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Sci-Fi Heroine: Battle of the console brands

There has always been a debate with gamers about what platform is the best: X360, PS3 or PC.

While Sony always offered a superior product, the PS3 was more expensive than what most players could afford. A PC offered more smooth gameplay, as well as the ability to do more within the game, offering amateur designers and developers the ability to change up the user interface and add new maps and areas in various PC games.

It seemed to the general, everyday gamer that the 360 offered a cheaper and yet adequate way to play video games. The 360 offered an easier multiplayer function than the PS3. It made grouping and playing games easier on the 360. The 360’s multiplayer function comes at a monthly cost, while PS3’s was free.

When the announcement of the Xbox One came out, gamers were excited. Xbox.com crashed as gamers crowded the servers to get a sneak peak at all the goodies the Xbox One would offer.

The Xbox One is comparable to the PS4 in tech specs, with only small differences. The Xbox One has an 8-core x86-64 processor, while the PS4 has an AMD Jaguar 8-core processor. The PS4 sports an AMD Graphics Core Next engine graphics with 1,152 shaders; Xbox One also has an AMD Radeon GPU with 768 shaders. A shader is a computer program that is used to do shading — the production of suitable levels of light and color within an image. Both consoles have eight GBs of DDR5 ram and a Blu-ray optical drive.

Gamers trust certain brands. Microsoft, however, hasn’t been the most reliable brand among the tech junkies. Windows Vista will forever haunt Microsoft as one of its failures. The first generation of 360s that hit the shelves had issues, while the first generation of PS3s are still highly valued for their backward compatibility with PlayStation 1 and 2 consoles. Sony has AMD Radeon as its GPU, which has been proven as reliable in PC gaming.

In regards to the tech specs, the PS4 seems slightly dominant of the two consoles. However, what about the other perks each console has to offer?

Other perks of the PS4 is that you do not have to pay for their online service. Xbox Live may not seem like a lot every month, but when you’re a broke college student, 10 bucks can mean a lot.

One of the biggest controversies with the Xbox One, one that caused a great outcry on social media among gamers, was that Microsoft was going to force the inability to buy and sell used games. Since then, Microsoft has rectified its plans and announced this would no longer be an issue.

Another hiccup in Microsoft’s ideas for the new Xbox One was that there would be limited offline play. This caused some concerns among players, because it seemed as if Microsoft was going to force players into purchasing a subscription to Xbox Live. This was another idea that was quickly done away with after the controversy spread on the Internet.

Sometimes, the deciding factor can be price. Currently, Sony’s asking price for the PS4 is $399, while Microsoft is asking $499 for the Xbox One.

Even though Microsoft is doing its best to backpedal all its bad ideas, it seems as if gamers have turned toward Sony as the light at the end of the tunnel. It may be too little too late for Microsoft, but only time will tell, as both consoles will be released this holiday season.

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