Which Is Superior: Sony Playstation versus Microsoft Xbox - Video Game Console Analysis

In the last 22 years, PlayStation and Xbox have sold a combined 510 million units.

Each brand has had its ups and downs, but we thought it would be fun to see how the

Two have compared over the years.

Join us as we try to determine which console is best in the story of : Playstation vs. Xbox.

Sony entered the video game console market with the Playstation in December 1994.

It was a very successful console which managed to sell 102 million units by the time it was

discontinued in March 2005.

The console featured a 33 MHz CPU and a 33 MHz GPU.

The most popular game on the console was Gran Turismo, which sold 10.8 million copies.

Sony waited six years before releasing a successor to the original Playstation.

Playstation 2 debuted with a price tag of $299.

Microsoft became interested in the video game market and in November 2001 debuted their

Xbox, also for $299.

Microsoft derived its name from DirectX Box which was a reference to Microsoft's graphics

API, DirectX.

Xbox had a significant technological advantage over Playstation 2; its Central Processing The unit, or CPU, is clocked at 733 MHz, compared to the PlayStation's 295 MHz. Its Graphics processing unit or GPU also overpowered that of Playstation with 233 MHz compared to 147 Mhz.

Due to the Xbox's technical superiority, Sony lowered the price of the Playstation 2 to $199.

Playstation also secured exclusivity rights to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which sold

17.3 million copies.

Sony ultimately sold 155 million units of Playstation 2, making it the best selling

console of all time compared to Microsoft's 24 million Xbox units.

Microsoft's most popular game of the generation was Halo, which sold 8.4 million units.

The Playstation 2 boasted a catalog of 2,500 games, compared to Microsoft's 1,000.

In December 2003, Sony tried to bundle Playstation 2.

It combined a DVR, a DVD burner, and a video game console.

The device was called the PSX.

PSX was deemed a failure, and it was never released outside Japan.

While Sony was enjoying the massive sales of Playstation 2, Microsoft was already working

on the next iteration of Xbox.

They called it the Xbox 360.

It was released in November 2005 priced at $299, a whole year before Sony released their Playstation 3, which was priced at $499.

But Xbox was definitely not without its flaws.

Xbox 360 suffered from a critical hardware failure which gamers to call the "Red Ring

of Death."

One source reported that as many as 68% of test units were found to be defective.

This defect cost Microsoft over $1 billion.

Playstation 3 featured an 8 core Cell processor compared to Xbox 360's 3 core 3.2 Ghz Xenon

processor.

Two processors had very unique architectures, making them hard to compare.

PS3 3 featured 256 XDR RAM compared to the Xbox 360's 512 GDDR RAM.

This number made the PS3 seem weaker, but it actually functioned more efficiently.

In 2007, the PS3 sold 6.5 million units while the Xbox 360 sold 7.3 million.

PS3 in the same year sold 40 worse than its previous, far less powerful version, which

sold 12 million units.

But even though the PS3 had a slow start, it managed to catch up with the Xbox 360.

By June 2016, the PS3 had sold 86.5 million units, while the Xbox 360 had sold 85.5 million.

 The Xbox 360 game catalog contained 1,200 titles while the PS3 game catalog contained 2,125.

 2,125.

 If we don't count Kinect Adventures which came bundled with Kinect, Grand Theft Auto

V was the most successful video game title on both consoles selling 21.3 million copies

on PS3 and 17.8 million on Xbox 360.

The 8th generation of consoles came out in November 2013, with Microsoft releasing Xbox

one, and Sony releasing the PlayStation 4.

Microsoft suffered a huge marketing blow, even before release, when they announced that Xbox One will require Always Online mode, which would make the console unusable if it was unable to connect to the internet at least every 24 hours.

Playstation 4 arrived in stores at a price tag of $399, while Xbox One launched at $499

and included Kinect.

At launch, both consoles were similarly matched as far as processors were concerned. PS4 featured an 8-core AMD processor that clocked in at 1.6 GHz, and Xbox One at 1.75 GHz. But as far as graphics were concerned, PS4 had a 30% advantage with 1.84 TeraFLOPs over Xbox One's 1.31 TeraFlops.

In August 2016, Microsoft released Xbox One S, a physically smaller design of Xbox One,

which includes Ultra HD Blu-ray support and can output and stream videos at 4K resolution.

Sony released the PlayStation 4 Pro in September 2016.

The Pro version received a massive power boost by upping its graphic performance to 4.2 TFLOPS,

but features no Ultra HD Blu-ray support.

To date, the PS4 has sold over 40 million units, while the Xbox One has sold 18 million.

Microsoft is expected to release Xbox Scorpio in late 2017, which is going to have a graphical

performance of 6 TFLOPS.

We addressed a of technical specifications in this episode, but let's not forget that

Software plays a big part in all this and deserves a video of its own.

So, do you think there is any chance Xbox can once again take the lead?

Which console do you prefer, and why?