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New-Gen: One Year On 

We consider the state of play one year after the launch of the current generation.

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The new generation of consoles - and by that we mean Xbox One and PlayStation 4 - were much needed and long overdue when they landed in November of last year. Their reception since they were launched to much fanfare in the run up to last Christmas is testament to the lethargic slump that the industry was in before they arrived. It took Sony less than nine months to shift 10 million PS4s, and although Microsoft are being coy when it comes to announcing their own sales figures, the new hardware is at least outselling their outgoing console, the ever-so-popular Xbox 360 (they did recently confirm that they've sold 1 million consoles in the UK, and 10 million have been sold through to retailers worldwide, but yeah, still coy). 

It hasn't been much of a console war this time around, with Sony easily emerging as victors. Clear winners with room to spare in fact. It almost wouldn't be over-doing it to call it a one horse race, and Microsoft now has to content itself with scrapping it out with Nintendo for second place, such is PlayStation 4's near-unassailable position as the dominant force in this latest round of the never-ending console war (that's not to say that Microsoft hasn't gotten their act together - they have - but this opening exchange definitely has to be marked down as a win for Sony). This wasn't helped by the fact that Microsoft launched in fewer territories, and Sony was able to press home that advantage (and they surely did). Many of our readers will have had to order an Xbox One from abroad if they wanted one, which is far from ideal, and PlayStation's greater coverage has surely secured them dominance in several territories what would have been marginal and keenly contested had it not been for the conspicuous absence of Microsoft's offering.

However, that hasn't meant the last twelve months have been smooth sailing, even for Sony. There's been difficulties along the way, most notably with regards to a shortfall of games. Delays and underwhelming titles have pushed us into the unenviable position where this generation's best titles are often the highlights of the last. Diablo III, The Last of Us, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Grand Theft Auto V and Tomb Raider, all games that have been re-released on new-gen platforms with a bit of additional spit and polish. Even games such as Sleeping Dogs, Injustice: Gods Among Us and Metro (2033 and Last Light, bundled together as Redux), solid titles that did well enough on PS3 and Xbox 360, have made the jump onto the new hardware, their respective publishers sensing an opportunity, throwing themselves at the gap in the market. Older indie games have also flocked to the new platforms. Updating established titles instead of working on new projects, given the costs involved in development, is a no-brainer for publishers looking to get games quickly and cheaply in front of an ever-growing audience desperate for something to play, but it's not great for the consumer.

New-Gen: One Year On 
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It's also arguable that quality has been hit by the generational leap. How much content was cut from Forza Motorsport 5 as Turn 10 grappled with the new-gen tech? Could Battlefield 4 have avoided being a mess if EA hadn't had to develop their troubled shooter across a variety of different platforms and to a tight deadline? It's undeniable that the most spectacular games, graphically speaking, were able to achieve dizzying levels of visual fidelity because they were developed exclusively for new-gen consoles. Ryse: Son of Rome, Killzone: Shadow Fall, Infamous: Second Son, Forza (Motorsport 5 and now Horizon 2), Assassin's Creed: Unity; all made without the need to compromise (although it's arguable that Unity isn't a great example; it's a game that heaves under its own ambitious architecture). Creating games that scale down with relative ease is a practice that makes sense given the huge number of old-gen consoles still in circulation, but it does lead to cut corners. 

It's not just the games that have had a mixed time of it. Kinect was unceremoniously ditched by Microsoft after just a few months, as yet another layer of the platform holder's bold vision for the future was peeled back and discarded. To be fair to MS, at least they gave the device a chance; Sony ditched their camera before they even launched the console and those who have purchased one, either at launch or since, will be wondering why they bothered. Perhaps Project Morpheus will be the next step forward for PlayStation, leading the way alongside Oculus Rift into an era of virtual reality, but while we're impressed with what we've seen from this latest push into the VR space, these are still relatively untried waters, and uncertainty is as prominent as this movement's potential. Yes, we're hopeful, but we're not holding our breath when it comes to VR, because unless the major publishers get on board, this could be yet another false dawn.  

New-Gen: One Year On 
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The respective dashboards of both consoles have undergone a subtle yet steady evolution since last year's launch. Xbox One's is the most noticeably different, and there's more changes coming to the platform, as Microsoft plans to roll out Windows 10 next year, integrating their new operating system across a variety of devices, including their console. This could be a boon for Xbox One owners, as it should open up the platform for developers to easily port apps and programs across from the PC and mobile/tablet space. Sony, while remaining truer to their original vision, have still stumbled from time to time, but PSN's shortcoming have been all the more frustrating considering they're now charging for online play where before this was offered for free. We're still getting free games via PS Plus, but only now are we starting to see triple-A titles on the horizon. Microsoft too are giving away free games, even if the quality of their offerings aren't generally to the same standard.

Simply put, both platforms have failed to better their predecessors out the gate, the steady evolution of PS3 and Xbox 360 into sleek media centres over time has proved hard to replicate from a standing start. Indeed, Sony's infrastructure has stumbled on more than one occasion this year, and Microsoft's wasn't as robust as it needed to be. When it comes to UI and networking, both systems felt under-prepared and lacking in polish. When it comes to the architecture of the online side of things, recent messes involving both consoles - Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and Driveclub on PS4 - show that all is not well on this front.

Controllers have also been an area of contention. The Xbox One controller had a lot to live up to thanks to the best-in-class offering for Xbox 360. We'll stick our necks on the line and call out the Xbox One pad as the best of the two new-gen input devices, but it's a much closer run thing thanks to a plethora of improvements found in the DualShock 4. Perhaps Sony would have turned it around in this respect were it not for shoddy rubber grips on the analog sticks that wasted away far too easily, or the controller's appalling battery life that frequently keeps us tethered to the console. The Xbox One pad is decent, and in some ways it does feel like an improvement over the Xbox 360 controller, however it could have been better put together, and there's the undeniable feeling that a bit too much cheap plastic was used in their construction (or perhaps that's just us).

While this latest generation of consoles has been a success, and a much needed shot in the arm for retailers, it's also proved an opportunity for studios to stretch out their legs after an extended sundown period where development on the previous generation had seen games hitting an increasingly obvious ceiling in terms of visual quality. It's hard to say that the old hardware stunted creativity though, as the new-gen machines haven't really produced anything that, graphics aside, couldn't have been realised before. The most creative games are still indie, the small-scale digital projects that are able to take risks and experiment with style, form and content. One major shift that we saw coming during the latter half of the last cycle was the rise of the indie scene. These smaller, boutique titles are now, out of necessity as much as anything, a headline feature on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (although if you scroll through the respective storefronts, PlayStation 4 is clearly dominant in this area). Their prominence is a chance to showcase the creativity of developers working in the industry today, at the same time as acting as a reminder of the software shortfall that has given them, and the recent spate of HD remasters, enough oxygen to prosper in place of new IPs and big sequels. 

The landscape, one year on, is starting to look better. There's more new titles on the way, and the lineup of existing games certainly has a healthier complexion thanks to a frantic October-November, even if it does flatter to deceive in some respects. While it's clear that one console has fared better than the other, ultimately the winners have been us, the players. Prices continue to drop, and when you also factor in Wii U, which is growing an increasingly impressive library of first- and third-party exclusives, we've got what equates to genuine consumer choice. We might not have taken huge steps forward in the last twelve months, but the ones that we've taken have mostly been steps in the right direction.  

New-Gen: One Year On 


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