 Corsair's Raptor line of quality gaming peripherals has the features you need to win at a price you'll like. Click now to learn more. Welcome to a first for us. This is our comprehensive image quality comparison between five, I don't have any hands for you, but five different platforms in both. Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag and Battlefield 4. So we are going to be testing Xbox 360 to represent a last gen console, PlayStation 4, Xbox One as well. As an entry level gaming PC, so priced at around $550 worth of parts including a Windows operating system and a high end PC representing around probably about a $1,500 to $1,600 expenditure. I want to take a moment to walk you guys through our setup and how we're going to be doing this. So come on in. First of all, down here we have our high end PC running on a test bench. It features a GTX 780 and we've actually down clocked and jury rigged our 3960X to get equivalent to a 4770K performance. We've got 32 gigs of RAM in there and SSD and it is just generally pretty beastly. Then following up over here, I've got an Xbox 360. I have a PlayStation 4. I'll try not to wreck that. I have an Xbox One hiding over here in the corner and you can see the Kinect is actually living on our entry level machine. So this one features an AMD A8 5600K quad core. It's got only 4 gigs of RAM, a Radeon 7770 graphics card and then a generic power supply and a very entry level case. Because we wanted to really reach a price point that's more in line with the consoles than what the typical perception of a gaming PC is, which is that it's much, much more expensive. So next up, let's show you guys the setup that we use that will allow you guys to download the full quality files at 30 megabit per second so you can actually compare for yourselves. So each one of these platforms runs off of HDMI to an HDCP compliant splitter right here. So we have to swap them as we go. What this does is it strips out the HDCP protection that's on the PlayStation 4, which allows us to capture it with the same degree of quality as all the other ones. So that then comes on over here. Alright, so it's able to output to our monitor there where we're actually playing the games and then to an AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable, which is actually on the floor down there. And you can see, Slick is actually recording Battlefield 4 gameplay right now. So then what we're doing is we are archiving all of the footage, all the test runs here and we are going to make those available for you guys to download. While you guys are enjoying some gameplay footage, I'm going to walk through what I feel are the pros and cons of each of the platforms. So we'll start with Xbox 360. They're cheap. They're about 150 bucks on eBay and they come with a great controller. Still the favourite of both me and Slick. The problem with it is that while the games run, it's a miracle that they do it all because this is an 8 year old platform. I mean, they're full of jaggies and they look awful, but... Okay, they're running, so if you're on a budget or you've already got the console and visuals aren't important to you, I guess it's a great option. The only problem that I have with it is that it doesn't feel like a good value. I'm still investing $60 a game into something that I'll get to play in a way the developer never really intended it to be enjoyed and that's not even going to be backwards compatible with my... Or, that my next console, my new platform that I'm going to need anyway for upcoming games isn't even going to be able to run. I would have to rebuy the game if I really wanted to have the experience that the developer meant for me to have. So that's the only issue I have here. It just feels like money that I continue to invest in this platform is a bit of a waste. Next up we've got our low-end PC. The pros for this is that it's 450 bucks without an OS or 550 bucks with an OS. That is smack dab in the price range of the next gen consoles. Not only that, but the functionality goes beyond gaming. You can stream, you can edit, you can upgrade it in the future if you do have additional funds available to you. And it gives you a lot of flexibility so you can adjust your graphical settings for desired performance. So if you decide that detail settings are more important, okay, turn down your res. If you decide that resolution is more important, you have that ability to make decisions for yourself. You can also get cheap peripherals. I mean, when you compare the price of a PC webcam to something like the PlayStation Eye, it looks like a joke, especially given that that PC webcam, for the sake of doing something like streaming on Twitch TV, has exactly the same functionality. In terms of cons, well, there's no exclusive titles for it, that's for sure. It doesn't include a controller unless you count the $20 that we budgeted for a keyboard and mouse. And this particular one doesn't have very high-end components, so I'm not sure if it'll last eight years of heavy use the way that people would expect from something like a gaming console. It's also a PC, but it doesn't really have the horses for surround monitor gaming or some of the exciting PC stuff that's coming like Oculus, so I have to list that as a con for it as well. Now in conclusion, image quality was comparable to the next gen consoles with a comparable price. And this is the first time this has happened in a long time. We're used to new consoles launching with amazing hardware for the price, and the manufacturers taking big losses on selling them, but in 2013, you can basically just build your own console killer PC for about the same price. I mean, this is a great option if you don't care about the slightly better image quality that you might get on the consoles or the exclusive titles. Next up is our high-end PC, and the pros of this are pretty easy. It's very, very fast with great image quality, the best available. There's fantastic anti-aliasing technology and better detail levels available with the horsepower to really take advantage of them. There's great functionality outside of gaming. You can do high-end video editing or other content creation, and they're amazingly upgradeable and flexible. Throw triple monitors at it, racing seats with surround monitors, flexible game streaming is available to devices like Steambox in the future, other PCs, or even Android devices like Nvidia Shield. The sky is pretty much the limit here in terms of flexibility. On the negative side, it's expensive as all balls. I mean, high-end hardware just plain costs a lot of money and also just tends to have more issues than mainstream stuff. That is the drawback of living on the bleeding edge. I mean, a lot of the time, it gets patched, but you do have to live with it in the meantime. I guess the summary here is that none of that really matters because you get to join the glorious PC gaming master race, initiation into which includes procedures that make your penis larger if you're a man, your breasts larger if you're a woman, and your beaks stronger if you're a bird. No, but seriously, it is the best gaming experience, so it's a great option if that's what you're after. It's just really expensive compared to everything else here. Next up, we've got the Xbox One. The pros here are pretty complicated. I mean, there's the additional functionality with the IR blaster and cable box integration as well as Microsoft services. There's the wife and kids appeal with silly Kinect dancing games. And I mean, really, to me, Kinect being included really is a selling point if you expect something like this to end up under the tree. And when you factor in the fact that Sony wants $60 for their inferior camera, it starts to look like not a bad value. The fact that potentially Microsoft can leverage their cloud servers to deliver better gaming experiences in the future is a really cool thing that I'm excited about. And finally, voice control is a definite plus for this console. In terms of the downsides, the first one I've got here is voice control. You'll notice this was listed twice, because while it's really cool and it works, we haven't really even gamed on the thing yet. We've only benchmarked it and it's already annoyed us a couple times by accidentally picking up our voices and interrupting our gameplay. I'm also not impressed with the controller. The joysticks feel a little loose and the rumble motor is loud and pathetically weak. And I mean, there's also no support for things like live streaming on Twitch. This is the kind of thing that even Sony managed to figure out. And obviously, if you're on a PC, it's extremely easy to do. So there's a few things that Microsoft's got to fix, but at least a couple of those can be done in software. In summary, unfortunately for gaming, it's just plain technologically inferior to the PS4. It's already running at 720p in new games, albeit with similar detail settings to the PlayStation 4. So from a distance, the image quality might look quite similar, but we could really see the PlayStation 4 pull ahead in Assassin's Creed 4, where it's running at 1080p. The flexibility of the Xbox One as an entertainment device could be a great value in the long run, however. So it's going to be up to you whether or not this one's a great option, and I think it'll depend on whether you're going to use those features or not. Which leads us to the PlayStation 4, the pros. Well, first up, more games run at 1080p or at least higher resolutions with satisfyingly beautiful graphics. It's small and relatively sexy compared to Xbox One in our estimation, with just plain better gaming hardware inside and no gigantic power brick outside. It's got higher power consumption while gaming and idling, but in standby it's actually much better, so we've got to give the nod to Sony here, because let's face it, a lot of the time game consoles are sitting in standby. Now, I'm not a huge DualShock fan, but it's definitely better than the Xbox One controller for me, so I'm again going to give points to Sony here. In terms of cons, well, it just doesn't really do much else yet, so there's no IR blaster, no included Kinect, and I mean, there's Sony just being Sony. Like, the HDCP protection on this console almost prevented us from making this video for you in a timely fashion. They do weird stuff, like building Twitch TV streaming, then limit the quality and prevent you from archiving it so people can only watch you live. I mean, it's better in terms of hardware, but sometimes, again, Sony does weird stuff, like in Battlefield 4, their betterness was less noticeable, because up-sampling from 900p adds visual anomalies that make it look kind of soft and weird, so we couldn't decide really whether it was better to have 720p with jaggies or 900p with visual softness and weirdness. So, I mean, the summary, I guess, here is that the PS4 looks like a great device. It's still not for me personally, because I really can't live without a keyboard and mouse, but it's great bang-for-the-butt gaming hardware. And from what we've seen here, Sony's done a good job of delivering the hardware that gamers and developers want and hitting a very appealing price point with it. So, overall conclusions now. I think many of you might have expected me to go, Rarararar PC is the greatest in this entire video, but that's really not what we're trying to achieve. We want you to make up your own mind. We're more than happy to give you our thoughts, and if you made it this far, that's awesome. But before you spend your money, take a step further and check the links in the video description. We've uploaded sample footage from each console to YouTube and provided links so you can download the sample footage and watch it for yourself locally at your leisure. I encourage you to spend some time doing that. If you like to buy any of the stuff and we've helped you make your decision, please also follow the pricing and availability link that is also in the video description and buy from our affiliates. It helps us out a lot. Guys, we also always want to hear from you, so let us know based on, well, I don't know, this evaluation or anything else that you've read or watched, what platform do you feel has really won the round up here? Post it in the comments below, and as always, like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.