Xbox One vs PS4: Doom Creator Labels Hardware 'Essentially the Same'. Are They?

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will begin a heated competition for the hearts and minds of gamers when they are both launched later this year, but gamers passionate about one or the other may find that they are arguing over consoles that have very similar internal structures.

That is how John Carmack, the founder of id Software and the creator of the beloved Doom series, feels about the next-gen consoles. Carmack, in his keynote address given at QuakeCon which Gamespot reports, reflected that the technology behind both consoles is both very similar to each other.

"It's almost amazing how close they are in capabilities, how common they are. And that the capabilities that they give are essentially the same. It's almost weird how close they are. In the near-term, it's clearly going to be a good thing for developers, gamers...it's an excellent thing for AMD,"

While Carmack acknowledged that there are some variations in the hardware of the two consoles, such as their memory architecture and some technical specifications, he feels as though both consoles will be able to deliver a similar hardware experience for users.

Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are designed around the structure that high-end PC's use, which is why some developers like Ubisoft prepared for developing games on the consoles by pushing the PC versions of their games to the limit, in hopes that the practice will pay off later. The two consoles are also similar in that they have the same amount of RAM for use (8GB), and they will both have the same amount of internal memory for storage (500GB).

One of the biggest differences between the two consoles is the price, with the PlayStation 4's price being one hundred dollars less than the Xbox One's $500 buy-in. The other big difference between the two is that the Xbox One will have the Kinect come standard for the device, which is one of the reasons Microsoft is charging more for the device in the first place. The last big detail that jumps out as different between the two also deals with the Kinect. Because Microsoft wants users to communicate with the device, they will not ship headsets with the device, while Sony will include a headset with every PlayStation 4.

Look out for more PlayStation 4 and Xbox One news as we find out concrete release dates for the devices.