It appears from what we know that the PS4 has a bit of an edge in terms of graphics/compute power, and its probably going to be favored by spec-monkeys, but the XBox One is close enough in terms of hardware capability that the system software, XBox Live / Cloud infrastructure, and general integration with Windows PC / Windows service ecosystem could very easliy close the appeal gap for most people.

We got some specs and numbers to compare -- The Xbox One has 768 graphics compute units vs. 896 (+ 256 for compute only) in the PS4, both are DX11.1+ feature set, 8GB DDR3 + 32MB ESRAM vs 8GB GDDR5, and both are now confirmed to use 8 "jaguar" CPU cores from AMD. Much ado has been made about the DDR3 vs GDDR5 issue, but I think its mostly a wash -- GDDR5 has higher bandwidth, but it also has higher latency -- game devs have gotten pretty good at optimizing their memory layout in a way that would favor bandwidth over latency, but its not always possible or practical, and it always contorts the classical Object-Oriented worldview that most programmers think in, especially those who aren't gamedevs or involved in HPC work. If your problem makes you jump around a lot in memory, or you just want to write your software in the classical OOP fashion (as opposed to DOD), then the XBox One is probably going to penalize you less than the PS4.

In general, the PS4 is clearly tuned for games first, while the XBox one is a more balanced approach that makes concessions in order to facilitate non-game apps and likely to bring costs down.

My prediction is that the PS4 is going to come in around $100 more expensive than XBox One, even with the new Kinect bundled in. Due to the nature of GDDR5 chips, and Sony's late change from 4 to 8 GB they've got to have a more complex motherboard (more chips (16 per console), more electrical signals), more manufacturing expense, and they're forced to use the largest capacity chips that anyone makes, and which aren't in common use on graphics cards. Combined with an even larger SOC than is in the Xbox One, Sony faces a very real threat of supply chain issues either due to yield difficulties with their SOC or with the GDDR5 supplier being able to meet their demand.

To make an over-used car analogy, the PS4 is like an F1 racecar, while the XBox One is more like a high performance sports car. The former is purpose-built to excel at exactly one thing, while the latter is something that's a daily driver and still no slouch at the racetrack.

One word: fail.

I spent 28 minutes of presentation listening to idiots prattle about live TV and Skype. Do not care. Don't have or want cable TV.

Well, keep in mind that everything they showed with cable TV will likely work just the same with Video on Demand, Netflix, Hulu, HBO-Go, or whatever other non-cable subscription services you might have. In fact, a better way to look at it is that they're extending all the goodness they've already started with those services to your cable TV subscription, not the other way around.

And we can all have our personal preferences (and I'm with you not caring about cable TV), but the clear fact is that most people *are* spending more time on their 360s and PS3s watching Netflix and the like than they are playing games. Maybe not you, maybe not me, but the mass market is.

If the broader appeal (and hopefully a lower price-point) of the XBox One gives them a significant lead out of the gate (Say Microsoft moves 2x the units this Holiday season as Sony does, or has a 500k-1m lead by end of next year), it won't much matter the technical differences between the two. Sony's exclusives will use the extra hardware on their box, but cross-platform titles will look nearly identical and utilize the extra power for little more than eye-candy. Only if Sony can manage to beat Microsoft off the starting line will their extra hardware gain them advantage in cross-platform games.

However, like you I am concerned with the lack of concentration on games so far, from both parties.