This Christmas season will see tech-giants Sony and Microsoft go head-to-head as the newest generation of consoles hit stores globally.

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have been in the pipeline for several years and now the time has come for gamers to sink their teeth into them.

Despite both being in competition with each other and Nintendo for over a decade, this is the first time that both a new PlayStation and Xbox have been released in the same year.

The dissections and verbal blows between the two companies have been extra sharp as a result, including Sony’s cheeky nudge at the Xbox One’s second hand sharing capabilities.

Despite the phenomenal day one sales for both the PS4 and XB1, the build quality of the consoles has been widely criticised as gamers have fallen foul of reliability woes.

Faults such as discs not being read and graphical flickers or crashes have been found by the first set of customers, which have reverberated around social media.

This will unquestionably reignite memories back to numerous PS3 and X360 problems, especially the latter’s infamous Red Ring of Death. Social media was still growing at the time of these launches which meant some customers had to suffer in silence.

Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii U is approaching its first year on sale in Europe, but it has yet to capture the hearts of customers like the original Wii did.

The more cynical gamer will look at the comparison videos and pictures of the next-gen Call of Duty and FIFA 14 and think why not keep their current hardware for a while or invest in a top of the line gaming PC?

According to Conor O’Neil, the Events Officer of the DIT Gamesoc, he had one or two issues with the XB1 at the Dublin launch event. “With regards to presentation, most of these games left a lot to be desired. There exists the same blatant animation glitches we saw in the last generation of consoles and apart from that, there really isn’t much room for improvement,” he said.

However, he was taken aback with games that showed a graphical enhancement. He explained “Battlefield 4 looks stunningly real, as expected, and fairly smooth with regards to visual effects. This is probably evidence of the machine’s display capabilities and so the issues I found may simply lie in the individual games.”

“I anticipate the improvement in the power of the console(s) will have a very positive impact on games as storytelling devices in the next few years as players empathise more with characters that move and look more like real people,” he concluded.

Patience is ultimately the key as the next-gen needs time to expand its catalogue of games. Just two months ago, Grand Theft Auto V burst onto the scene but it was only created for 360 and PS3. Whether those who have purchased an unreliable new console have any patience left is the more pressing issue.

Featured image credit: – EMR – on Flickr