Dual console owner question

[American Gunner]

How the hell do you guys do it? I owned a 360 for most of the generation and picked up a ps3 2-3 years ago, and even though I had a bunch of exclusives to play, I never felt like I was giving it enough time to justify my purchase. Now fast forward to this gen, and I started with the XB1 with intentions to grab a ps4. I still plan on getting one on my tax returns, but now I am struggling with the idea of doing this all over again. The saving grace for my ps3 purchase was the fact that the online was free and it was my blu-ray player, but that won't be the case anymore.

So how do you guys make it work, the ones that own both? I know that there will be weeks or even months where most of my gaming would be done on one console, so I worry that I am just wasting my money.

 

[Dumac]

With multiple platforms, it comes down to exclusives. You have to judge if the console has enough exclusives for you.

For PS3 I was interested in:
Demons Souls
Valkyria Chronicles
Ni No Kuni
Nier
Persona 5
Uncharted 1, 2, and 3
Heavy Rain
Last of Us
God of war
Heavenly Sword
Enslaved

For Wii U I was/am interested in:
New Super Mario Bros U
New Super Luigi U
Super Mario 3D World
Pikmin 3
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze
Mario Kart 8
Super Smash Bros
Wind Waker HD
Eventual Zelda

Those are enough games to warrant buying the console for me. The xbone and ps4 aren't there yet. I am pretty sure the ps4 will get there one day, but the xbone I'm not so sure of.

Don't worry if you don't play a console for months in between. It doesn't matter if you are gaming on it 24/7. Think about the whole life of the console.

Online play being not free means you should probably consolidate all your online games to one platform.

 

[digiram]

I was on the same exact boat.. Lol. I picked up a ps3 to play with fam members and friends on the Sony side, but never really did. I tried uncharted and some of the exclusives.. Never captured me. So it sat for 3 yrs as a BD player. I just sold it recently, but kept my xbox360's. Since announcement, I was soo ready to jump ship to ps4 till I discussed woth the core group I game with.. We all went XB1 and I'm enjoying it. Ryse was short but sweet, we still do cod, some bf4, my son plays Forza awaiting Minecraft and I'm. Looking. Forward to Titanfall. Most people that I know, personally, not many, that have both is mostly playing on xb1 right now and waiting for a significant ps4 release.

 

[cmdrdredd]

How the hell do you guys do it? I owned a 360 for most of the generation and picked up a ps3 2-3 years ago, and even though I had a bunch of exclusives to play, I never felt like I was giving it enough time to justify my purchase. Now fast forward to this gen, and I started with the XB1 with intentions to grab a ps4. I still plan on getting one on my tax returns, but now I am struggling with the idea of doing this all over again. The saving grace for my ps3 purchase was the fact that the online was free and it was my blu-ray player, but that won't be the case anymore.

So how do you guys make it work, the ones that own both? I know that there will be weeks or even months where most of my gaming would be done on one console, so I worry that I am just wasting my money.

Buy exclusives for the specific platform it goes with and buy multiplatform games for the system you like better or you have more people to play with on.

For example, I am playing Forza, Killer Instinct, and just recently finished Ryse on the XB1. I also finished Dead Rising 3. I finished Knack and Killzone on PS4. Since I prefer the PS4 controller I also finished Assassin's Creed IV on the PS4 and have NBA 2k14 on the PS4. I will buy multiplatform titles on the PS4 because I prefer it over the XB1 given the choice between them. I simply don't miss any exclusives this way.

I suppose you could split it up if you have no preference. I had a friend who would buy a couple games on PS3 and then a couple on 360 even though all the titles he purchased were available on both. He just wanted to get play time on both. He, like myself, didn't care about gamerscore and trophies. There was no incentive to keep buying everything for one platform in order to increase your ranking.

 

[purbeast0]

its the simple fact that $400 - $500 upfront is nothing compared to the countless of hours i will put into the console over the next 5+ years. i'm at a point in my life now where that really isn't that much money to spend so it's just easy to spend it on something i know i will be using a lot in the future.

granted i usually wait until there is at least 1 "must have (to me)" game for it. i wouldn't have gotten a ps4 yet if i had to purchase it. x1 i knew i was getting day 1 about 10 minues into e3 when they showed killer instinct. i didn't get ps3 until almost a year into it's life cycle, and only because there was a sonystyle.com deal on it where it was $350 for the 60gb launch version.

and yeah there are usually weeks possibly months i'll go without playing a console, but that is okay to me. last gen i was playing sf4 pretty much 3-4 days a week up until like last summer. but i'd play it on 360 because live is 1000x better than psn (won't even get into this discussion now but on ps3/360, psn was a joke compared to xbl). then i'd play games like burnout and racing and the occasional fps game on 360, because the controller and online is simply better.

but then i could never play hot shots golf, god of war, uncharted, ratchet and clank, or uncharted on xbox360. so i needed a ps3. there was a point where i was playing hot shots golf at least like 3-4 nights a week as well, and i'd try to play that between playing sf4 on 360.

i'm not one that has to jump between games. i'll stick to a couple games and just play them over and over, and just get really good at them and have fun with them. for 360, it was sf4. for ps3, it was hot shots golf (for a while), but then ps3 also has the best single player exclusives imo.

i'm guessing this will probably happen this gen for me too. ps4 will eventually have the better single player games, and x1 will have one here and there, but will still have the better online. as of now i'm pretty much only playing killer instinct on x1 and that's probably going to be my habit for a while.

 

[artemicion]

Personally, I don't really maintain a backlog of games. My rationale is that most games will only get cheaper over time, so there's no point in buying unless I'm going to play it immediately. The only exception is free games I get with Live Gold and Playstation Plus.

My advice would be to buy-as-you-go. If you don't think you'll play one console for months at a time, don't buy it until you know you're going to play it. There's a good chance it'll be cheaper down the road (or come bundled with a game or something). Even if it's the same price in a few months, time value of money baby.

 

[American Gunner]

Those are all good points. I am a Xbox guy, I enjoy live and love the controller. All of my friends are pretty big Xbox guys too, in fact they pretty much won't even look at a playstation. I guess I just hate the idea of spending $400 on a console that will sit unused more that the time it will be played.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Those are all good points. I am a Xbox guy, I enjoy live and love the controller. All of my friends are pretty big Xbox guys too, in fact they pretty much won't even look at a playstation. I guess I just hate the idea of spending $400 on a console that will sit unused more that the time it will be played.

Well, see what happens once DriveClub, & inFamous are released. You never know they might be spectacular.

 

[American Gunner]

They may be. I was not a huge fan on the infamous games on the ps3, so I am not that high on the new one. It looks fantastic, but I am not going crazy for it. Driveclub may be good, but I am also getting tired of Forza at this point (probably because they only put 14 damn tracks in the game and I am tired of seeing the same thing over and over again). I love the show. That alone could almost be enough to justify my purchase, but I will only play it for 2-3 months tops and then move on to other things.


What complicates things is that my classes are getting ready to start up again. I played the hell out of my XB1 during december because I didn't have school and used a bunch of my paid time off, so I had nothing else to do. But if this semester is anything like the last one, I will only have time on the weekends to play video games, and that starts to make me question if I really need a second system right now.

 

[Lil Frier]

Buy exclusives for the specific platform it goes with and buy multiplatform games for the system you like better or you have more people to play with on.

I suppose it's dependent on how quickly you will throw a game away. I'll play Black Ops II and Halo 4 for the full 2 years their replacements take. I've built up a backlog of about a dozen games on 360 to finish. I just think that there are too many games on ONE platform for me to play to want to get another console. I've not finished BioShock 2 on 360, and I've had it for years. If I added in the Kingdom Hearts, Uncharted, God of War, Resistance, and Killzone titles to my library, I'd never get ANYTHING done. I like to get through the campaign of shooters, but I play them primarily for multiplayer (in terms of time spent), and wedging two shooters (Black Ops II and Halo 4) into my multiplayer rotation was tough enough. I couldn't add in Killzone, and possibly Resistance...

 

[Lil Frier]

Driveclub may be good, but I am also getting tired of Forza at this point (probably because they only put 14 damn tracks in the game and I am tired of seeing the same thing over and over again).

I'm with you. I got Forza 4 for Christmas in 2011, and I didn't actually get around to playing it until, like, this past fall (almost 2 years later). I played it A LOT for about a month, but the tracks in THAT got redundant. After reading how they halved the content, cut back on the visuals post-E3, and then added asinine microtransactions, I decided that when I get an Xbox One, I'm writing Forza off entirely. Forza 4 is my last Turn 10 game, screw them. If I had to quit Forza 4 due to redundancy and boredom after 4-6 weeks, I won't be able to tolerate half the content in Forza 5.

 

[cmdrdredd]

They may be. I was not a huge fan on the infamous games on the ps3, so I am not that high on the new one. It looks fantastic, but I am not going crazy for it. Driveclub may be good, but I am also getting tired of Forza at this point (probably because they only put 14 damn tracks in the game and I am tired of seeing the same thing over and over again). I love the show. That alone could almost be enough to justify my purchase, but I will only play it for 2-3 months tops and then move on to other things.


What complicates things is that my classes are getting ready to start up again. I played the hell out of my XB1 during december because I didn't have school and used a bunch of my paid time off, so I had nothing else to do. But if this semester is anything like the last one, I will only have time on the weekends to play video games, and that starts to make me question if I really need a second system right now.

DriveClub is nothing like Forza. You should check out the info on it if you are interested in it.

It's entirely first person. Meaning you are the driver, you don't just pick a car and go. You walk around in first person and get in and buckle up. You challenge other racers around the wold 24/7 to beat you. You can make challenges from your phone too. You can accept challenges. You are supposed to form a race club where you and your friends compete against other teams. The game is probably going to be more arcade racer than sim, but the developers are car people so the attention to detail in the cars is supposed to be something. Of course there will be single player too.

It sounds ambitious and I hope it works half as good as it sounds to me. It's from the team that did the Motorstorm and WRC games.

 

[American Gunner]

Yeah I have kept up on it for a while. It does interest me in the fact that it seems like a very cool concept, but what I meant was I kind of feel burnt out from racers at this point because of the crap that Forza has pulled. I am starting to lean towards skipping it for now and getting it in the summer. We are moving and for the first time since I was 14, I won't be working. Instead, I will be going full time to school to get my degree while my wife works. It feels a little weird to think that I won't really be contributing, but she reminds me that I worked to put her through nursing school so she wants me to get the degree and job that I want.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I'm with you. I got Forza 4 for Christmas in 2011, and I didn't actually get around to playing it until, like, this past fall (almost 2 years later). I played it A LOT for about a month, but the tracks in THAT got redundant. After reading how they halved the content, cut back on the visuals post-E3, and then added asinine microtransactions, I decided that when I get an Xbox One, I'm writing Forza off entirely. Forza 4 is my last Turn 10 game, screw them. If I had to quit Forza 4 due to redundancy and boredom after 4-6 weeks, I won't be able to tolerate half the content in Forza 5.

I dunno, In less than two months I finished Dead Rising 3, Knack, Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse Son of Rome, BF4 campaign and did some online (gave up due to severe issues on PC servers) Assassin's Creed IV, played the hell out of Forza and NBA 2k14 and did quite a bit of practice in Killer Instinct. I also finished Metal Gear Rising Revengeance on PC yesterday (3rd time I finished it because I played through it twice on PS3), finished Tearaway on Vita, am beginning to play Zelda Link Between worlds on 3DS finally, and I still play Animal Crossing New Leaf on 3DS every day for a bit trying to get all the bugs and fish for each month and keep up on events in the town. I always find time to play the games I buy. I'm not a completionist though. Some titles I will revisit happily and keep going trying to get all the goodies.

For me I do it like so.

Single player games I pick one and play it until I finish. I ignore every other single player game during this time except Animal Crossing. Games that are never finishable like NBA, KI, and Forza I pick a day and that is the game I play. Whatever time I have to play it on that day, that's my game. Sometimes it's an hour, sometimes 4+. It depends on what's going on that day. The only day that I never get play any video games at all is Friday. I play foosball with my friends on Fridays. Depending on how I feel I play a bit almost every other day. You may think I neglect everything else and just play games which isn't true. I play games when I have time and am not doing anything else. If we go out, watch Hockey or Basketball, play foosball, have a friend's b-day or special event, go to a movie, watch a movie at home, or anything like that I don't play games. Sometimes I just feel like watching TV because a particular game has me stressed, so I just pop a movie on or see what's on tv.

I don't get rid of all my games right away either. If I can get good value for it because I completed it quickly I will probably trade it in and use it toward other games though.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I have a 360, PS3 and gaming PC. If I had to keep only one it would be the PC, but I'm glad that I got to play games like Valkyria Chronicles and Crackdown 1.

I have not bough either a PS4 or X1 because there aren't enough games that I want to play yet, and I have plenty of games for the other systems in my unplayed stack.

I probably won't buy an X1 or PS4 for just one game, but once it reaches 2-3 exclusives that I care about (and my backlog is smaller) then I'll start to think harder about it.

 

[American Gunner]

That makes sense DaveSimmons. I can tell myself that I will wait, but I have a feeling that once I start seeing gameplay for The Show, then I will probably just bite and buy one. The good thing is at that point, there will be the show, infamous (which again I am not hyped for but wouldn't mind seeing), and knack that me and my wife could play coop. That might be enough for now and then I can go back to my Xbox after and play it until the next exclusive comes out, something like The Order which sounds really cool to me.

 

[cmdrdredd]

That makes sense DaveSimmons. I can tell myself that I will wait, but I have a feeling that once I start seeing gameplay for The Show, then I will probably just bite and buy one. The good thing is at that point, there will be the show, infamous (which again I am not hyped for but wouldn't mind seeing), and knack that me and my wife could play coop. That might be enough for now and then I can go back to my Xbox after and play it until the next exclusive comes out, something like The Order which sounds really cool to me.

You mentioned The Show twice and I am totally hyped for this game. I love the game of baseball (but watching it on TV is tedious for me). I can't wait to be able to keep my Road to the Show player through multiple versions of the game instead of starting over.

 

[Lil Frier]

I dunno, In less than two months I finished Dead Rising 3, Knack, Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse Son of Rome, BF4 campaign and did some online (gave up due to severe issues on PC servers) Assassin's Creed IV, played the hell out of Forza and NBA 2k14 and did quite a bit of practice in Killer Instinct. I also finished Metal Gear Rising Revengeance on PC yesterday (3rd time I finished it because I played through it twice on PS3), finished Tearaway on Vita, am beginning to play Zelda Link Between worlds on 3DS finally, and I still play Animal Crossing New Leaf on 3DS every day for a bit trying to get all the bugs and fish for each month and keep up on events in the town. I always find time to play the games I buy. I'm not a completionist though. Some titles I will revisit happily and keep going trying to get all the goodies.

For me I do it like so.

Single player games I pick one and play it until I finish. I ignore every other single player game during this time except Animal Crossing. Games that are never finishable like NBA, KI, and Forza I pick a day and that is the game I play. Whatever time I have to play it on that day, that's my game. Sometimes it's an hour, sometimes 4+. It depends on what's going on that day. The only day that I never get play any video games at all is Friday. I play foosball with my friends on Fridays. Depending on how I feel I play a bit almost every other day. You may think I neglect everything else and just play games which isn't true. I play games when I have time and am not doing anything else. If we go out, watch Hockey or Basketball, play foosball, have a friend's b-day or special event, go to a movie, watch a movie at home, or anything like that I don't play games. Sometimes I just feel like watching TV because a particular game has me stressed, so I just pop a movie on or see what's on tv.

I don't get rid of all my games right away either. If I can get good value for it because I completed it quickly I will probably trade it in and use it toward other games though.

I think that' because you and I determine "finish" differently. When I say I haven't finished Forza, I mean I'm going to TRY to get that asinine Achievement for getting Gold on all 1,100+ races. When I say I haven't finished Black Ops II, I mean I want to go back, replay the campaign, and get some more Achievements on it.

By my standard (which is USUALLY getting all of the Achievements I can, with a minimum of 50%), I just finished NBA 2K9 in 2013, I am almost done with NBA 2K10, and I have a LOT to do in NBA 2K11 and NBA 2K12, to the point that I skipped NBA 2K13 (the VC in NBA 2K14 has 100% turned me off to it). I just went back a couple of months ago, and I got 100% on Assassin's Creed II, which I finished (got the No-Hitter Achievement) on 11/25.

I usually don't just beat a campaign and move on. I try to get a lot of the Achievements, just because it feels like content. If the Achievements are a massive drag on fun, I won't do them (the reason I have such a low completion percentage for overall Achievements), but I like to go for some of the challenging ones.

 

[Lil Frier]

You mentioned The Show twice and I am totally hyped for this game. I love the game of baseball (but watching it on TV is tedious for me). I can't wait to be able to keep my Road to the Show player through multiple versions of the game instead of starting over.

That is the only franchise on PS3 I really wanted to try. However, I liked MLB 2K for a great set of controls, and I could forgive the graphics. The fact that The Show was so resistant towards the Total Motion-style controls MLB 2K used kept me from ever REALLY wanting it. If they're finally accepting them (and doing them well), great. MLB 2K has been officially canceled for 2014, so I'm admittedly sad that we're unlikely to see baseball on a Microsoft console this season (unless EA comes out of nowhere with MVP or something).

 

[American Gunner]

I hated mlb 2k. It felt do inferior in so many ways. They couldn't even update their player name user base, something they still haven't done on the nba games.

 

[Doppel]

Personally, I don't really maintain a backlog of games. My rationale is that most games will only get cheaper over time, so there's no point in buying unless I'm going to play it immediately. The only exception is free games I get with Live Gold and Playstation Plus.

My advice would be to buy-as-you-go. If you don't think you'll play one console for months at a time, don't buy it until you know you're going to play it. There's a good chance it'll be cheaper down the road (or come bundled with a game or something). Even if it's the same price in a few months, time value of money baby.

Agree entirely. I buy when I want it, I play it, I sell it. I have no backlog of games nor even a library of them. A game on a shelf I won't play again is just money down the drain.

I game in periods of intensity, a few hours/day until I am done and then I take a break of weeks to months until the next one I absolutely must play pops out. I do this in part so I am not constantly rotting my brain playing games day after day. That said, I have been at it for two months now, but winter is a great time to play games.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Steam sales and Humble Bundle collections make it all too easy to get a larger and larger backlog of PC games.

For consoles, my backlog has mostly grown from seeing something on sale and thinking I might want to play it next. I buy it, then I get distracted by something shiny that I want to play even more

 

[American Gunner]

I did some thinking and decided that I'm just going to grab it on my tax returns. I'm bored of the games on my xbox already and really want to play the show. I figure I can play killzone and knack until titanfall and infamous come out. Then I'll play titanfall for a month until I am ready to move on and play other stuff.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I did some thinking and decided that I'm just going to grab it on my tax returns. I'm bored of the games on my xbox already and really want to play the show. I figure I can play killzone and knack until titanfall and infamous come out. Then I'll play titanfall for a month until I am ready to move on and play other stuff.

I'm sure you'll get tons of enjoyment out of it.

 

[American Gunner]

I'm sure I will. I will eventually own a Wii U, but not until I can get the system for $200 or less.