Assigning the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 a review score is stupid. There I said it.
I understand reviewing a console and giving your early impressions. People want, and need, to know about the system before it releases. But anyone who tells you that the score assigned is for something other than fueling the fanboy flame war is lying to you. That's right, l-y-i-n-g. They are looking for nothing more than to stir the debate, and the best way to do that is to pit two sides against one another over something as simple as a tenth of a point.
Assigning a score to a console, especially so early in its launch, is pointless. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 – regardless of having them a week early – are still new. We don't know what they will look like in a year. Heck, we don't know what they will look like in a month. Each console update can significantly change the experience for a consumer. We can only speculate how the Xbox One and PS4 will evolve over time.
It's one thing if you're doing so at the end of a console's lifecycle. By then, you know everything the console has to offer. You know what games it has, you know its services, and you know its technical limitations. The Xbox 360 and PS3, for instance, deserve a score at this stage in the game. Because we know just about all there is to know about them at this point.
We don't know anything about the Xbox One or PlayStation 4. Sure, there's promises. There's the hope that Sony will have an abundance of exclusives. There's the notion that the Kinect will continue to improve. There's the idea (and maybe technical specs to back it up) that the PS4 may be more powerful than the Xbox One. But we've yet to really see any of this unfold.
We haven't even experienced the Xbox One's launch and some sites are reviewing it as “better” than the PS4 simply based on their pre-launch experiences – the idea that in the future it'll work as intended. Likewise, some scored the PS4 higher based on the notion that games will eventually look better on it.
The truth is, nobody knows because we can't see into the future. And you can make the argument that the score is representative of the “current” state of the system, but unless you plan on updating your score for each console with every game release, with each system update, with every new announcement, then you are doing a disservice to consumers.
Go ahead, offer your opinions. Tell readers what you believe to be good and bad about each system, but don't assign a score just to assign one.
Giving the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 a review score is dumb. That is all.
