I see a repeated claim that "Tech specs are on par". They are not. Sure the CPU is near identical (2 AMD Jaguar modules, 4 cores each), but- the GDDR5 sony uses has slightly more than 2.5 times the bandwidth of the X1's DDR3 (which is pretty high-end DDR3 nonetheless) - may be partly mitigated by MS's 32MB of on-die SRAM (super-small, super-fast buffer). The real kicker however is the graphics. both consoles use AMD's 28nm GCN ("Graphics Core Next", i.e. radeon 7xxx era) architecture. X1 has 768 stream procecessors (the basic building units of every AMD GPU). PS4 has 1152. That's 2/3 ratio. Apples to apples. PS4 can theoretically put 50% more work on each frame, or churn out frames at 50% higher rate than X1 (or mix ome of both). Practically these figures never scale linearly. A conservative estimate would be ~30%-35% advantage. In PC terms, that's 2-3 generations worth of performance (on the other hand, PC generations last about a year). bottom line - X1/PS4 are not "on par" with each other. PS4 has quntifiably more powerful graphics muscle, and X1 would most of the time be the common denominator for multiplatform games.

Just gonna pop in and say that Tech spec numbers mean nothing till you actually put them to good use and make the best use of the hardware you got.

This pretty much. I doubt we'll see a real difference between the visual quality of the two systems for a solid number of years after their release.

The internet is just doing what the internet does. Yeh people are pissed with Microsoft but I think they made the right move. By getting all of this stuff out of the way they don't have to focus on it at E3. If they spent more time on games their E3 conference would be filled with what we saw yesterday and people would lose their shit even worse than they have so far. Doing it this way round allows them to gauge popular opinion before E3, so they can clear up misunderstandings and announce all the big games news only a few weeks later. If their E3 conference is really game heavy they will more than likely get the 'won E3' achievement and everyone will forget their gripes. Doing it the other way round the issues people have now would be fresh in everyone's mind for the rest of summer. The PS4 is yet to be seen, this will almost definitely happen at E3, if people react to it as they did to the Xbox one they will have E3 2006 on their hands again.

MS did not lose me yesterday. In fact, we have known the specs of the console for a while, and since it is on par with the PS4, we can expect almost identical gaming on both machines. With that cleared what is left to differentiate the offer is the other console features and that is where the One feels like a winner.

For one second drop your bias and look at this console. Pros: Social media (for some people) Kinect (for some people) Slightly better graphics (Same as PS4) Multitasking Cons: FEE FOR PLAYING USED GAMES PAYING FOR ONLINE NETWORK So much casual bullshit that nobody cares about I have played on 360 for a long time and think it is the better console, but the One so far looks like a turd.

I am not sure that bias means what you think it means. Or you did not understand what I said. What I mean is that the features that we are aware now on X1 appeal to me more than those that we know of the PS4. I call that preferences. I own both a PS3 and a 360 and will probably will buy again a console from both. But so far, from what I know, the One is in the lead when I am thinking which one I should buy first.

IMHO, they are going through the same mistake Sony did with the PlayStation 3 -until they eventually managed to understand that what their public wanted were simply and just the games. They did receive the message pretty well as the PlayStation 3 tremendously improved from its release, and has now set off the PS4 focusing on the right track. Microsoft showed us how it was all about the games from the very beginning with the 360, but just alike, it's trying to be more than that now, and they have left the games completely unattended. It's still too early to judge, but we are not too far either.