4.) Why Hardware Specs Don't Matter: Part 1

       I have heard a lot of talk about how powerful the PS4 and Xbox One is and isn't. The fan wars is driving me insane; and not in a good way. People are already taking sides about which consoles specs beats the other. This happens with every generation and every generation is surprises me that how little the difference in console specs actually matter when predicting a console's success. So far there has never been a generation where a console with the fastest processor or the best graphics processing unit ended up becoming the dominant console of its generation. Lets go down the list shall we:

3rd Generation 
       In the 3rd Generation, the sega master system was just a plain faster machine than the NES, and the NES whooped it! The NES sold 61.91 Million Units whereas the SEGA MS sold 6.25 Million Units.

4th Generation 
       The Neo Geo had the best specs but lost to everything.

5th Generation
       Even without bringing up the Sega Saturn, which is probably the most technically powerful, the N-64 was way better than the Playstation 1 in terms of ram and processing power. The N-46 had 4 MB of RAM whereas the PS1 had 2MB of RAM. Even with all of Nintendo's brand power and their previous console dominance, it couldn't hold a cndle to the PS1's sales. N-64 had 32.9 Million Units sold whereas the PS1 sold 102.49 Million Units sold.

6th Generation 
       Then comes the sixth generation and here comes the Xbox with its monster processor, unbelievable GPU and double the RAM of the PS2. Yet, it sold far less than the PS2. Xbox sold 24 Million Units but the PS2 sold a whopping 155 Million Units.

7th Generation 
       Finally, the 7th Generation. The PS3 really is a bit more powerful with its cell processor with up to 7 cores. The Xbox 360 had 3 symmetrical power pc cores but they were running extremely high for the machine at 3.2 GHz each. ( Which lead to heat issues from initial release). The downside is that the PS3 cell architecture was difficult to develop for because it was locked away behind arcane architecture which requires coding wizardry that not even Sony was always capable of unleashing. Not that it matters because both systems were so soundly crushed by the Nintendo Wii in unit sales, that they felt the need to jump on the motion control bandwagon half the time. The Nintendo 3DS outsold the PS Vita with 29.84 Million Units whereas the Vita sold 2.2 Million.

       My fear is that hardware specs are going to define this generation, because sadly I have seen hundreds of gamers buy next-gen consoles purely based on hardware specs. What we should be looking for as gamers are the features that really set the systems apart and makes them unique. In the end, its a matter of preference and specs don't sell systems, awesome videogames do!  Good exclusive titles like the Uncharted series for Playstation, the Halo series for Xbox and the Super Mario series for Nintendo.

       What features do each of the consoles have which might lead to interesting exclusive titles? Because I am into game development, I look for anything that makes game development easier or cheaper because that's often a major concern for smaller studios; especially anyone taking a big risk on a game. Perhaps more importantly, I am always looking for unique features that allow for game design that couldn't be presented on any other console.