Originally posted September 26th 2013. I made in response to this article: PlayStation 4 new camera, an xbox copycat?
Yeah... Thing is though, Sony is playing it cool. They're all "yeah, use it if you want to, but it's whatever." They've been like that since launch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they dropped the mandatory inclusion, aka every PS4 ships with it, not "you must have this plugged in at all times," even before the xbox one announcement. They knew that gamers didn't really care about it, as shown by the playstation move. They made some games for it, but once they saw that no one was buying it, they were all "ok then, let's not care about it." Microsoft however, "man kinect is amazing. You need to get this for your xbox 360 to really improve your gaming experience. Just look at all these 'awesome' game's were making, like kinect adventures and kinectamals." Problem is, rather poorly received. Sold decently from what I heard, but no one was buying a third kinect game and devs weren't to thrilled to program for something people didn't really care for.
Now with this generation, there are 2 schools of thought with the camera control accessory; make it super technologically advanced and force it onto people, or make it super technologically advanced and say "yeah get it if you want but we don't care."
Initially, Microsoft was all "this is an amazing piece of tech. This IS XBOX ONE. We want to make sure you know that, so we're going to make it so that your XBOX won't work without it connected. But trust us, you'll love it just as much as us." They probably only dropped the required connection after some exec's cat chewed through the wire and said "hey guys, I have mine connected, but it doesn't work. My cat chewed through it. The guys on all the internet were right, this will be a problem if for people with cats and/or children, and since that's our target market, we don't want to lose them over this."
Sony on the other hand, "yeah we thought about including it, but then we remembered that you guys don't really care for motion controls. We'll have it do the whole voice controls and face recognition sign in thing if that's what you're in to, but we really don't care. Buy it if you want."
Sure, both consoles are quite similar as to what they can do, but so was the 360 and PS3, and to an extent, so was the PS2 and XBOX classic.
PS2 and XBOX classic; both could play music, both could play DVDs, both could do online multiplayer. The features were super similar with the only things separating them being exclusives and one having a payment wall for the online and DVD services.
PS360; both could do DVD, both could do HD video disk playback, both could download games through their online store, both could buy movies and TV shows through their online store, both have a web browser (though one got it much later than the other), both have a large number of streaming services, both have online multiplayer, etc. Main differences that separated the 2 consoles, exclusive games, one having a payment wall for services and HD video disk playback, and the same one with the payment wall adopting the failed HD video disk.
Later in their life, they both made motion control accessories, both of which got mixed to negative reviews from developers and consumers. Main difference, one shoehorned their motion control accessory and the other just kind of let it fade to not caring.
Now with PS4 XBOX ONE, there were a million differences. One made you check in every 24 hours and the other didn't, one made you stay online whenever you played it and the other didn't, one let you share games and the other didn't, one made you not only buy a motion control camera, it also made you use it all the time, and the other one didn't even make you buy the motion control camera, like before, one locked close to everything behind a payment wall and the other didn't...the list goes on and on. The only thing that was similar was the multiplats, some streaming services, and both used blu-ray. Thing is, people didn't like the differences. People preferred one to the other 20 to 1. Spoilers, XBOX ONE did all the consumer unfriendly stuff and PS4 didn't. Only thing people didn't like about PS4 was that they made video capture a pain and super complicated while XBOX ONE didn't.
Well, Microsoft then changed their tone once they saw the numbers, releasing what I will call "XBOX 180." They dropped all their consumer unfriendly practices, making it "very similar to the PS4." They still make you buy the motion control camera, but you don't need to have it connected the all the time.
Now there were some things that XBOX got right, like voice commands and face sign in for their motion camera and allowing game capture. To make things better, PS4 allows game capture and motion camera things.
Once again, they're essentially the same, except for exclusives and one locking most of the features behind a payment wall, just like the past 2 generations. I don't get why people act surprised when the consoles are very similar to each other. Don't they know only Nintendo can do things differently?
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Looking back, I find it kind of funny how people were going crazy about the motion controls, considering they're now dead 5 and a half years later.
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