PS4 Vs Xbox One: Update, Price Drop Boost Xbone, But Is It Enough?
It’s time for another round of PS4 vs Xbox One, with the latest Xbox One update now hitting the current gen Microsoft console this week. There have been upsides and down sides in the recent changes to the Xbone, but it’s been mostly positive.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Games with Gold is receiving an update, allowing Xbone owners to finally download free games like their Xbox 360 brethren. The catch is that much like PlayStation Plus, even if they’re on your hard drive, the games you download for free will only be playable if you have an active subscription, basically turning it into a game rental service. In doing so, Microsoft lost some of the edge they had before, but now the playing field is more level.
Some of the more positive news on Microsoft’s side of the Xbox One vs PS4 battlefront is that they recently and finally decided to sell the new console without the Xbox One Kinect. Even though they claim the peripheral isn’t worth $100 on its own, the price of the console dropped by that much, again giving the PlayStation 4 some competition with its price tag. Microsoft could be turning things around for itself in the PS4 vs Xbox One console war after the Xbox One price drop.
Have you tried swapping out the Xbox One hard drive, or are you afraid to turn it into an expensive paperweight? The update will allow you to bypass that problem altogether and use an external hard drive to store your games. This was a smart move considering that most bigger games weigh in at nearly 50 GB each and there is only space for maybe ten of them on the original 500 GB hard drive, if you don’t count the operating system itself. You might just be able to keep your copy of Thief or Assassin’s Creed IV when you get Batman: Arkham Knight next year.
Xbox One latest update brings external storage support, real names in Xbox Live and SmartGlass improvements http://t.co/Gg65LLbtlH
— CNET (@CNET) June 4, 2014
Another point for Microsoft in the PS4 vs Xbox One console war comes with the ability to now use your own name on Xbox Live. While some gamers prefer the anonymity of a user name, and some might even prefer the ridiculous names the service gives you by default, being able to use your real name adds that much more “street cred” to your victory when you score the winning head shot in Call of Duty: Ghosts or Battlefield 4.
The previously mentioned video streaming apps will also finally be taken out from behind the paywall so you only need one subscription each to access Netflix, HBO Go, and other apps. There will also be some improvements to Xbox One SmartGlass.
There is no word yet on backwards compatibility or developers being able to get games up to the 1080p 60fps benchmark, but Microsoft has said they are working toward the former.
Is Microsoft about to start winning the PS4 vs Xbox One console war, or are they simply closing in?
[image via eurogamer]
