Comparative Analysis of Gaming Consoles: A Literature Review

This report provides a comprehensive literature review on the evolution of gaming consoles, focusing on the advancements and competition between Xbox and PlayStation. It explores the industrial revolution of gaming consoles, highlighting market growth, features comparison, and future innovations such as cloud gaming and virtual reality. The report analyzes market trends, sales figures, and consumer preferences, while also addressing the challenges faced by the gaming industry, including fierce competition and the impact of events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis covers key aspects like hardware specifications, software capabilities, and the overall impact on the gaming landscape, including the future trends and advancements expected in the industry.

Research Paper 1
CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Industrial revolution of the gaming consoles
Over the last 30 years, gaming consoles have experienced tremendous growth, and its
convincing success is its manifestation. Its business is growing at a rate of 10% to 18% annually.
Its economic value has moved from the niche business to the sensational company. Presently, the
ratio of game consoles exceeds globally compared to the balance of the personal computer used
for gaming purpose (Majander, 2019). According to the report, global revenue came from
gaming consoles, including portable software, hardware and mobile devices, approximately $67
billion. Furthermore, the gaming consoles of Microsoft and Sony are both essential vital players.
They are at the forefront of the gaming industry and always offer innovative and latest
perspectives in their gaming consoles (Sokiyna and Aqel, 2020). The Sony PlayStation has a
significant market share, with total sales of the PlayStation 4 as approximately 40 million
compared to the Xbox One total sales of roughly 21 million. However, the novel stage of gaming
consoles, including Microsoft and Sony, two heavy-duty entertaining corporations, compete for
their status as the most incredible gaming console (Shomer, 2020). Sony introduced PS4, and
Microsoft introduced Xbox One innovative gaming consoles as it uses modern technology to
better bring the gaming experience for users.
Figure 2.1 Revolution of the gaming consoles as indicated in Newton (2018)

Research Paper 2
According to the report, Sony has a 50% share market of gaming consoles. The PS4 has a
semi-customized APU “accelerated processing unit” manufactured by AMD. The accelerated
processing unit contains GPU, CPU, encoder or decoder for videos, and memory controller. For
instance, the PS4 internal hard drive uses a file system structure, but it supports FAT and ex-FAT
formatted USB storage devices (Ramakrishna et al., 2020). It permits customers to use USB-
connected devices to view videos, photos and music. On the other hand, Xbox was created by
Microsoft and uses a Windows-based OS. It contains a different OS for the games of Xbox One
and each compatible program (Sundberg, 2019). The operating system is located inside the
internal HDD and has a backup copy in the console's internal memory to prevent damage or
recovery during factory reset. Xbox One has a central processing unit contains 8 GB of DDR3
RAM, and 3 GB is reserved for the OS and the rest of the applications and games.
Figure 2.2 Revolution of gaming consoles in terms of revenue as demonstrated in (Shomer, 2020)
Moreover, Warner (2019), demonstrated that the accelerated processing unit chip is
utilized to force the graphics and simulation functions on the console. It also equipped with
multiple chips to support its capabilities of multitasking even in sleep mode. The PS4 has a built-
in special audio chip of mp3 streaming that supports chatting during gameplay. However, it has
further equipped with a bandwidth of 177 GB per second and 8 GB of GDDR memory which is

Research Paper 3
16 times faster compared to PS3 (Sundberg, 2019). On the other hand, the Xbox One highlights
the device of Kinect peripheral camera and has many features for device use. Its customers can
connect their cable devices and view live broadcasts. The Xbox’s live game console signing
service has also been upgraded (Pitić et al., 2020). The users will save real-time footage of their
gameplay and stream these footages to share it with friends. It is packed with equipment of
Kinect sports camera and an official controller.
2.2 Features comparison between Xbox and PlayStation
With the development of technology, modern gadgets have made the game much
attractive. Both Microsoft and Sony have carried entire modern expertise in terms of gaming
perspective (Bayeck et al., 2018). An argument among them is the comparison of products in
terms of appropriate for gaming. Over the past few decades, both corporations have made
changes and developed high-end products through many beneficial specifications according to
their customers perspective. The gaming consoles of Microsoft and Sony have been contending
for more than four years to surpass either. Furthermore, 2017 was the most desirable year for
console users, and its favoured console has been significantly upgraded (Kulkarni et al., 2020).
Most individual who plays games for the first time have difficulty deciding to buy Xbox or
PlayStation. While analyzing their latest models, we have discussed a few differences, which are
mentioned in Figure 2.3:
Figure 2.3 Microsoft Xbox vs Sony PlayStation spec comparison as mentioned in JP and Babu (2019)

Research Paper 4
These two products still have a few similarities: both have 8th generation consoles as
AMD Next-Gen graphics “Radeon HD”, their processors are customized AMD 32, and 64-bit
Jaguar both are video game consoles (Shomer, 2020). Lastly, their audio outputs use HDMI.
Their prices seem to change every week and range from $230 to $500, depending on the price
bundle. Furthermore, Xbox One, their first products, had some noisy and non-functional disc
drives; therefore, the global sales were still far ahead of Microsoft in 2014. Both consoles offer
playback options where users can play previous games (Ayed et al., 2019). For Xbox one, users
can play for free while on PS4, and they make payment for it. However, the PS4 is multi-faceted
with numerous unique features and worthwhile exclusives. According to the report, the gamers
searching for niche experiences and JRPGs will enjoy using the PS4 while gaining the upper
hand in terms of performance. The Xbox One is not a bad option to choose from, one reason
being that the Xbox play anywhere gives you two digital games for one price. They are the two
leading consoles in the worldwide market of gaming consoles (Chan et al., 2020). The specs
above will make choosing a console quickly since users can compare them and decide according
to what you are looking for Xbox. Therefore, most of the gamer prefers to use PlayStation over
Xbox for the most intense gaming experience.
2.3 Market growth of PlayStation and Xbox in terms of sales
The primary motivation of consumers to decide to purchase a gaming console may be
examined entirely through the reasons which might affect the resolution of the gaming console.
As the finest game determines whether the system has feasible long-term performance as the
reasons are availability, worth, reliability, weight, performance, colour and shape (Lendino,
2018). The sales relationship between hardware and software is much more complicated. The
higher the quality of the games, the larger the installed user base. According to the report, the
growth of the gaming market worldwide is linked to the appropriate environment of organized
trade, stakeholder attention, the channels of online payments, and advanced amount in terms of
gaming console development (Foss and Saebi, 2018). With the further development of the
PlayStation 4, Sony continued to capture the video game industry, with the largest market share
in 2015, reaching 21%. The PlayStation has always been the most popular brand. It has been
vigorously promoting it for the past two decades, beating Nintendo and SEGA with innovative
gaming experiences, unique graphics, and features (Azuma and Kodama, 2018). In 2015, the

Research Paper 5
annual difficult growth rate of global gaming consoles was about 7%, and by 2020 sales will
reach $ 2.3 billion.
According to the report, the sales gap between PS4 and Xbox has grown so much as
publishers believe that the Xbox One market is just a secondary issue and can be neglected. In
the early 2000s, when the PS2 dominated the console market compared to Xbox, it was hard to
attract attention as the research indicated that the sales of the PS2 are four times higher than the
Xbox, which launched a year later (Määttä, 2019). Presently, there is some controversy over the
difference in sales between the PlayStation and the Xbox. The potential quantities of PS4
acquisitions have led to an expansion of potential PS4 buyers. Furthermore, the global-scale
distribution of consoles is not the same as the sales of original gaming consoles not always match
the ratio of active users who continue to spend money on consoles and DLC. On the other hand,
the Xbox CEO Phil Spencer put it in 2015, “We at Sony were not motivated, but offered to
attract as many users as possible.” as Xbox One sales improved slightly (Johansen et al., 2020).
From a technical perspective, games can be easily transferred from one console to another
without any pain. The alternative is to ignore potential Xbox One users because, in most cases,
the Xbox One business makes no sense.
Figure 2.4 Market value of top three gaming consoles in last five years as indicated in (Ayed et al., 2019)

Research Paper 6
2.4 Future advancements and innovation in gaming consoles
As compared to the previous generation of products, the modern generation of gaming
needs faster video rendering, memory and much power for processing. The gaming consoles of
PlayStation and Xbox One are equipped with a hard drive hybrid, rotating drives, liquid cooling,
and three times faster speed of RAM. Its specifications, such as Sony PlayStation and Microsoft
Xbox, are innovative every year to meet the needs of game makers (Hoffman and Gold, 2018).
However, the innovations reduce the cost of operating systems with less power and stimulate
innovation in laptop solutions and portable devices—furthermore, recent developments known as
the resolution of Ultra HD or 4K (Givon et al., 2018). The innovative resolution needs
marvellous video processing capabilities and permits users to immerse themselves in a natural
gaming environment. However, the technologies such as multiplayer atmospheres, real-time
games and virtual reality allow users to dive into the present’s distant planets or war zones. In the
future, corporations will use these technologies to create a much cooperative staff.
Moreover, the individuals who play immersive 3D gaming already utilizing innovative
technologies, but the gear is much costly, such as the Sony’s PlayStation VR headset is
approximately $410, and Oculus Rift Headset is about $600 (Majander, 2019). However, the
latest technologies prices will fall over time in the future. The corporations such as Sony and
Microsoft invest in creating and developing new technologies such as game streaming services
and virtual reality to provide different groups of users with new gaming experiences. It has
become possible due to the rapid development of computer technology, computer processing
units and GPUs are becoming faster; therefore, the infrastructure is better, and in the case of
virtual reality, screens have become more precise, and cameras and head-tracking technologies
have improved (Azuma and Kodama, 2018). Furthermore, the future development of the gaming
industry will emphasize cloud-gaming technology as mobile games will future trend. It is
necessary to ensure that the hardware performance of the gaming console will not drag down the
game screen and ensure portability. There is only one way which is cloud gaming. Sony and
Microsoft will have to worry about their consoles dragging down the game and leave the screen
calculations to the cloud. Consumers want a portable device to play the 3A masterpiece (Givon
et al., 2018).

Research Paper 7
2.5 Current challenges of the gaming industry and future technology to overcome it
According to the current competition in the global gaming industry is fierce. Tencent and
NetEase occupy the leading positions. However, it is difficult for waist game corporations such
as Microsoft and Sony to stand out in the market competition. With the continuous modifications
in the gaming industry pattern, the future of both corporation’s gaming sector will be challenging
(Määttä, 2019). To allow investors to build the confidence of the corporations that initially had
high hopes for the gaming sector may not reach the 30% growth forecast in 2018. Furthermore,
during the COVID-19 epidemic, individuals staying at home, the demand for entertainment
shifted from passive to online, while the gaming industry shifted from conventional
entertainment. Household goods have become a necessity of the consumer’s life, and games, one
of the main forms of online entertainment, have been increasingly affected. During this spring
festival, the gaming industry achieved unprecedented growth (Ablyaev et al., 2019). However, it
reflected in the single number of active daily online entertainment increased in time, the overall
cycle of spring festival stalls has been lengthened, and the willingness of users to pay is
increasing among them. Mobile games, which have accounted for the largest share of the
domestic gaming market in recent years, have seen the most significant increase in revenue.
According to the report of 2020, the Tencent games and Huawei signed a strategic
cooperation memorandum for using the mighty computing power of Huawei Kunpeng processor
to build the Game-Matrix cloud gaming platform and conduct technological exploration and
innovation in game fields such as game engines and cutting-edge technologies (AI/VR/AR).
However, the 5G+ mobile edge cloud gaming solution was developed, and it is based on
Huawei’s 5G MEC’s mobile network perception capabilities (Chan et al., 2020). The power and
edge computing infrastructure provide cloud gaming services with ultra-low network latency,
low cost, high image quality, and mobile usage zero-interruption gaming experience. Presently,
the 5G+ mobile edge cloud gaming solution is already in the live network environment. The next
test pass will help the rapid development of the cloud gaming business (Sokiyna and Aqel,
2020). However, the adverse impact of the epidemic on cloud gaming platforms is limited as the
deep cooperation of the global industry of technological innovation of integration of operation
and cloud network, turning challenges into opportunities, will increase the explosive growth of
cloud games in the second three quarters of 2020.

Research Paper 8
Moreover, the platform provider of cloud gaming, publishers and gratified creators have
to work closely with in-depth gaming gratified product equipment to further explore and rapidly
improve the platforms of cloud gaming for address existing global collaboration status issues.
The problem of difficulty in content updates are caused by inconvenience (Vuyyuru and Talasila,
2020). However, the cloud service providers and cloud game platform parties cooperate through
cloud-network integration technology innovation, and the cloud game market growth will be
bigger and stronger day by day. Therefore, the cooperation around the global industry of gaming
consoles and technological innovation of cloud-network and cloud gaming platforms will
strengthen both content resources and user experience are guaranteed and improved (Sokiyna
and Aqel, 2020). Laying a solid foundation for the rapid and healthy development of the
following gaming consoles industry will be beneficial for the gaming industry giants Microsoft
Xbox One and PlayStation PS4.
Presently, the gaming industry's significant challenges are that the network transmission
cannot solve input delay and screen freeze problems (Warner, 2019). It is indeed a massive
obstacle for the users who play games, but in 2019, regarding communications, the only
technology that is 5G to overcome this issue. However, 5G technology has not yet been officially
commercialized, but it will make a significant mark in the history of wireless communication.
Therefore, the development of cloud games will be the opportunity to enhance gaming
reliability, usability and portability (Ramakrishna et al., 2020). There are indeed many problems
that need to be solved for cloud gaming. However, Microsoft and Sony will sustain the status
quo and make no mistakes. The future broadband can play 4k pictures smoothly in real-time. The
local stand-alone games in the same period are estimated to be 8k already. The idea that cloud
games can replace local stand-alone games is tantamount (Määttä, 2019). Finally, the cloud
games will popularize as the ultimate driving force is whether it can be profitable as the
technology can realize. There are not too many examples of technical success but unprofitable
failure. The proportion of digital game sales will be higher and higher in the future. The game’s
sales model will also change in the future from a one-off physical, digital buyout and gradually
changing to server cloud host leasing.

Research Paper 9
Figure 2.5 Future perspective gaming based on cloud as demonstrated in (Hoffman and Gold, 2018)
2.6 Collaboration of Microsoft and Sony for future cloud-based games solutions
As the first massive alliance between Microsoft and Sony was announced during a
session between Mr Kenichiro Yoshida, the President and General Manager of Sony corporation
and Mr Satya Nadella, President of Microsoft, signed a cooperation agreement of cloud services
and also the development of artificial intelligence (Newton, 2018). However, both corporations
will explore cloud solutions in Azure cloud services to support their gaming and content
streaming. Microsoft's Azure cloud service will also power existing Sony gaming services and
content streaming in the future. The partnership relates to creating new cloud technologies and
artificial intelligence through the Azure cloud computing system, and both enterprises will work
to develop new cloud solutions that benefit gaming and entertainment services. Furthermore,
Microsoft clarifies that those hard work will further create a reliable platform for the community
of gratified creator (Ayed et al., 2019). The plan of Microsoft and Sony partnership in the future
services of developers and the community of games.
As the two companies will part of other existing data with each other, but this partnership
suggests that Sony and Microsoft will cooperate in cloud-based gaming. The cooperation is a big
deal for Microsoft and Sony, and a massive loss to Microsoft’s main cloud competitor such as
Amazon, and Google, the new games competition for Sony and Microsoft, which will lose the
ability to host Sony cloud facilities (Ablyaev et al., 2019). Moreover, the cloud and broadcast
technologies have become more important in games, especially after Google revealed earlier this

Research Paper 10
year its game-streaming service, Google Stadia, which poses a threat to both Microsoft and
Sony, therefore Google can utilize You-Tube to transport it in pieces. Stadia is working on
games for broadcasting by cloud-based to the devices of Chromecast, the devices of Pixel, and
the browser of Google chrome but Sony has become able to respond after it cooperated with the
software giant Microsoft, and it obtained the necessary assistance in the field of cloud
infrastructure (Foss and Saebi, 2018). However, Sony owns its services to broadcast games in the
cloud, such as PlayStation Vue, while Microsoft promises a good experience for its project x-
cloud games, coming into the market as soon as possible.
Therefore, the company's gaming sector official, Phil Spencer, promised to announce
something big during the E3 Games conference, and the partnership could be a way to ensure the
two companies can compete and stand in the way of competitors, such as Google and Amazon.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demonstrated that Sony constantly become as a pioneer in the
industry of technology and entertainment (Azuma and Kodama, 2018). The announcement of
this partnership is based on the story of novelty, as this partnership has brought strong features of
Azure to Sony. Give users a new gaming and entertainment experience (Amos, 2018). On the
other hand, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida also explained that Microsoft has been our important
business partner for many years. While both corporations competed in certain zones, the
combined progress in terms of the solutions in cloud-based technology will facilitate attracted
gratified and beneficial for gaming consoles.
.

Research Paper 11
CHAPTER 3 – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The next chapter focuses on solving the research question according to the objectives set
out above, which are additional to expose: the methodology, approach, type, and research design
implemented for the resolution and obtaining in data collection for the present study.
3.1 Nature of the research
The nature of research based on exploratory as the literary findings and determinations of
the study instead of random circumstances. The exploratory research presents a introductory
awareness regarding issues in research or objects to get a introductory perspective and
impression awareness. The situation for some research questions is that there is no preceding
expertise in research as the affiliation among the factors which are not clear (Sundberg, 2019).
This type of research includes many ways such as participation in observation, participation in
unstructured interviews, consulting literature, case analysis. It is usually a small-scale research
activity that presents a direction and foundation for added thoughts and the future exhaustive
investigations (Zagorulko, 2020). As it is an impermanent conclusion of the researcher based on
the literary discussion such as the researcher wants to consider "comparison between PlayStation
vs Xbox consoles". However, the research method prefers that it can solve an imaginary
problem. According to the research, it will help in selecting data collection methods and research
design (Warner, 2019). Afterwards, it clarifies the essential nature of the search engine, the usual
conclusion that has no imaginary observations.
3.2 Research philosophy
The research philosophy is how to analyze, use, and collect phenomenon data as the term
epistemology and non-toxicology encompass several philosophies of research methods. The
primary research philosophies in the western scientific tradition include positivists, sometimes
called scientific and explanatory, and anti-positivists (Foss and Saebi, 2018). Furthermore, the
central perspective to use the phenomenon data or analysis of acquired data is considered a
research philosophy. It permits researchers to examine the basis of research and helps to collect
the most precise information.
3.2.1 Positivism
The Positivist researchers consider the sustainable reality, and its observation and
description can be done objectively. It does not interfere with the studied phenomenon. They

Research Paper 12
believe that the phenomenon ought to be detached and the measurements ought to be repeated
(Givon et al., 2018). It usually encompasses manipulating practicality by modifications in just
one independent factor to recognize regularity and establish relationships between the social
world in certain aspects. The Forecasts might be selected on the basis of earlier explained and
observed facts and its interrelationships. Furthermore, the Positivism researchers becomes a rich
and long tradition of history (Bayeck et al., 2018). It’s extremely subterranean inside our
community that it is considered scientifically based on positivism without knowledge and is
therefore invalid. Positivism also has particularly successful connections with the ordinary
disciplines and physics. Although, there is enough dispute on the paradigm of positivist is
appropriate for societal disciplines, and most researchers demand for a added diversified
approach to information systems research methods.
3.2.2 Interpretivism
The researchers of interpretivism consider the subjective reality and analysis should be
genuinely experienced. The investigation of wonders around usual situation is vital to the
philosophy of interpretive and at the same time recognizes the researchers can-not evade to
swaying the wonders (Newton, 2018). The researcher acknowledges that it might be several
explanations on truth but claim that the explanations are components of precise awareness.
According to the report, the verdict of interpretivism is much positive as compared to the verdict
of positivism.
3.2.3 Pragmatism
According to the research philosophy of pragmatism, the research question is the most
crucial determinant of the research philosophy. It can combine positivism and interpretivism
within one study, depending on the nature of the research issue. Furthermore, the philosophy
holds that the concept of research is essential only if it supports any action (Warner, 2019). The
research method here believes that the most crucial determinant of research philosophy is the
research issue. They noted that survey questions require respondents' answers to obtain specific
information.
3.2.4 Realism
The research philosophy of realism is based on the idea of separating reality from rational
perspectives. The philosophy of epistemology based onto the technical approach of progress in