Consoles in 2018. Why would you BUY any of them?

INTRODUCTION

Owning one of each for a while now I decided to talk a bit about each one of them and why are they worth considering. For Playstation and Xbox I will be referring to the newer versions, a.k.a. the slim ones and the pro ones.

NINTENDO SWITCH

Docked Nintendo Switch. Source: Evan-Amos

We'll start with the newest one, the Nintendo Switch, which launched with positive reviews and strong sales. It is also the most interesting of the three as instead of going for high performance to compete with the Playstation 4 Pro and the soon to be launched Xbox One X they went with portability. It is kind of unique since you have a dock to put the console in when you want to play on your TV at 1080p (or 900p in case of some games) and at 720p when in portable mode, on it's own display. It doesn't sound that impressive,  and it seems even worse when you take into account the fact that it features the Tegra X1 SoC, designated for mobile. But despite all this, Nintendo made it work and it allows you to play AAA titles. The games can be bough digitally and downloaded or purchase them as Nintendo proprietary Game Cards. Of course the console, sadly, comes with only 32GB of internal storage but you can always extend it with an MicroSD card up to 2TB.

Worth considering for:

• Portability (you can take it with you and play AAA games on the bus,train,plane,etc)
• Unique console concept (there are some people with reasons like this)
• Nintendo Games (you got Super Mario Odyssey, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and other Nintendo exclusives that would be enough to make some buy the console)
• Portable Skyrim (if you really love TES:Skyrim and absolutely want to have it on all possible platforms, but don't forget to also buy an Alexa then)

Not worth considering for:

• High-end gaming ( If you want 4k gaming, ultra sharp textures and what-not this is not the console for you, as it's mere 512 GFlops (FP32) are less than half of what the base ps4 and xbox one can)
• Portable Multimedia ( While Hulu launched an app in USA and Inkypen worldwide, you don't have have access, at least for now, to YouTube,Netflix, Amazon Prime,etc so you will still need your phone and/or tablet for that)
• Included Controller in docked mode (The included controller is far from comfortable when using the console in docked mode and you'll have to fork out some cash to buy the Switch Pro Controller which actually is great but the extra cost might make some avoid buying it)

PLAYSTATION 4

PS4 Slim and Pro side by side.

The best-selling console of this generation, most of you probably already have it. Since it's launch in 2013, it received 2 newer versions. The Playstation 4 Slim which is a slightly improved version of the original with the biggest change being that it's 40% smaller. The other newer version is the Playstation 4 Pro which is geared towards high-end console gaming. It's apu is overclocked to 2.1Ghz, has 1GB DDR3 added for non-gaming tasks, has an AMD Polaris based GPU capable of 4.2Teraflops and a 256bit memory BUS and promises 4k gaming. Games marketed as PS4 Pro Enhanced will feature either improved graphics quality, higher resolution, HDR support or all 3 of them. You can also subscribe to the PS Now service which is a streaming service like Netflix but for playstation games. Of course PS Now is also available for PC but if you own the console you'll have a DualShock controller for PS Now.

Worth considering for:

• Exclusives (if you love God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bloodborne and other Sony exclusives or you just want plenty of exclusive games to justify buying the console then it's a must buy, even if you own a PC)
• Cool yet elegant looks (Some might actually pick a console for looks, but who am I to judge? The console looks good, the controller looks good and will attract plenty)
• Easy to use UI (the UI is very straight forward and easy to use, although it is a bit weak in the features department, probably for it's own sake)
• Lower end model ( in terms of performance the PS4 Slim is noticeably better than the Xbox One S for FullHD gaming)
• PS VR (There aren't many Virtual Reality games yet but the PS VR is a good budget alternative to the more expensive oculus rift and htc vive available for PC)

Not worth considering for:

• PS4 Pro size (while the PS4 Slim is super ok and will easily fit everywhere, the Pro is way bigger and might be an issue for some)
• Best High-End gaming ( if you plan to play on 4k and want the games to look the best, you might be better off with an Xbox One X or even better off with a PC, assuming you would pay extra for PC parts)
• DualShock Controller ( while not as bad as the base switch controller and good-looking, the DualShock is quite uncomfortable. It actually looks really but if you have the chance to play with the Switch Pro or xbox one controllers, you might just hate the DS. It's handles are very slim, having the analog joysticks both placed in the middle might affect coordination a bit and ,at least in my case, you will hit your thumbs into one another a lot)
• 4K Blu-Ray (none of the PS4 consoles include a 4k Blu-Ray player, for those that also want them to be multimedia players)

XBOX ONE

Xbox One X(black) and Xbox one S(white)

And last but not least, the Xbox One, called by some the useless box, a flop,etc. The console was heavily criticized at launch due to being quite bulky, performing worse than the PS4, being overpriced due to having the kinect included and initially adopting the pc way of buying games (you buy the disk with a code, activate the code and it's yours, you can't trade it anymore). Microsoft have worked since then trying to improve the console and nowadays it's actually a platform one might buy. As was the case with Sony, Microsoft also released two updated console versions. The first one was the Xbox One S, which was an improvement over the original one both in performance(albeit small) and being 40% smaller (did they agree with Sony to make them both 40% smaller?) while also including HDR and a 4k Blu-ray player. The second version, released a bit later in 2017, is the Xbox One X, which is a 4k oriented version having a revised APU clocked at 2.3Ghz, a 6TFlops AMD Polaris based gpu and 12GB of GDDR5 with a 384 bit memory BUS, while being just a bit bigger than the Xbox One S. Also they recently introduced something kind of weird for a console, and that is 120Hz/120fps support).

Worth considering for:

• Best High-End Gaming console (the Xbox One X is the most powerful console out there, albeit you can still buy a PC if you want the best 4k gaming experience or the most fps on a high-end monitor)
• Xbox GamePass (similar to PS Now, it's a service but you actually download games locally so your experience won't be affected by your internet quality)
• Xbox PlayAnywhere (while this is seen as a downside for some as they say you won't have to get a xbox one if you have a pc, it's actually a good move, it unifies playerbase, it allows you to get a "living room pc" in form of an Xbox instead of actually investing in a second PC and the games are still exclusive to the console platform if you only play on console and the PC players of the same game can't trade the game after purchasing it, but the downside is, from pc you'll have to deal with Windows Store which is kinda bad)
• Xbox Backwards Compatibility (older Xbox and Xbox360 games are continually made compatible on the newer platform, so you can buy them digitally if you missed them before or insert your old disks and play the games on the Xbox One)
• Best Multimedia Pick (if you like to use your console as a multimedia device as well, especially for 4k content as you can play 4k Blu-ray disks)
• Controller (While the light box button can be annoying at times, it's no doubt Microsoft have taken the X360 controller and only improved it, it's simply made to fit in your hands and feel good and practical, a sign that confirms the fact they spent over $100 million in it's development, even though they somehow missed the fact that the light might annoy some)

Not worth considering for:

• Exclusives (Even if the games launched are still console exclusives, the list so far is way smaller than what the competition has. While the store is in no way empty and has lots of games you can pick from, Microsoft still have a way to go in terms of exclusive games, and if you have a PC and only want to buy a console for exclusives then the Xbox One might be good only to play the older games you might have missed)
• UI (even though it's quite feature heavy and the o.s. is literally windows 10, the UI tends to be quite clunky and heavy for some, it's ok once you get used to it but it's the worst of the 3)
• Overall Playerbase (having only sold ~40million consoles compared to 82 Million PS4s, you might have trouble finding a bigger team for CoD or other multiplayer games, also there is a big chance your friends might already be on PS4)

Conclusion

Well every one of them is worth buying, assuming the considerations meet your requirements. Now in 2018 all 3 platforms are strong, healthy, still delivering great games and fun to use. It was obvious each have their flaws but in the end all that matters is to pick the one that will provide you the most fun. Or all, because why not?