Without going into a full-on rant about fanboys, tech specs or online infrastructure of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, I will say this: the often referred to ‘on paper specs’ at a console launch are simply irrelevant until we get the systems in our homes, developers making games and digital fun on our flat panel TVs.
With just about every console launch, most recently the PS3, Xbox 360 and even the Wii gamers and media were up in arms about the specs, the ram, the processor and of course the graphics card.
Back in 2005 the Xbox 360 launched with more video ram than the PS3 which had more processing power than the 360. The amount of discussion and flaming ‘fanboyism’ that was unleashed over the cell processor and all of the consoles hardware specs was ridiculous because no one knew where we would be in 2013 and guess what – both the PS3 and 360 are more or less the same visually and even on the online front.
Guess what, the Wii ‘won’ the current generation for consoles and it was a ‘last-gen’ piece of kit which proves it is all about the experience and not just an artificial number of gigs and megs, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I love powerful hardware but I will not be engaging in debates about withholding 3+ gigs of ram to run the OS on the Xbox One or PS4 – we have no idea what that means yet and I sure as heck haven’t heard devs complain about it.
The point to all of this, until we play the games and the new generation takes shape, we just don’t know how important the DDR5 vs DDR3 advantage is or how big of a difference the cloud computing will make.
What I do know is that I am excited, very excited for a new console launch. My skin is tingling.
Oh, and don’t forget about the Wii U. Nintendo isn’t dead yet.
