Sorry in advance for my poor English.:sweaty:
I'm French and I wanted to share my point of view about this topic which I found really interesting . ( In our forums, war between consoles turn very quickly into insults and moderation ) :devil: . A lot of friends, and I think I can say, a lot of European are going / will go for the PS4, and I'll try to explain why.
I own both PS3 and X360. As a WP lover, and as a Microsoft and Sony Lover, I had no bad ideas about MS nor Sony. ( but I already had PSone and PS2 slim, PSP and Vita) . I began to buy the PS3, when I was obliged to : When Capcom released Street Fighter 4. I choosed the PS3 because a lot of friends had it, plus it has bluray support, which was pretty great back in 2008 at this price.
But, sadly my PS3 ( brand new), had a lot of problems, reboots, bugs. And worse, the Online was a total garbage. And you can't play a game like SF4 with a bad online mode, because it's frame perfect. So I decided to sell the PS3 and bought Xbox 360 . It was the pack with Forza and Alan Wake. It really blown my mind :This 2 games were really good, plus the SF4 for 360 was like the Arcade version : Lag free. Okay I needed to pay for playing online, but at least It was a good online.
Then, I re-bought a ps3 in occasions months ago because I really wanted to play the Uncharted trilogy, god of war, and last of us. Now I still have both, and I use my PS3 as a netlfix / bluray player, and the 360 for Ultra street 4.
I told you that just to say that I was NOT in favor of Sony, nor Microsoft. In fact, I play much more on the 360 so in my mind I would have go for the excellent Xbox One first. But they did a lot of mistakes. Here they are :
- They did a really bad marketing in their conference. Ok Sony's one was not that great, but still better than the online conference that I see in middle of the night here in France from MS, and I nearly felt asleep because It was really boring.
- Sony's marketing was really effective : Unlike the PS3, they focuses on telling customers that it was: 100eur cheaper than the One, yet more powerfull. AND, cherry on the cake, It will be really easy to make games on it thanks to its PC architecture, so they won't have troubles like they had with the PS3 cell's engine.
- A really bad thing here : Microsoft stopped the development of games for the 360 : Actually there is NO games at all ( I mean, AAA games, or big licenses) for the X360. They basically just are saying : The One is the new console, so buy it and stop playing 360. It shows that they don't care about the actual customers of the 360. Meanwhile, Sony is still providing great games like The Last Of Us, which really proves they support their machines as long as they can.
- MS did some legendary bad communications, like this one :
"No internet for Xbox One? Get an Xbox 360 then, says Microsoft." Here we really thought ( well, we are still thinking) they make fun of us.
- They shouldn't have stop their vision : Yes the One was more expensive than ps4, but at least they have a vision and the envy to push a big thing with the implementation of Kinect into our rooms. They just stopped that, and I think this is an error because even if it's 100eur expensiver ( can I say that ? lol) than the ps4, If they have successfully prove that It can bring really new game experiences, peoples will be OK to put 500 € in the One. It was their better, bigger bet, and they just cancel it.
- They have no luck, because the launch of their gaming system was in the same period of the storys with the NSA, and as you know the One still need to "hear" what you say to turn on your console. Here in Europe, everybody was like " Hey I don't want the NSA hear all my conversations" . A day I was in a friend's house who bought the One day one, and he even had put a thsirt on the kinect's camera. I asked why, he said " You know, I don't want everyone see me..."
- Here in Europe, the vocal recognition is just crap. We were 2m away from the kinect, and we wanted to navigate inside the menu, and it was the hell, because it don't understand us. But It probably works great in the US.
- A lot of PS4 games are going to be exclusive, in particular if you like fighting games : Guily gear, SF5, and they talk about Tekken 7. In Japan everyone says that Monster Hunter license is coming to an end very soon with Nintendo, and they just will work with Sony.
Well, I hope you had the brave to read my bad english . Just to tell you that here in Europe, we like the One as much as the PS4, but really, the communication from MS is **** here . And It lacks a vision in longterm they had when they first presented the One.