The PS4 Slim and Xbox One S are both impressively sleek, offering attractive designs that look great under a TV and can fit into a backpack without a problem.
Xbox One plays hundreds of Xbox 360 games, offers cross-play with PC and lets you binge on three generations' worth of games for a good price. After years of fan demand, Sony finally jumped on the cross-platform train in 2018, with cross-platform betas currently available for Fortnite and Rocket League. Xbox One has a much better track record when it comes to supporting cross-platform play, allowing you to play games like Minecraft, Fortnite, Ark: Survival Evolved, Rocket League and Astroneer with friends on other platforms such as Switch and PC. Xbox One is also the exclusive home of EA Access, which lets you play an ever-growing library of EA games for $29.99 (£19.99/AU$39.99) a year or $4.99 (£3.99/AU$6.99) a month a month. As of early 2018, the service even gets all of Microsoft's first-party games the same day they hit shelves, including Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2 and Forza Horizon 4. In contrast, Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass grants access to over 100 Xbox One and Xbox 360 games that you can download for $10 (£7/AU$10) a month, including such major hits as Halo 5 and Gears of War 4. Playstation Now is currently unavailable in Australia. 2018, you can also download PS2 and PS4 titles from the service directly.
The PS4 plays PS3 games via PlayStation Now, which allows you to stream hundreds of last-gen titles (and a few PS4 games) from the cloud for $20/£12.99 a month or $45 for three months in the US, £84.99 for a year in the UK.
A small selection of digital PS2 classics are available on Sony's new console, each scaled up to 1080p with earnable trophies and support for features such as Share Play and Remote Play. You can play older games on PS4, but not without paying up. The system even plays a handful of games from the original 2001 Xbox, including such classics as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Ninja Gaiden Black and Jade Empire. More than 400 Xbox 360 games are currently playable on Microsoft's new console, including Mass Effect, Splinter Cell: Conviction and the entire Gears of War series. If you have a massive library of old Xbox games, however, the Xbox One might be a better buy for you. While this is a great value, those who have a decent gaming PC arguably have no reason to buy an Xbox One. As part of Microsoft's Play Anywhere initiative, you can buy digital versions of games such as Sea of Thieves and Forza Motorsport 7 once and play them on Xbox One and on Windows 10. You don't necessarily need an Xbox One to play some of Microsoft's biggest first-party games. Both systems play tons of great games, but Sony's system has more hit games that you can only play on a console. PS4 has a healthier fighting game lineup ( Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator 2, King of Fighters XIV), though Microsoft's platform is the exclusive home to Killer Instinct.
Most sports games come to both systems, though Sony's MLB: The Show series is exclusive to PlayStation. Crackdown 3 and Sea of Thieves aren't too shabby, either, and 2019 exclusives like Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Gears of War 5 look pretty promising.
That's not to say the Xbox One is devoid of great first party games - titles such as Forza Horizon 4, Gears of War 4, Halo 5 and Sunset Overdrive are all major standouts. Here's how Sony's and Microsoft's flagship gaming systems stack up. And while rumors of the next-generation Xbox Scarlett and PS5 systems are heating up for 2020, the current-gen consoles still look like they have plenty of life left in them. More importantly, the Xbox One and PS4 both have tons of great games, and are both available for less than $300 (£300/AU$550). There are even spruced-up versions of both systems that offer 4K gaming. The Xbox One has tons of entertainment apps and can play a bunch of Xbox 360 and Xbox games, while the PS4 has continued to double-down on blockbuster exclusives and user-friendliness. Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 are constantly evolving - both consoles have gotten slimmer designs, new features and, naturally, lots of big games since they first launched. Uncharted, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn