The Console War: A Brief Look at 2014 And Predictions for 2015

Abdullah Awan

Nobody needs to remind you again that we're in the middle of the never ending console war and it's never been this big with Xbox trying to take back the market share with lucrative deals and the PlayStation 4 with it's precious exclusives, and there's no end to it as we're talking about two of the most popular companies in the world battling for supremacy. Whoever said the victor would be decided at launch has obviously never witnessed the drama *ahem saga of the console giants.

The Direction of the Console War in 2015

Where at one side what Microsoft exceeds in software integration, Sony does it with it's hardware electronics. Microsoft's introduction 'Cortana' and its special integration of Xbox across all Windows platforms was countered by Sony through bringing PlayStation innovation to it's hugely popular cell phones and electronic devices. Both the heavy weights are evenly matched and 2014 could have been a defining year of the console war with the PS4 topping the sales charts for 11 months straight but it just dipped in the end , where enormously popular offers by the Xbox One team helped it top the charts for the last 2 months and hence taking the lead in the holiday season and becoming the best-selling console in the U.S. in November and December.

So far the console war in 2015 has yet to unveil as none of the leaders have made any moves except the Xbox One price dip by Microsoft which just the tip of the ice berg. And as we head into the bright world of prediction now, i need you to bear with me because many won't agree and only some might but that's how guesswork works, but i make these predictions/derivations out from the current anticipation of the gaming industry.

Lets talk about Microsoft first, with it's upcoming Windows 10 event, there have been many rumors that Microsoft is planning to launch some big titles for the Xbox console aswell. Although its just a rumor that there will be announcement of such a sort but this has happened in the past that we not only get information specifically about the topic at hand but other ends too, and this is almost crucial that Microsoft brings something important to Xbox on this public forum to keep it ahead of the curve. So folks, we won't be wrong to expect an announcement or two in a week.

Sony on the other hand has been busy with its new chips, where i has started mass production of its 1GB GDDR5 RAM chips. The PS4 uses 16 of 512MB version of these chips, which begs the question why Sony is focusing towards something else entirely out of the blue. According to Samsung Tomorrow:

"Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced that it has begun mass-producing the industry’s first 8 gigabit (Gb) GDDR5* DRAM based on the company’s leading-edge 20-nanometer (nm) process technology. GDDR5 is the most widely used discrete graphics memory in the world.

Designed for use in graphics cards for PCs and supercomputing applications, and on-board graphics memory for game consoles and notebook PCs, discrete graphics DRAM provides an extensive amount of bandwidth to process large high quality graphically-oriented data streams.

We expect that our 8GB GDDR5 will provide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with the best graphics memory solution available for game consoles as well as general use notebook PCs,” said Joo Sun Choi, Executive Vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics.”

It has been of recent debate that Sony is planing to use these 8 1GB chips in a new upcoming PS4 slim(rumor) and these would bring down cost in various ways, which could mean a lower cost for the console and hence providing a better challenge to the Xbox One in terms of the console's costing.

So this is how the console war might start to shape up to be. No one knows for sure at the moment but do share your views with us in the comments sections on what you think where the console war might be leading.

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