Xbox One Console Free

The first real video game console war was detailed expertly in one of my favorite non-fiction books, aptly titled “Console Wars” by Blake J. Harris. It’s a story of drama, suspense, and even intrigue, and shows how Nintendo eventually bested SEGA to knock the rival company out of the console game. There are funny parts about how SEGA built Sonic the Hedgehog from scratch to compete with Mario (Sonic originally had fangs, a guitar and a busty girlfriend), and intense moments like when SEGA realized the Saturn was doomed once they understood Nintendo had the 64 on the horizon with the original PlayStation not far behind.

This latest console war, PS4 vs. Xbox One, started out in a way that seemed like it had the same high stakes. No gamer will likely soon forget E3 2013 where Sony announced that not only was there no question that the PS4 would play used games (something Microsoft seemed poised to abandon), but the system would debut for $400, a full $100 less than the Kinect-connected Xbox One. The crowd not only went wild, but it set the PS4 up to dominate the Xbox One in sales for over a year and a half to date. Though both consoles have been performing well compared to their predecessors, Sony and Microsoft had a real war on their hands as the Xbox One had to slowly reshape itself into a more attractive console by reversing many of its core decisions. Someone could practically write a book about that someday (paging Harris).

But recently, the things that divide the PS4 and Xbox One are becoming less and less interesting, and focused less on providing new and interesting perks and games for their systems and more about mildly annoying those who own their rival console.

This happens in a number of ways, but one of the most prominent is a practice that has spawned with this new generation, timed-exclusive content, and now as the concept evolves, timed-exclusive games. It’s a new practice where one console manufacturer pays a specific amount of money to a publisher to not release things exclusively for them, but to ensure that specific content or games they get are released later for their rival systems. Sometimes it’s a week, but a lot of the time, it’s as much as a year.

We’ve seen Sony do this with Activision since the dawn of the PS4. They worked out a deal where PS4 Destiny players get certain “bonus” content in the base game and its expansions. So far, that’s meant that PS4 players have gotten weapons, armor, ships, missions and multiplayer maps that Xbox players haven’t, and though it’s not a ton of stuff, it’s certainly enough to be irritating. Those items will unlock this fall, one year after the release of the base game, but Destiny’s next expansion, The Taken King, will begin the process anew and has even more Sony-exclusive stuff that will be locked away from Xbox for another solid year.