering gap, but that's easier said than done, and still leaves the 4 compute-only GPU-units in Sony's box completely unaccounted for. I think the cloud actually is pretty compelling, and something Microsoft is in a unique position to leverage, but they haven't done a good job selling it to consumers -- what they really need is to demo compelling, preferably unexpected, real-world uses of the cloud infrastructure. I also think they need to eat some crow by throwing in the towel on DRM and either dropping the price to match sony, or bundle an extra controller or game in.

@Skytiger -- XBox Live isn't including 2 free games per month going forward, they're doing it starting in July and ending in November when One launches, so you'll get to download 8-10 xbox 360 games if you take advantage of it. Its to get more people used to the idea of downloading full-size console games than it is anything else.

But the real problem, I think, is that Sony can add cloud resources to their platform, or developers can run them in the mean time -- they've traditionally been more open to third-party network services anyhow -- but Microsoft can't add more silicon to their box now. If they've got the thermal headroom, they might reach for a clock advantage of 16.5% over Sony (so, 932hz, vs 800Mhz if rumors are to be believed), which would completely close the rendering gap, but that's easier said than done, and still leaves the 4 compute-only GPU-units in Sony's box completely unaccounted for.

Has Microsoft announced their GPU architecture/specs yet? People keep saying the PS4's is flat out better, but they seem nearly identical to me save a few differences people probably aren't allowed to talk about.

edit: PS4... not PS3... I feel like that's going to grow in it's annoyingness over the following months.

Yes, Microsoft has publicly stated that they have 768 execution units in their GPU, which maps to 12 GPU blocks in AMD's current architecture, and matches the information leaked about Microsoft's console. Sony has publicly stated that they have 14+4 GPU blocks, the 14 are capable of the full rendering pipeline (that is, they have ROPs, et al attached), and the 4 are compute-only. They've also said that they've customized their architecture to excel at compute, and I bet (though this is purely conjecture), that its only these 4 that have the compute-centric enhancements, as the features they've talked about consume a lot of transistors and wouldn't benefit rendering workloads. Those enhancements basically come down to having more active compute threads per block (64 vs 2), which means they'll be able to queue up many small jobs more easily, and keep the compute units busier.

I'm actually pretty confident that the 4 compute blocks in PS4 are representative of AMD's GCN2 architecture (less the ROPs) -- or at the very least that the front-end threading enhancements are GCN2, even if the rest of the backend isn't.

Neither party has revealed clock speeds, but the rumors and leaked info which has been correct so far are saying 800Mhz.

If clock-speeds are equal, the PS4 has 16.5% (in scenarios with no compute workload, and without offloading other typical rendering pipeline tasks) to 50% (in scenarios where the compute-only units can be fully-employed for rendering centric tasks, e.g. to compute lighting influence or produce geometry that's fed to the rest of the pipeline) to 75% more rendering power (in scenarios where 4 blocks are completely used for non-rendering compute-tasks).

they're offering more silicon for $100 less ... If clock-speeds are equal, the PS4 has 16.5% (in scenarios with no compute workload, and without offloading other typical rendering pipeline tasks) to 50% (in scenarios where the compute-only units can be fully-employed for rendering centric tasks, e.g. to compute lighting influence or produce geometry that's fed to the rest of the pipeline) to 75% more rendering power (in scenarios where 4 blocks are completely used for non-rendering compute-tasks).

Now that they've both announced their processors, from a gameplay perspective there is no real difference between the systems. Compute-only GPU units are most useful for things like non-essential physics; it makes your cloth look more cloth-like, and your particles bounce off the world more realistically. This does not transform gameplay. The memory bandwidth and cache differences will also make a difference primarily in cache-intensive systems, which again means particles and effects, not gameplay.

For cross-platform games, one system will have slightly better effects and particle systems, on the next game the other system will have slightly better effects and particle systems. Studios will continue to pick one platform or the other to be the lead (usually thanks to easier debugging) and the other to fix bugs as they are encountered. The gameplay itself will remain identical.

Cross platform games will see very little significant difference between the platforms. When you play FIFA you will still be playing the same FIFA you've enjoyed for twenty years, now with more sweat and dirt particles. When you play your favorite FPS game, one system or the other will have slightly more blood splatter. Cross platform will be no different than the current generation; you will still be able to do side-by-side comparisons where the games are played identically with only slight visual differences.

Right now, in the posturing before launch, currently significant differences are the big-brother always-on requirement, the ability to trade games and buy used, and the price point. Microsoft is voluntarily hurting itself with all three. (Microsoft could have leveraged the Kinect for unique gameplay, but did not. Instead they continue to focus on the Kinect as a replacement TV remote and a device to spy on you.) The hardware differences are minor, unless you like comparing the pixels of blood splatter rather than playing games.

Later it will be the platform-exclusive titles that push sales. Titles like Final Fantasy and Little Big Planet absolutely drive platform sales. Sony has been pushing hard for title exclusivity, and by the looks of their announcements they've done a pretty good job. These won't be because PS4 has 4 GPU blocks for hardware physics, instead they will be because Sony's business relations department negotiated a profitable business deal with a studio.

Sony's announced price at $399 means they're eating manufacturing costs with both fists as a loss leader then asking for seconds, but its a significant issue for Microsoft.

At least Sony gets some money from Microsoft for BluRay royalties.

I still see myself getting a PS4 rather than an Xbox One. Everything so far with the Xbox One has disappointed me.