PS4 vs Xbox One Episode 4: Software #Helpful Post

Consoles have evolved to become the hub of the living room so how do the PS4 and Xbox

One stack up in the software department? Even though both consoles are close in most areas

they take two totally different approaches for the interface. The PS4 is focused on gaming

with media as a secondary feature where the Xbox One puts a much bigger emphasis on entertainment.

Both are outfitted with a Bluray drive that supports DVDs but the PS4 oddly doesn’t

work with audio CDs. The Xbox also has an advantage by supporting the vast majority

of video formats over USB and you can also run your cable box through the One to control

everything through a single device. You’ll find all the standard streaming apps on both

like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Twitch and quality wise we’re

looking at 1080p across the board. They also have some exclusives, Skype is only available

on the Xbox and Spotify is on the PS4 which is a pretty killer feature for me. It would

be nice to have 4K considering some $100 streaming devices can handle it but it is technically

possible for 4K support to be added at some point. Unlike the last generation both consoles

can multitask. The PS4 will keep apps running in the background and bring it right back

up when you open but it’s quick to kill things when it needs the memory. The Xbox

handles things more elegantly, you can hit the Xbox button to minimize the app or game

while it’s still running and you can even run two apps side by side. I find myself using

Snap all the time to watch a video or livestream in the background which is especially nice

on a large TV. Something optional for both consoles are Kinect and the PlayStation Camera.

They both serve basically the same purpose by supporting a few camera enabled games and

giving you voice commands. The PlayStation Camera will do a few basic things and although

I feel it’s not as accurate as Kinect the camera does a good job of tracking to let

you play some pretty cool games. The Kinect includes Bing which works well as a more universal

search and it’s also got more commands such as being able to turn on and off both the

Xbox and TV with your voice. The problem is that both of these are fairly expensive add

ons that don’t seem to have much of a future especially in the Kinect’s case. Get into

gaming and both have plenty of cool tricks. The Xbox One just added backwards compatibility

for 360 titles and it works really well, you can use discs or downloaded games which work

inside an emulator. It’s basically indistinguishable from playing on the original hardware and

it even works like a normal Xbox One app for things like multitasking. On the PS4 side

Digital Foundry discovered Sony snuck in a PS2 emulator but as of today it only works

for a handful of Star Wars games from a limited edition bundle. The bigger push is PlayStation

Now which is a way of playing PS3 titles via streaming. If you’ve got a solid internet

connection it’s a cool way of playing a lot of games that will probably never come

to the PS4 but you can’t play your own games and it’s about $15 a month which makes the

Xbox solution hard to argue with. The PS4 does however have Remote Play on a few devices

like the PS Vita. You need a solid connection between the pair but it works really nicely,

you essentially get a mirrored display on the Vita and some games have specific support

for the controls. The Xbox has streaming to Windows 10 devices which is basically the

same thing, you connect the controller to the PC and you’re able to stream Xbox games

right over to the computer. One thing to consider is that both consoles require a subscription

to play online. PSN is $50 a year where Xbox Live comes in at $60 however it’s often

available for quite a bit less than that. Both give you access to free games and discounts

each month and the selection is pretty comparable recently but regardless you’ll have to shell

out for a subscription to get the most out of these consoles. While the series so far

has been close this one’s pretty straightforward. The PS4 has a nice interface, quite a few

cool tricks and enough apps to cover the basics but the Xbox One has more features, a better

designed UI, camera and backwards compatibility giving it the clear win this time around.

With four episodes down the Xbox and PS4 are tied so stay tuned, this isn’t over just yet.