I picked up an Xbox One, mostly because I wanted to play Halo: TMCC but I think now I'm leaning more towards the Xbox Live.
I acknowledge that my case may be unique, but scouting the internet there seems to be a lot of people that have experienced similar challenges when it comes to game accounts when purchasing a PS3/vita. These are some things you may want to consider when buying a PS4:
1. Changing your ID/Gamertag on PSN for any reason, is impossible. They probably used our PSN IDs as our unique identifier in the data table and they keep dragging their feet as opposed of making a new data table which may be expensive, but will be even more so the more PSN grows.
edit: There actually is a way to promote a sub account to a master account. Thanks to DreadMoth for the correction
2. [i]There is currently no way to promote Sub-to-master accounts. That means if you create an account for your kid at age 12, 5 or 6 years later they will not be able to play mature games on that account. They may either create a new account and loose all their progress/trophies and have to start from scratch. For this you can either lie about your age,if you are not 17 or older, which may be an issue later on if you need to retrieve your account or enter your payment options.]There is currently no way to promote Sub-to-master accounts. That means if you create an account for your kid at age 12, 5 or 6 years later they will not be able to play mature games on that account. They may either create a new account and loose all their progress/trophies and have to start from scratch. For this you can either lie about your age,if you are not 17 or older, which may be an issue later on if you need to retrieve your account or enter your payment options.
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3. While PSN and Xbox Live both suffer from downtime, Xbox live is usually more reliable.
4. Say if you move permanently or temporarily overseas, you cannot transfer your account from say US to the UK. If you move permanently, you will probably no longer be able to purchase games from the PSN store without a viable card. For the US it is not an issue, but for certain countries like Malaysia it may be more difficult to get top up cards which can be used for purchase.
I mention all of this because Xbox does allow you to change your name, albeit at a fee (free the first time), move your account wherever Xbox live has service, and the overall network is a hell of a lot better than PSN, which despite charging for the service now, hasn't really improved since the PS3 days in my opinion.
With that said, the biggest weakness the Xbox has is its lack of exclusives. PS4 not only has more exclusives, but more interesting ones in my opinion. Nevertheless that is something you have to decide on your own.
7. Yes, the PS4 does have a significant advantage graphically over the Xbox One. Nevertheless, I don't think that advantage is significant enough to warrant choosing one console over another because you can run a game natively at 900p vs 1080p. You may feel free to disagree.
8. Earlier in this generation, sometimes games did suffer a performance penalty in terms of FPS because of the Xbox One's lack of power compared to the PS4. This is a case where I would recommend getting a PS4 over a XOne, or vice versa. Nevertheless that doesn't quite seem to be the case anymore, although the Xbox continues to struggle with resolution. Although to be fair, so does the PS4. Native 1080/60 fps are not as frequent as you would hope.
9. In Xbox's favor, backward compatibility through emulation will be available soon. The catch is that because of licensing issues, publishers have to agree to let their games appear in the program. It's not as easy as just putting your copy of the game in the drive. Some games may perform significantly poorer than what they did in the Xbox, however. You can look at some examples of Mass Effect running on Xbox One through emulation vs Xbox 360 native on DigitalFoundrys youtube channel.
So it seems like a cliche but both platforms have their advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage for both is that you pay for online, which shouldn't be the case. If PS4 had Xbox Live's ease of use in terms of changing your ID/gamertag, sub-to-master promotion, and general reliability, I would say get the PS4. Likewise if the Xbox had PS4's exclusives, I'd say get the Xbox one, as it stands, its a little more complicated than that. Hardware wise, PS4 is a good console but it has a lot of things that prevent it from being a great platform in my opinion. Xbox Live is unmatched as far as consoles go but Xbox One doesn't have a much exclusive games to entice a lot of people, plus Microsoft's support and push for the console outside or the US is lackluster.
Of course you can ignore half of my PSN criticisms if you only buy physical games. That is my .02 cents, take it as you will.
Post edited October 12, 2015 by Arponare