I have been following the news of the two consoles closely over the last few weeks, and I've got the following opinions:

- The two consoles have essentially identical technical specifications, and they pretty much will be able to do the same things and have the same capabilities, in terms of gaming and online media. The differentiation will be in the subtleties of their software implementation for their various features, and which game publishers they can court to obtain platform-exclusive titles.

- The two consoles have the same price. The PS4 is touted as being 100 dollars cheaper, but that's without the motion control camera. The price for the PS4 with camera included is not yet known, but As Tycho said, "I'm smart... I can figure it out."

- The whole "download your games instead of buy on disc" model has, of course, been done already for years quite successfuly by Steam and others. But the thing I'm not seeing mentioned in the press is that the PS3 has also had that for years. Unlike the Xbox 360, which only offers downloads for older games, the PS3 currently has day-one triple-A downloadable titles right now. With the PS3, I can choose to download a brand new triple-A title on the release day. So basically, Microsoft is trying to tout a feature as revolutionary when actually it's old hat. No surprise there. Again, both of the new consoles will have this, so there is no differentiation there.

- Total aside here, but if I browse the web with the PS3, I can play Flash-based videos such as Zero Punctuation. The user experience isn't the most friendly when I do it that way, but I can do it. I flatly can't do that at all on the Xbox 360 because its web browser doesn't contain a flash plugin. I don't know if the new consoles will follow that tradition. I know that web browsing isn't necessarily the thing we want to do with our game consoles, but I will make the point that both companies are trying to tout their ability to play online video media, and unfortunately, some of that is only accessible via a web browser. It's a tiny miniscule little thing, but it's an example of the kind of thing I mean when I say that these companies will only be able to differentiate their products via the subtleties of their software implementations.

- So now that we've established that there's precious little difference in the two products, all that's left to talk about is how badly Microsoft botched their messaging at launch time. They backpedaled so hard on the used-game-tax thing that I could hear the screeching tires from across the lake. They made a distasteful rape joke during one of the game demos. They tried to tout "always-on, always connected" as a feature, without understanding that people do not appreciate being watched. Basically, Microsoft botched it so bad that Sony was able to win the marketing spin, hands down, using a single powerpoint slide. So much so, that it prompted Tycho to utter my favorite quote from this whole fiasco, referring to last week's E3 event: "I would avoid the punch at Microsoft's afterparty."

In the end, I don't care. I'm not interested in either of the consoles right now. Neither of them will play my current game libraries: Neither console is backward compatible, a fact which makes me just exasperated enough to make me deliberately avoid them both for right now. I'm out of inputs on my TV, and out of space on my mantle, so if they want me to buy their new console, they have to give me a damn good reason to displace my old one. As with all game consoles, I'll buy their console when there is a compelling game available for that console, that I want to play, and that I cannot play anywhere else. I haven't seen that in their launch day announcements.