OK so since the announcement of all these things at E3, a number of us have been asking, what is the difference between them, so today I thought to give you my thoughts on the matter. Some of you will agree and others will disagree, but regardless of your views, these are mine. Let's get rolling:
Wii U:
Now unlike the other 2, Wii U isn't an expansion of the Wii. It's instead the Wii's successor and it doesn't require 2 separate and really expensive devices in order to play from 2 screens. The additional screen comes from the console's main controller, the Wii U Gamepad. Now I've already talked a lot about this console during my predictions blog post so I won't get into too much detail here. What makes this different to the other consoles is that you can continue playing a game directly from the Gamepad when others want to watch something else on the telly and it features a number of different features such as an accelerometer, gyroscope and a vibration feature too. I can't even think of any downsides to this so if this proves to be successful, then it's a thumbs up for Nintendo.
PS3/PS Vita Cross-Play:
Cross-Play is an upcoming feature that will allow the Vita and PS3 to communicate with each other through gaming. Using this feature, players will be able to use DLC on games that are released for both consoles and play games in a similar way to the Wii U in that it allows you to play the game on the Vita, if you pause the game on the PS3. Additionally, for multiplayer games, gamers can use the Vita or the PS3 version of the game to go head to head. While Remote Play is already on both consoles so that they can communicate with each other as well as Cross-Play, there isn't really that much you can do with it, except for just seeing what the other menu looks like. Other downsides that I can think of, is that both the Vita and PS3 cost a lot of money to get, just to do cross-play and I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I think that you would need the game available on both platforms which could be a problem if you're low on cash. This was in the works way before the Wii U so maybe Sony will make it different so that it won't be just a copy of what Nintendo are doing.
Xbox SmartGlass:
Now personally, I don't think that SmartGlass is a threat to Nintendo and Sony, because from what I've heard, it seems that Microsoft are doing something different but using a similar concept to the Wii U and Cross-Play. I see this as more of a threat to Apple, Samsung and Google in that it plans to use phone and tablet devices to communicate with the Xbox 360 for more than just shopping, transferring data and cross-play games. So in theory, the SmartGlass is the one to beat, however like with Cross-Play, you would have to pay a lot of money to get not only the console, but the devices as well.
Overall, I feel that while each company are offering cross-play that is used in different and innovative ways, the Wii U is the only one to give you cross-play right out of the box. Here's how I rank them:
1- Wii U
2- PS3/PS Vita Cross-Play
3- Xbox SmartGlass
And that is my thoughts on the matter.
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