Which new-gen console is more durable? Which can fall from a place high enough to kill a man and keep ticking? This is certainly one way to find out. Oh, and loser gets chainsawed in half.
Wired's Battle Damage segment subjected the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles to an endless torrent of torment. Or at least, they decided to drop both of them from increasingly high places until they stopped working. First to let out a final, defeated screech was declared the loser... and summarily chainsawed in half.
Unfortunately, after a 15 ft drop the PS4—or rather, a jagged box of shrapnel that once called itself a PS4—wouldn't even turn on. The Xbox, despite missing sizable chunks of its boxy frame, continued to work like a charm.
We can only draw one conclusion from this: The Xbox One is INDESTRUCTIBLE. Dying after a 15 foot fall? Totally forgivable. I could probably be killed by a particularly nasty fall from that height, so I can't hold it against the PlayStation 4. Xbox One, however, was like, "Gravity? What even is that. I'm a box of machine parts so I literally do not know. Wanna play some games? Yeah wheeee let's play some games! Games, yeah, games!"
Which, of course, brings us to the PS4's cruel posthumous fate:
Not gonna lie: watching these machines fall and shatter and try their damndest to keep on working made me a little sad. Same with the PS4's brutal execution. I honestly don't have any particular affinity for either machine, but there's just something heartbreaking—in a weirdly human way—about seeing them helplessly clatter to the ground. Even earlier, when talking about the Xbox, I couldn't help but personify the hell out of it. Maybe I care more than I think about these boxes that have taken me to so many far away lands.
Related: I'm gonna go buy a bunch of pillows to put under the table where I currently keep my PS4. You know, just in case.