For years, the PlayStation and Xbox brands have been going at it. Both Sony and Microsoft have released incredibly powerful machines, and while both consoles can play many of the same games, there are exclusives to each console. The Xbox has Halo, while PlayStation has Killzone; Microsoft has Gears of War, Sony has Uncharted. It's great that there's some true competition in the market, but sadly, it means that there will always be something exclusive to one side or the other.
One fan wasn't exactly happy with the exclusivity business model, and since there's no hope of Sony and Microsoft ever teaming up, he went in the opposite direction. After all, if there's no way to get the competitors to build a console together, why not just build one yourself?
That's exactly what one Eddie Zarick did with the 'Playbox' laptop: the custom console combines the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One hardware into a single, briefcase-sized machine.
Basically, Zarick took the insides from both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, rewired and reconfigured the parts, and dropped it all into a custom case. All that was left was to hook the consoles up to an external monitor via HDMI, and the Playbook was born!
Alright, it was probably a bit more difficult than that, but that just makes the Playbook even more impressive. The fact that two next-generation consoles are stored in one unit is impressive enough, but the built-in source switching and extra video ports are something you'd expect to see on a professionally-built piece of hardware, not something a fan made in his spare time.
Then again, the Playbook isn't Zarick's first foray into building custom laptops: the 'Xbook' is a custom portable console based on the Xbox One, and the Xbook DUO is a combination of the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Just building them would be impressive enough, but Zarick's creations look like something that'd be sold in a store - they're that well-made.
It's a shame nothing like the Playbook will ever sit on a store shelf - you can be sure they'd sell out in seconds.
To see all of Zarick's custom creations, head on over to his YouTube channel.
