Played both of them over the weekend at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. Xbone was set up at Microsoft Store and PS4 at Sony Store. First time getting my hands on the controllers.
Quick impressions of the games:
Forza - Played like Forza. Looked pretty shitty, lots of jaggies. Wasn't impressed at all. Did not scream next gen to me. Not that I really expect any launch games to do that, but still.
Knack - After watching someone play FIFA for 10 minutes (which looked like a shitty looking current gen game rendered in 1080p), I got to play Knack. I thought it was pretty damn fun. Not $60 fun, though. Maybe I'll pick it up when it drops to $20. Framerate was stable for me, animations were beautiful, no jaggies, charming art style... If I were to pick up any retail PS4 game at launch, it would probably have been Knack. But I think I'll be good with just Resogun.
Anyways, controller impressions!
Xbox One:
PROS:
My favorite controller of all time is the Gamecube controller. I've played with that controller more than any other controller in my life, probably for at least 6000 hours at this point.
I can say for a fact that as soon as I got my hands on that Xbone controller, I knew. This is the closest any controller has come to the perfection that is the Gamecube controller. It just MELTED into my hands like the Cube controller, and it felt FANTASTIC. Easily better than the 360 controller, and I fucking love that controller too. I was honestly shocked how much I loved holding it.
D-Pad is fixed. Totally acceptable d-pad on that thing. Took them long enough.
I didn't use the face buttons much since I was playing Forza, but I tried messing around with them while the game was loading. From what I could tell, they felt pretty good. Definitely need more time with the controller to judge, though.
The analog sticks were incredible. Possibly the best ever. They felt like a million bucks. Classy as fuck.
Triggers felt fine too.
CONS:
LB and RB are kinda fucking garbage. So disappointing. They had it perfect on the 360 controller, and everything on the Xbone controller besides these two buttons seem to have been improved over its predecessor. How could they fuck this up? They are simply awkward to press compared to the perfection that was the 360s RB and LB buttons.
The rumble in the triggers/controller in general. Now I'm pretty sure this was just the demo kiosk, and we'll be able to turn rumble off... but this controller had it on full fucking blast. It was to the point where the thing would vibrate and it sounded broken. Just annoying. I'll be turning off rumble when I get my controller.
So overall, I was overwhelmingly impressed by the Xbone controller. How would PS4 fare?
Dualshock 4:
PROS:
Like the Xbone controller, the DS4 felt utterly fantastic in my hands. I HATED the Dualshock 2 and 3. I actively avoided third party games on the PS3 mainly for this reason. Now, that is absolutely not an issue. Before, controlling with the left analog stick felt awkward at times. Now, those problems are gone. The increased size of the controller makes it way more comfortable to hold.
D-pad seems marginally improved. L1 and R1 also seemed improved, and obviously R2 and L2 are vastly superior to the Dualshock 3.
I also like that the analog sticks are concave like the 360/Xbone controllers rather than the DS3. However...
CONS:
... I played with the DS4 after the Xbone controller, and the analog sticks were clearly a step down. I don't want to say they felt cheap... but they even felt like a step down from the PS3 analog sticks, aesthetically. I totally believe
stories like this, and fear my analog sticks could be destroyed like that if I treat my controller too rough (luckily I'm not too harsh on my controllers lol) Too bad, because it's an otherwise perfect controller imo.
This picture really tells it all:
There's no comparison. Xbone sticks shit on PS4s.
All in all, I'm super impressed with both controllers. The problems I have with each of them are easily fixable, and I hope Microsoft and Sony both release revisions at some point to fix these small problems. But even if they don't, I'm happy. These controllers are great, and at this point, I'm seriously considering just buying an Xbone controller to use for PC games.