Microsoft are trying to impress you with big numbers, but...

Right after the XBox One unveil, Sony shares went up and Microsoft down, I think this is indeed a good indicator of the general perception from the public.

But why??

Because there is no big innovation outside of the TV features, whose are cool, but won't make people like me buying a XBox One over a PS4, especially since Sony claimed that their price will be highly compelling to customers.

One single PS4 will still be faster than 300 000 Microsoft cloud servers for cloud gaming. Cloud gaming is a fantastic concept, but is also all about latency. Gaikai is allowing your PS4 console to be that cloud server, which is totally brilliant, because chances are you will always be closer geographically to your home, rather than from an official Microsoft server farm, especially in remote (as well as not-so-remote) countries around the world, thus reducing the latency consistently and by an exponential factor. You will stream your AAA PS4 titles faster, more comfortably, and more reliably to your Vita, than you will ever be able, technically, to stream your AAA XBox One titles to any other device via Smartglass.

You can guess that the 300 000 cloud servers are there first to:

1-DRM everything;

2-Delivering fast downloads/updates/DLCs over night;

3-Provide you with cloud storage for your saves, files and preferences;

and THEN, in the last place

4- Enhance/leverage your game experience/quality, if any company see the interest of using this partial architecture, which is highly unlikely to happen in many years from now. We will start seeing the benefit of cloud computing only when XBox One will start to become technologically obsolete (so, towards the end of its lifespan), because since an Internet connection is not mandatory (standardization being the main advantage of consoles over other gaming platforms, like personal computers), developers won't see the financial benefit of exploiting cloud computing, even if the platform to do it is available and standardized. The market will always be fragmented between those who have an always-on Internet connection, and those who don't. Even in 2020.

Anyway, if at some point in time Sony feels the PS4 should also be able to do cloud computing in order to boost your PS4 power, they now have the backbone (Gaikai) to do it. But right now they focus on concepts, technologies and architectures that really add something innovative, appealing and useful to the end user experience.

Smartglass will allow us to stream games with more latency, to 3 types of devices (iOS, Android and Windows Phone) that don't have physical buttons. Why should we want this? How can I expect the new Halo, Call of Duty, Forza, Alan Wake or Gears of Wars to play nice with touch controls, when the XBox One controller is now the only controller of that generation to NOT feature any touch input hardware? The WiiU has touch controls. The PS4 will have touch controls. But not XBox One. That means that in order for a AAA title to be correctly and decently supported on Smartglass-powered devices, the developers need to design two completely-different control schemes at the same time, or then we will begin to see even more fragmentation within the XBox One ecosystem. But the hard truth is that developers will not do it, since not all XBox One users will use Smartglass. When they will do, they will:

1-Release the Smartglass support later, with a delay;

2-Release the Smartglass support at an additional fee;

3-Not always release any Smartglass support, it will depend if the game is successful enough with the default controls scheme.

A PS4 + Vita combo will be much more adapted and optimized for gaming, and the Vita will be better established than even a future and yet unannounced XBox Surface mobile device.

Don't be fooled by big numbers.