I would imagine the ratio to be more even than that Amazon poll when sales figs start turning up, but still it seems pretty clear PS4 ownership will exceed that of XB1 by a not-insignificant amount.

I guess it's possible that XB1 will "beat" PS4 but I would be very surprised.

How likely are people to consider going for and sticking with only one console this time around? I bought all consoles for the last two generations. Before that I didnt have enough disposable income to get them, and now I don't have enough disposable time to justify them.

I think that's the overriding factor in my decision. I think PS4 looks more appealing, but time wise and house loan wise (a new addition), I can't justify going multiplatform this time around, hence I will be most likely going Wii U only. I'll still keep my PS3 around, and I have a 3DS and assorted retro systems, but I cannot justify to myself the need to keep up to date with multiple equivalent systems anymore.

It comes down to playing habits to be honest. I'm not an online gamer, so the appeal or draw of certain announced PS4/XB1 games is limited - even though I appreciate they are technically quite spiffy.

WiiU plus PS4 should keep me happy for a while to come. Although as I have no plans to get a PS4 for quite some time, things could easily change. But I find it hard to see me giving MS any money.

Yossarian wrote:

Mod, I've never known a grown adult so blindly defend a company in the face of all evidence to the contrary as you are doing here.

I don't see it as him defending a company more a case of him defending things that he can't see a problem with.

Also 'evidence'? I think you mean 'opinion'. Yes there is the fact that the XB1 needs to connect to the internet but it isn't evidence that it is a bad thing, it's an opinion that it is a bad thing.

I've been saying from the start that despite all the negative press and all the polls the basic fact for myself about the Xbox One is that in my circumstances I get a much better deal than I do/did with my 360. I'm not bothered about logging in every 24 hours while I'm playing games because my console will be connected to the internet, hell the chances are I will already be online playing Battlefield 4 anyway. I'm not bothered about whether I can't trade a game or whether I can trade a game, I don't trade games now nor do I buy pre-owned so this is both of the main points that are being directed at the Xbox One quashed in my household, when you add to this that my ENTIRE library is playable by my son and my mates or by myself if I go to another Xbox One owning mate's house then you can see why (for some) the supposed issues just aren't there for some of us.

I also can't get my head around why the people that AREN'T buying an Xbox One are also feeling to the need to constantly go on about the features that piss them off about it, you're not getting one so why bother keeping on about why you're not getting one? And this is what I see from Mod, every single time somebody brings up the 'always on' (which it isn't) he will post in reply, just like I presume you and I would?

More like 75 million sold, 40 million accounts. But I don't know it precisely.

I wouldn't try and read much into amounts not online, most people who buy 2nd and 3rd machines during a generation keep the same account.

I thought everyone has a live account. I do. But I had one year of Gold and now don't go online. Except for those lovely patches.

Moto70 wrote:

JMW wrote:

I wouldn't try and read much into amounts not online, most people who buy 2nd and 3rd machines during a generation keep the same account.

I'd have thought this would be almost all as well, I know I did. Also I have 2 x Gold accounts so things like this must distort the figures, I can't be alone in having more than one account?

Yeah, I was meaning I think Sas was getting to the point of saying a big proportion of 360s didn't go online, but I don't think that's the case, the difference between accounts and sales is down to replacement machines.

Moto70 wrote:

I bought my initial 360 then had 2 or 3 replacements before I bought my 360S, in fact that's another thing that annoyed me, an article I read said that we stuck by Microsoft throught the RRoD (no mention of YLoD mind), we didn't fucking stick by them they replaced our consoles. Sticking by them would have been buying our own replacements. I don't think the reporting is helping in any way, shape or form. I have only read one artocle that I deemed to be balanced.

If a situation isn't balanced, I'm not clear why a journalist should be reporting it as such.

Moto70 wrote:

If a situation isn't balanced, I'm not clear why a journalist should be reporting it as such.

So you don't think that when mentioning any negatives you should mention any positives? Hardly decent reporting is it?

If there's more negatives than positive, you should say so. The consoles are quite different, the reactions to them from their potential customers has been very different. There's probably a lot of bandwagon jumping for page views and stuff, I don't know. 

The story seems to be 'Xbox has not been well-received, PS4 has been, this is why that's happened'. It's not a story that can be all that balanced.

Got to say in the past couple of days I have gone from being all over that Xbox to pretty much decided on PS4.

The DRM stuff didn't fuss me too much but the price and need for all this extra gubbins like battery packs and a mic is just ridiculous.

That and everyone here seems to be getting PS4, Air_Hair_lair is too and he is the only other person I play with online really.

Decision made, now I can get on the hype train.

JMW wrote:

Moto70 wrote:

JMW wrote:

I wouldn't try and read much into amounts not online, most people who buy 2nd and 3rd machines during a generation keep the same account.

I'd have thought this would be almost all as well, I know I did. Also I have 2 x Gold accounts so things like this must distort the figures, I can't be alone in having more than one account?

Yeah, I was meaning I think Sas was getting to the point of saying a big proportion of 360s didn't go online, but I don't think that's the case, the difference between accounts and sales is down to replacement machines.

Or people that have three working machines. Like me.

Or people that never take their box online. Because apparently they exist.

Yeah, replacement/additional machines. For all practical purposes I'd be happy to assume that all 360s went online.

Everyone has bias, that's true. Where it becomes a problem is when that bias is due to influence or external pressure. The biggest offending examples in recent memory being the complete lack of information about Skyrim PS3 performance issues, when every press comment on the matter was glowing praise, and Bethesda refused to release any PS3 demo code for reviewers.

The RROD scandal was also pretty disgusting too. It took about a year for Microsoft to comment on it, beyond the flippant and insulting dismissals like "Things break". The press hardly pushed the issue at all.

I think those kinds of incidents speak not so much about personal bias per se, but rather the problem of organisational level bias and influence, which makes it impossible for me to trust media outlets these days. They were all tarnished over the course of this past generation, with the sole exception of Retro Gamer.

It is nice to see the emergence of people like Jim Sterling, and Eurogamer seem to have found a spine after the John Walker/Doritios-gate events of late 2012.