Compare and contrast XBox One and PlayStation 4 from the user perspective

[Deleted member 11852]

This may be a daft question that has been answered in the last few posts, but here it goes anyway: if I have 4 PSN accounts on my PS4 system and one of them is a Plus member that enables online MP - do the other 3 accounts on that PS4 gain the rights to play online on that system as well or is it limited to the user-account where the Plus membership was activated?

Not a daft question, there is a lot of confusion on this.

If the person with the PS+ sub has set that PS4 as their primary console then any other local or guest account on that PS4 can use multiplayer.

My account has PS+ my girlfriends does not but she can game online using our PS4.

EDIT: link to Sony's FAQ page in question

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Not a daft question, there is a lot of confusion on this.

If the person with the PS+ sub has set that PS4 as their primary console then any other local or guest account on that PS4 can use multiplayer.

My account has PS+ my girlfriends does not but she can game online using our PS4.

<CALayer: 0x1477b990>

That's a nice feature. My old 360 allowed for a family Live account, only that was an additional cost. Every user needed their own Live account.

 

[goonergaz]

That's a nice feature. My old 360 allowed for a family Live account, only that was an additional cost. Every user needed their own Live account.

This was something I hated about X360 but folk couldn't understand why I couldn't either just pay for additional subs or share my account!

FTR I believe MS have made their online system now the same for XBO (but happy to be proven wrong).

 

[FarticusMaximus]

This was something I hated about X360 but folk couldn't understand why I couldn't either just pay for additional subs or share my account!

FTR I believe MS have made their online system now the same for XBO (but happy to be proven wrong).

The 360 situation was a bit of a ball ache. My regular Halo partner could never join me in splitscreen Halo 4 Spartan Ops with his own account because he didn't have Live Gold and it was requirement (a retarded decision by 343i in it's own right). It meant no achievements for him.

You could always log in as a guest to the account with Gold access, but you did need a Gold account to be logged in at the time.

The X1 situation is blissfully simple. If the primary account has Gold then every one else on that console has full Gold access.

 

[goonergaz]

The X1 situation is blissfully simple. If the primary account has Gold then every one else on that console has full Gold access.

Same with PS3 & 4 - and frankly the way it should be.

 

[orangpelupa]

Many thanks for all your help but your quote is somewhat out of context, it just means that my kids can play on the PS4a but I have to play on PS4b:

"Games purchased through PSN can be downloaded and played on different console, but only the original pruchaser can play this game on the console the game was not originally purchased on. Up to two systems can be used concurrently."

This is my problem, unless of course, as I said before, I can be logged into PS4b and my child can access the title with their account?

I guess I could check this by deactivating my PS4 - in theory the kids shouldn't be able to play but by logging on I can. Then (without logging off) I can let my son log into his account and see if the game works.

basically you swap "Active" console.

Account A* login on PS4a but set PS4b as active console.
Account B login on PS4b but set PS4a as active console.

this will make both PS4 can access games from both account.
Account A have PS+, so Account B can get online without buying PS+.

EDIT:
the behavior of PS+ MP access
- shared on one active console (any account can online MP without PS+)
- as a guest, PS+ is locked to the account (so you must login online).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

With a few years' updating, I've come to realise how utterly poop the PS4 OS seems. Last night I decided to get a Christmas theme going. Well, there isn't any decent one on the store. PS3 had a bazillion themes because there was a free editor, but Sony withheld that from PS4. So I thought I'd just use a wallpaper like PS3. Look through the settings and struggle to find anything other than a game screenshot option. Check online and apparently that's the only option for customisation! Can't stick one's own images on the HDD and set them as wallpaper any more.

Don't understand what's going on. How can a next-gen machine lose functionality and usability from the previous generation? At launch, maybe, but Sony are patching in so little it seems. Only vague justification I could find is because images are often used as hacking vector with buffer overruns, but there's surely ways to protect against that without preventing customisation?!

 

[bunge]

Don't understand what's going on. How can a next-gen machine lose functionality and usability from the previous generation? At launch, maybe, but Sony are patching in so little it seems.

Bring back Home!

 

[Globalisateur]

With a few years' updating, I've come to realise how utterly poop the PS4 OS seems. Last night I decided to get a Christmas theme going. Well, there isn't any decent one on the store. PS3 had a bazillion themes because there was a free editor, but Sony withheld that from PS4. So I thought I'd just use a wallpaper like PS3. Look through the settings and struggle to find anything other than a game screenshot option. Check online and apparently that's the only option for customisation! Can't stick one's own images on the HDD and set them as wallpaper any more.

Don't understand what's going on. How can a next-gen machine lose functionality and usability from the previous generation? At launch, maybe, but Sony are patching in so little it seems. Only vague justification I could find is because images are often used as hacking vector with buffer overruns, but there's surely ways to protect against that without preventing customisation?!

Truand pixel have done 1 theme based on Christmas. It's real time and run at 1080p60fps, with the date used for interesting stuff. You should check out.

 

[iroboto]

With a few years' updating, I've come to realise how utterly poop the PS4 OS seems.

What a necro bump. Lol. I didn’t even know this thread existed.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I was going to start a rant thread but knew there was something around. Would like to hear other people's opinions of their console's OSes. PS4 really disappoints at so many turns, such as drawing as much power downloading in 'low power' mode as when powered on because Sony couldn't manage a simple download on an ARM processor despite 3 Watt mobile phones managing just fine. In fact Sony keep losing out to usability on £50 cheap-ass mobiles (though, to be fair, there is one of the world's largest companies making the OS for those handsets ). First console I've ever owned that was a disappointment in general use though. All the others matched their game playing prowess with usability, and improved every generation.

 

[iroboto]

PS4 really disappoints at so many turns, such as drawing as much power downloading in 'low power' mode as when powered on because Sony couldn't manage a simple download on an ARM processor despite 3 Watt mobile phones managing just fine.

hmm. to be fair to Sony, I think this is the same issue everywhere.
So I'm pretty big on the green thing, and I've got watt measuring devices at my outlets that can be scheduled etc, or remotely turned off by wifi. My xbox 1 X only needs 1.24W to run in standby mode. Which is fine. but iv'e got an external hard drive that is also powered externally, that drive take 11W just to turn, and I assume marginally more to transfer data.

So I think when both consoles are reading/writing to the hard drive, we're going to see a huge uptick in power draw since mechanical energy consumption is significantly higher than the flash memory in mobile devices.

That being said, XBO has come a long way from where it began. It's been in a constant state of flux, but it's overall trajectory is positive. It's certainly at least imo at a point where I like it, but that's largely because 1X is much faster at the dashboard than my OG XBO was. But functionally I've been pretty happy with the XBO. Kinect does make it a slightly better experience, at least to bark voice commands from a distance, I assume any USB microphone array can do this now. Hell, I'd be willing to bet some savvy folks here with a 'smart speaker' can probably draft an app to function as kinect did.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sony stated they don't use the low power CPU for downloading because they can't.

"Ito-san explained that initially Sony attempted to have background download performed exclusively by the secondary sub-system ARM chip (as it was announced during the console’s presentation in February), in order to keep the main APU powered down, but that proved not to be fully possible.

The download process is too heavy for the ARM chip alone, so the Jaguar-based CPU of the main APU (Accelerated Processing Unit, that includes CPU and GPU) is called into action to do the heavy lifting and protocol processing."

They tried to have a ARM download but couldn't manage it, unlike every Android handset and every Raspberry Pi and every ARM powered STB, so burn 70 watts just downloading. This was discussed this Summer when I complained about my PS4 getting hot just while downloading, but it's still incredibly lame design. They included an ARM CPU to enable low-power background downloading and then failed the software side to manage that. Suggesting even that this little ARM is redundant in the system?

 

[Globalisateur]

Sony stated they don't use the low power CPU for downloading because they can't.

They tried to have a ARM download but couldn't manage it, unlike every Android handset and every Raspberry Pi and every ARM powered STB, so burn 70 watts just downloading. This was discussed this Summer when I complained about my PS4 getting hot just while downloading, but it's still incredibly lame design. They included an ARM CPU to enable low-power background downloading and then failed the software side to manage that. Suggesting even that this little ARM is redundant in the system?

How many apps can you download simultaneously on a Raspberry Pi at full speed ? And It's not only downloading data and storing it stupidly on a storage device. There is also the patch management to be processed by a CPU.

And I also doubt a Pi uses the same security procedures with the data it downloads from the web than a home console.

 

[BRiT]

You dont need to dl multiple items at the same time when you're in low power mode, you could just go for 1 item at a time at full speed. The only reason to go the multiple dl route is if your CDNs (content distribution nodes) are bad and you cant max out the bandwidth available with just 1 item at a time. Even with doing 1 item at a time, you could do multiple chunks (sections) to max out bandwidth.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How many apps can you download simultaneously on a Raspberry Pi at full speed ?

Dunno, but downloading multiple items is stupid. All that does is spread the bandwidth between multiple items so they all finish slower. If you do one at a time, you can be playing one while the others are downloading. And in low power mode it doesn't matter anyway as Brit says.

And It's not only downloading data and storing it stupidly on a storage device. There is also the patch management to be processed by a CPU.

Downloading only needs store the data on the HDD. Patching can happen when that's done. Presumably it does happen when that's done because you need the patch data ahead of patching, generally...

And I also doubt a Pi uses the same security procedures with the data it downloads from the web than a home console.

Firstly, what the hell kind of security procedures need 70 Watts?! Encrypted downloads don't take that kinda processing. Secondly, it really doesn't matter what the Pi can do. The purpose of the ARM was apparently to enable low power downloading*. That's what Sony set out to use, only they couldn't do it. So either they put that ARM in not knowing how they were going to use it, or they put it in for a job and found it wasn't good enough for the task. The fact Sony say they tried to get it running on the ARM and failed shows that either they botched the engineering or they botched the software. Andby and large Sony's hardware engineering is good, while the software on PS4 leaves enough to be desired that I'm more suspicious of the OS implementation in screwing this up.

* http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-playstation-4

There was also talk of a new processing module in the PS4 hardware designed to handle tasks like background downloading. Our sources suggest a low-power ARM core designed to handle "standby" tasks along these lines, while the console also saves the current gameplay state when the system is closed down, meaning instant access to the last game you played when you power up again.

 

[Globalisateur]

Dunno, but downloading multiple items is stupid. All that does is spread the bandwidth between multiple items so they all finish slower. If you do one at a time, you can be playing one while the others are downloading. And in low power mode it doesn't matter anyway as Brit says.
Downloading only needs store the data on the HDD. Patching can happen when that's done. Presumably it does happen when that's done because you need the patch data ahead of patching, generally...

Firstly, what the hell kind of security procedures need 70 Watts?! Encrypted downloads don't take that kinda processing. Secondly, it really doesn't matter what the Pi can do. The purpose of the ARM was apparently to enable low power downloading*. That's what Sony set out to use, only they couldn't do it. So either they put that ARM in not knowing how they were going to use it, or they put it in for a job and found it wasn't good enough for the task. The fact Sony say they tried to get it running on the ARM and failed shows that either they botched the engineering or they botched the software. Andby and large Sony's hardware engineering is good, while the software on PS4 leaves enough to be desired that I'm more suspicious of the OS implementation in screwing this up.

* http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-playstation-4

Downloading plenty of stuff simultaneously is the way Sony do it on PS4, whether we like it or not. And they don't need 70W. You can't activate only one core on those Jaguars (and whole APU). Blame AMD.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

hmm. to be fair to Sony, I think this is the same issue everywhere.

What's your power draw on XB1 when standby downloading? Google suggests 15 watts.

 

[BRiT]

Downloading plenty of stuff simultaneously is the way Sony do it on PS4, whether we like it or not.

Yes it is, I suspect it's because they may have lower max-speed CDNs so downloading multiple items offsets that decision.

And they don't need 70W. You can't activate only one core on those Jaguars (and whole APU). Blame AMD.[/

I don't think Sony needs the Jaguar cores for downloading at all but they need it for verifying the checksums, if the dashboard/firmware update process of the XBox One is anything to go on. The second step of Xbox One dashboard updates is the longest by far of the 3 steps and it's doing nothing but verifying the checksums. The steps are 1) download, 2) verify, 3) apply. These 3 steps are not explicitly shown or called out during game or app updates, so I don't know if they're still there.

Maybe or hopefully future SOCs could offload the checksum process to a lower power device, even if its dedicated just for that task.

EDIT: added statement about dashboard/firmware updates versus normal game or app updates.

And now pictures of the dashboard update steps:

1) downloading

http://www.xboxdynasty.de/app/uploads/2015/07/xbox-one-dashboard-151-640x360.jpg

2) Verifying

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5D40Mk9_jVY/maxresdefault.jpg

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Okay, so although downloading in the background on XB1 is lower power, there's another longer duration step from validation that requires the console to be on? Still strikes me as bonkers though.