Yesterday, Sony held a big live-streamed conference to announce the PS4. Lots of interesting stuff in there so let’s take a look.
For developers, it came as very welcome news that the PS4 will have a whopping 8GBs of GDDR5 RAM. Also, Sony is abandoning the PS3’s complicated Cell structure for something that’s much more similar to what you find in PCs. These two announcements alone make the PS4 very attractive for game developers – in theory, it shouldn’t be very difficult at all to take a PC game, even a high-end one, and put it on the PS4. The RAM announcement is especially welcome after years of having to deal with miniscule amounts of RAM on systems like the Xbox 360.
The new controller is a bit odd in that it’s basically a PS1-3 controller but with a touchpad and a light for the PS camera. Now, I’m a big fan of combining traditional controls with touchscreens like we see on the Vita and the WiiU, but I’m not entirely sure what the point of a touchpad that doesn’t have a screen attached to it. However, on the plus side, the controller now has a headphone jack (love that feature on the WiiU gamepad) and a new “Share” button that will allow players to bring up menus for things like taking in-game screenshots & videos and sharing them with friends online.
Other improvements to the system include suspend mode (common in portable systems but I think this is the first time a home console has had this) and the ability to do background downloads and start playing games before they’re entirely downloaded. Also, it sounded like they’re going to have an automatic demo for every game on the system – I’m guessing it’ll be like the PS+ system where you can just play a game freely for an hour. The system will not have backwards compatibility with previous Playstation system games which is very disappointing though not unexpected.
As far as games go, we got the usual suspects. FPS (Killzone), Racing (with a focus on teams and online connectivity), and so on. There was a cartoony Action/Adventure game that looked a little like a 3D Vectorman. Miscellaneous tech demos. Square-Enix embarrassed themselves by showing off an old demo reel and announcing that they’re going to have an announcement at E3. The new game from Capcom looked plenty nice, but despite some simple user interface elements on top of the screen, it looked more like a movie than actual gameplay footage.
Blizzard was a surprise guest but then disappointed by announcing that they’re going to bring Diablo 3 to the PS3 & PS4. If they had announced a Vita version of the game, that would have been one thing (portable Diablo 3 that doesn’t require a constant online connection? Yes, please!) but it’s hard to get excited for a delayed console port of a game that’s been out on the PC for a while, even if it is such a huge seller. The Blizzard announcement was made even more disappointing by the fact that the Blizzard rep started off his speech by mentioning several of my favorite old Blizzard console games like Lost Vikings & Rock & Roll Racing making many people think they might be bringing back one of their old IPs or in fact doing something entirely new, but nope.
The biggest surprise guest of all was probably Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid and the upcoming game, The Witness. He seemed rather uneasy to be there and started his presentation off with the sarcastic, “I really don’t know what I’m going to do to follow up after all those explosions.” He then showed off the first trailer for The Witness and announced that it’s going to be a timed exclusive for the PS4. Given how long the game has been in development (3.5 years), my guess is that funds were running low and Sony offered to help support development in exchanged for timed exclusivity. It’s a win all around for Sony (good exclusive title & it’s a nice gesture to show they’re pro-indie development) but somewhat disappointing to PC owners who have no intention of buying a PS4 and now have to wait longer to play the game. EDIT: Jonathan Blow has come out and said that Sony did not pay them or otherwise fund development in exchange for exclusivity.
They announced that many PS4 games will be able to be streamed to the Vita, thus replicating the off-TV play mode that the WiiU features. A price drop for the Vita was recently announced in Japan so it was expected that North America would see a similar price drop announcement at the Sony conference but no such luck.
All in all, Sony’s conference was a decent start (easy development environment), but they still have a long way to go (firm price and more game announcements). Hopefully, they build up momentum with additional announcements throughout the year.
Oh and this recap of the conference is rather funny. NSFW (language)
I don’t know, I can honestly say that I have 0 interest in the ps4 now. More streaming, more money having to be spent to get old games more than likely, more of the same kinds of games. The Wii U came out strong game wise showing a ton of unique and very interesting titles, while Sony has the Witness….for a little while. I think between pricing, focusing on making it work with Vita in the hopes of trying to get people to buy vita’s to go with their ps4’s, and just this last console generation in general, I am down on the mainstream console market. I am waiting to see what Microsoft has up their sleeves, and if it isn’t amazing, I will be taking a 5 year hiatus from Microsoft and Sony, and invite a Nintendo system into my house again.
I bought a Wii, but that wasn’t me supporting Nintendo so much as me wanting to play the few rpg’s I missed this generation on consoles. With the Wii U, I plan on opening my arms wide, and hugging it in the store when I am handed the sales receipt, and saying “Welcome Back.” I haven’t had a solid, primary, nintendo console since the Super Nintendo, and I am looking forward to heading back in that direction this summer.
In general, I feel Microsoft and Sony are only interested in the mainstream, with the occasional fluke title like Journey to help pad their resume, so to say. I think Nintendo is where the future is as a company you can get behind, who don’t seem like their end game is seeing how much cash they can squeeze out of you for as little effort as possible.
Yep. That video pretty much sums up the waste of several hours I spent watching that yesterday. I didn’t hear anything that sells me on the system, and Squeenix’s presentation was a big Eff You.
The touch pad would’ve been more useful on the right side of the controller as a substitute for the right analog stick. As it stands, though, it just sounds like it’ll be awkward to use. I guess all we can do is wait and see, though.
I think Jonathan was careful to say exclusive “console” release – at least that’s how I heard it – so there is still a chance for a PC release at the same time. If that’s the case I can understand why at the PS4 event J. didn’t mention the PC.
I have to agree. It is a good start. As more information trickles out, I am hoping for more defined information. I love the remote play idea. But is it going to be on certain games? Do I have to be on the same network for this to work, or can I do it remotely? Can the Vita be used as a 2nd controller. How is PS+ going to be effected if PS3 games are not backwards compatible.
There is a hundred and one questions left to be answered.
Now what is Microsoft going to show? and when?