Looking ahead for Xbox One and PS4
For our fifth and final category, we'll be looking at the future of both consoles. Both platforms have announced new hardware and software to look forward to, the rich lineup of games has something for every gamer to get excited about! The winner will be determined by new hardware, the number of triple-A exclusives and the weight of the IP/developer. This category will vary from person to person and will be our most divisive and opinionated category. We can't list everything announced for this category, but we will make sure to hit the big ones!
Xbox has a bright future ahead with Project Scorpio, but we don't really know too much about it. It'll boast native 4K, VR support, and games will just generally run better but we haven't seen the beast in action yet. What Microsoft has said so far sounds promising, but many of us should still be skeptical on what exactly this machine is until we see some games being played on it.
Xbox also has an exciting list of games coming in the future. Sea of Thieves looks promising as ever with a vast world to explore with your pirate friends on your large vessel, Crackdown 3 looks to redefine open world games by having a completely destructible map, and of course, we have those Xbox staple franchises like Forza, Gears of War, and Halo to look forward to as time goes on.
Platinum Games will also deliver the action-adventure, dragon slayer game Scalebound which sees players in the shoes of a very modern-ish looking character with stylish headphones to jam out to awesome songs while spilling the blood of mystical fantasy creatures.
Xbox also has a good advantage thanks to the ever growing library of Xbox 360 games playable on Xbox One which could possibly see critically acclaimed games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 drop next year on the feature.
PlayStation's list of upcoming titles is nothing to scoff at either as it has some of the biggest properties like Spider-Man fully exclusive to the platform. PS4 will also see the follow-up to one of Naughty Dog and PlayStation's highest rated game, The Last of Us. The emotional story of Joel and Ellie will continue on as they struggle to survive in the cruel, brutal world that has been torn apart by a wretched virus.
PlayStation is also bringing back fan-favorite franchises like God of War and Crash Bandicoot to the delight of fans which will surely help sell consoles. Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is also working on a PS4 exclusive game with a star-studded cast titled Death Stranding. The game was revealed this year at E3 and has already seen two trailers teasing the mysterious story that mastermind Hideo Kojima has conjured up. The game will star Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), Mads Mikkelsen (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Doctor Strange), and probably many other famous names.
Sony has a great list of developers working on amazing looking titles such as Quantic Dreams' Detroit: Become Human and Guerilla Games' Horizon: Zero Dawn. The future looks bright for PlayStation 4 games looking for excellent triple-A exclusives.
The PlayStation VR also has the potential to strive with a number of developers like Capcom, Rocksteady, EA, and many others already supporting the device. Games like Resident Evil 7 feature an optional VR mode that allows players to experience the entire game in PSVR for extra immersion. If it succeeds, we could see many FPS developers incorporate this into future titles.
Due to the high number of high profile studios working on fantastic games for PlayStation 4, we have to declare the winner of this category the PlayStation 4. Sony proved itself with VR this year and even if some of these exclusives somehow managed to crash and burn, VR shows enough promise and potential to beat out the competitors.
Winner: PlayStation 4
Overall winner
The PlayStation 4 comes away as the overall winner for 2016 with 3/5 categories won. The Xbox One is by no means a lesser console because of this win, as it still has a number of great features, games, and support! The PlayStation 4 comes away as the winner due to the number of fantastic games it has now and coming in the future, great innovations in technology, and more. Xbox looks to be catching up to PlayStation, however, so things could easily change in 2017 with the release of Project Scorpio.
Please keep to comments civil below! We love discussion, but don't be mean to anyone (or us) because you like one console more than the other or disagree with someone's opinions. We hope you enjoyed our year in review, let us know in the comments below if you have any suggestions on how we can make this article better when we revisit the topic in 2017.
Gaming controversies of 2016
We saw lots of controversies in the gaming industry this year from both Xbox and PlayStation. The winner of this category will be determined on who was able to stay away from bad publicity and control their brand the best. We can't cover EVERY controversy from 2016, but you can expect to find the biggest ones down below.
Xbox was mostly able to stay away from major controversies but it doesn't mean they were completely flawless this year. Many Xbox players were upset at Microsoft allowing PC players to play Xbox exclusives like Quantum Break and Gears of War 4 on PC. Some felt Microsoft was betraying loyal Xbox players by expanding their player base to PC and like the word "exclusive" didn't mean much anymore. Whether that complaint is justified or not is up to you but it still caused quite the uproar amongst the Xbox community.
PlayStation had it a lot worse than Xbox this year. We already talked in depth about the controversial PlayStation 4 Pro on the last page so let's jump into the No Man's Sky debacle. While many attribute the blame to developer Hello Games for the $59.99 disappointment, Sony had a massive part in it as well. They continuously gave Hello Game a stage to promote their game and didn't keep the studio in check for overpromising.
Sony also helped with the marketing of the game (TV ads, trailers, etc.) which also promoted the game we were promised but not given. It didn't help that Sony sort of threw Hello Games under the bus after the internet exploded in anger after the game released in August.
Sony attempted to right their wrongs by offering refunds to people, but some who acquired the refund reported that PlayStation support requests for other issues were blocked by PlayStation. It was a downright messy handling of the situation and one that could've easily been avoided by Sony.
Winner: Xbox One
A year of innovations
Our consoles are always being updated with new features and it's important to recognize how amazing and significant these updates are. It allows our three-year-old consoles to still feel fresh and thrive with amazing new features. The winner of this category will be decided by who had the most significant features added, another case of quality over quantity.
Xbox had a strong year by adding a number of highly requested features such as cross-play, cross-buy, and backward compatible games. Although the backward compatibility feature was added last November, it really strived this year by adding an additional 200 Xbox 360 games to the Xbox One library. The large library gave gamers a chance to revisit their favorite games like Red Dead Redemption, Bully, Halo Reach, several Call of Duty titles, and even gave the chance for players to experience those games they missed out on last generation. Microsoft promises to continue expanding the library even further in 2017 and we are all anxious to revisit some of our favorite games again.
Not only is it an awesome feature, it's a technical achievement! Microsoft hasn't gone fully in-depth on how they made it work, but the feature perfectly replicates the Xbox 360 with party chat, friends lists, achievements, and more. Players can also go back and play multiplayer games via the feature which matches Xbox 360 and Xbox One players in the same lobby! The engineers have said it is a long, tiring process but are happy to dedicate their time and effort to the feature.
We also saw the rise of the Xbox Play Anywhere feature which allows players to buy select Xbox exclusives like Gears of War 4 on Xbox One and own a copy on PC. Your progress carries over between platforms and even allows PC players to play with Xbox One players! It expands the player base and allows PC players to jump in on some of those excellent Xbox exclusives they might not have been able to play before.
Xbox's cross-play feature goes above and beyond just Xbox and PC players, though! Microsoft has said that the feature would work with PS4 users if Sony allowed them, but that has yet to come to fruition.
Xbox also continued their tradition of regular updates that added features like gamerscore leaderboards amongst many other things. Xbox managed to really turn things around despite the rocky launch it had in 2013.
PlayStation had some updates here and there this year but it never really went above and beyond. A decade later and fans are still begging for PlayStation Network name changes but Sony still hasn't delivered on it.
Their biggest update had to be the ability to patch in HDR display on games which is something Xbox was only able to add in via a new console. PlayStation severely lacked anything major or worth noting, which causes Xbox to take the cake for this category.
Winner: Xbox One
Next page: The promising futures of both platforms
Both Xbox One and PlayStation gamers could say that 2016 was pretty good to them, new hardware released, there great exclusives on each console, and much more throughout the year!
With the year coming to a close, it seemed like a good time to compare and contrast the two gaming giants and grade them based on how they performed this year! Keep in mind, this is based mostly on review aggregators and the overall consensus from a number of outlets (and user forums) we've gathered from across the web and not our own personal opinions. We want to give fair grades for the respective consoles with little to no bias towards either one. Some categories will require us to inject opinions and thoughts on certain subjects, but it'll remain neutral for the most part.
We'll be ranking the consoles based on the number of exclusives they had as well as how they performed critically, the pieces of hardware released and how well they were received, and much more! We will give grades based on each individual category, the one with the best overall grade at the end wins!
The Exclusives
The first category is centered around all the exclusive games released this year. While we will be taking into account the number of console exclusives released, the winner will be decided by the overall quality of the games released, quality over quantity. We are only counting games with a retail release in the United States, so you won't find Persona 5 here until next year! PSVR games are also exempted from this category as it would give PS4 an unfair advantage in this category. You'll find the exclusives for each platform as well as the Metacritic rating down below.
PlayStation 4
Street Fighter V – 77
MLB The Show 16 – 85
Ratchet & Clank – 85
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End – 93
No Man's Sky – 71
World of Final Fantasy – 77
Dragon Quest Builders – 83
The Last Guardian – 83
Average score: 81.75/B-
Xbox One
Quantum Break – 77
Recore – 63
Forza Horizon 3 – 91
Gears of War 4 – 84
Dead Rising 4 – 73
Average score: 77.6/C+
WINNER: PlayStation 4
The Hardware
For this category, we're going to talk about the new hardware releases for both brands. This will exclude controllers, minor accessories, and chat headsets. The only thing that will be taken into account is substantial additions to the brands such as consoles and VR headsets.
Xbox announced two new pieces of hardware at E3 this year, but only released one. The hardware in question is an updated, slimmed down Xbox One called the Xbox One S. The console offers a number of new benefits including 4K gaming and entertainment, HDR display, slightly increased performance, and more. The console is a great addition to the Xbox brand as it offers a much needed, smaller version of the bulky Xbox One and it removes the external power brick. It's much more convenient and nicer looking than the launch version of the console and doesn't make any extraordinary attempts to be way more powerful than the original Xbox One.
PlayStation had three substantial releases on the hardware front in 2016, one of which broke new ground for console gaming. First, let's talk about the PlayStation 4 Pro. From the get-go, the messaging of this console has been bizarre. Leaks started coming out at the start of 2016 suggesting a more powerful PS4 would be coming but some developers seemed to be puzzled by the hardware and didn't really want to dedicate time to it.
Many suspected it would be unveiled at E3 and it kind of was..? A few days prior to E3, PlayStation's Andrew House spoke in an interview acknowledging the existence of the console and said they wouldn't be debuting it at E3 and would reveal it at a later date. This confused many gamers as E3 is the one time a year where all eyes are focused on video games for a week! If the console isn't important enough to show at E3, is it really important at all?
Sony then dedicated an event to the PS4 Pro in September that somehow managed to confuse people even more and turn people off to the whole idea of the console. While there were some on board, many didn't understand the technical mumbo jumbo being thrown at us and it was hard to tell the difference between the standard PS4 and the Pro from a live stream on Twitch which has varying qualities (not to mention a lot of people probably weren't watching on 4K TVs or monitors).
When the console released in November, several games including Skyrim, The Last of Us: Remastered and even Final Fantasy XV in some places ran worse on Pro than the standard PS4. It wasn't a good look for the console and made gamers scratch their head at why Sony even decided to release this console. Several developers have even stated that there are issues with their games on Pro and they don't know how to fix it at all! Many say that the console does boast some better visuals on games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare but it's hard to say if it's a big enough leap to justify a new console.
Sony also released a slimmed down PS4 which incorporates HDR display on some games (this was also patched into the standard PS4) along with some other minor features. It's cheap, small, sleek, and is a great buy for those who have yet to pick up a PS4.
The biggest release for Sony had to be the PlayStation VR, the first ever VR headset on consoles. It's affordable compared to the other headsets, it's comfortable, has a great line-up of games, and is easy to use! The headset has much to offer with great apps like Hulu allowing users to place themselves in virtual living rooms or movie theaters to watch their favorite TV shows. Hulu and several other apps also allow full 360 degree VR videos that put users "inside" the video they're watching. Whether it's a concert, deep sea diving, or a helicopter tour, it's a nice, free feature that I imagine will be taken advantage of for things like E3 press conferences next year.
As mentioned, the library of PSVR games is vast and expands quite frequently. You can put yourself in the shoes of Batman and explore Gotham City as if you're really there, fight in captivating space battles in a Star Wars X-Wing, and much more! As of right now, the games are fairly short but longer, full-fledged games like Resident Evil 7 are coming in the very near future!
Although PlayStation made some strange decisions in the hardware department this year, they still manage to take the cake thanks to VR. While the Xbox One S is great, it doesn't come close to how innovative and fantastic the PlayStation VR is. This may change next year however as Microsoft has said Project Scorpio will have VR support, but they haven't gone into detail of what that means quite yet.
Winner: PlayStation 4
Next page: Controversies and new features for Xbox and PlayStation.
