There is way too much hype for the next generation consoles, the XBox One and the Playstation 4. After the presentations, the Youtube videos and the handheld demonstrations, it is already known that the two consoles will make a lot of money for Microsoft and Sony. But before you purchase these extremely expensive consoles, you might want to wait out and see how the market and the technology react.

It is often normal that when a gaming console is launched, the games available at that time are not usually the best of what the system has to offer. This occurs because game publishers do not yet have a grasp of the technology they are programming games for. It usually takes a good six months to a year for game developers to completely make a game that takes full advantage of the console architecture.

So what about the games that come out at launch? Well, they are merely translations of the games as they are made for the previous systems. Meaning, if you purchase FIFA 2014 for the XBox One, it will most likely be the same game with the same game mechanics. The only difference will be better graphics -- while that is nice to look at, it is nothing groundbreaking. If a next gen console is truly that, then the gameplay and graphics should be substantially better than the former.

Multiplayer is another factor to consider. Most gamers love to play shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield as well as enjoy the head-to-head matchups on Madden and FIFA. But just how big will the multiplayer community be at launch? Given the high price of the console, there might not be a lot of players online as compared to the current generation of systems. And if your gaming needs relies on the existence of other players, you may become disappointed at launch.

So what should the gamer do? They should wait for which system will have the greatest number of subscribers and next generation games. Note the term “next generation games” because these games should be revolutionary and inherently better than their predecessors. The next generation of consoles is out but the jury is still out on which is better.

Image credit: Taro Urata on Flickr