Gamers are more likely to purchase a Playstation 4 than an Xbox One this holiday season, market research group IDC predicts.

"The differences between traditional game consoles, PCs connected to HDTV's, and a variety of set-top-boxes and smart TVs that can play games will eventually be semantic," said IDC Gaming Research Manager Lewis Ward in a press release.

"And it appears unlikely that Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony will be driven out of the living room from a gaming perspective by 2017 as result of non-console competition from the likes of Valve/Steam, OUYA, cable/telecom companies, or related hardware and Web service providers."

Xbox One's external HDD support will not be ready on the console's November 22 launch date, GameSpot reports, leaving gamers wondering if Microsoft is not ready for its one-week head start over Sony's own next-generation console release.

"The future plan for Xbox One is definitely to support external storage, much like we do on the Xbox 360. My understanding is that the feature will not be there at launch because the team is working on some other things, but it definitely is on the list. I don't know when it will come in, though," Host Larry Hryb mentioned during a question and answer session at PAX, the Latin Times reports.

Microsoft announced it will release the Xbox One on November 22 and left many gamers thinking it planned its one-week head-start over Sony's release of the Playstation 4.

Sony announced at the Gamescom convention in Germany in August that it would release the PS4 on November 29 - Microsoft had not announced the release date of its own next-generation console at that time.

Following Sony's announcement, pressure mounted on Microsoft to announce the release date of the Xbox One.