So how bout dem PS4s?
So the PlayStation 4 was announced earlier today. It seems pretty neat. Some cool features here, some useless features there; Hardware's nothing to scream about, etc. Pretty much what people expected of it.
Streaming Demos from the cloud without me having to download anything seems awesome. Sure you get the a bit of input lag, but it's a demo, if I like it I'll get the full game and play that one without the lag. Especially where it's downloading the game in chunks, so that you can start playing while it's downloading the rest in the background.
You can also stream PS1, PS2, PS3, and maybe even some PS4 games over the cloud, though I assume that'll be a subscription, or part of PlayStation Plus or something. Lack of any other form of backwards compatibility is disappointing, but understandable; Hopefully there's not too much lag on that streaming service.
It's stand-by/off mode apparently keeps it on enough to do updates. So the constant firmware updates should be less of a problem than on the PS3.
The Dual Shock 4 looks less comfortable to hold, though I could be wrong on that one, probably am. The controller's Touch pad seems useless. There's no screen or anything for feedback, you're not even pressing the back of the screen like on the Vita. So I can really only see it used for virtual buttons or dumb "swipe" motions. Why not actual buttons? But maybe someone'll find a good use for it. Integrating the Move into the Dual Shock also seems limited in scope, but this is still just me not really seeing a good use for it. They've put a mono speaker in the controller, I still don't understand why that's a thing. The Headset port is definitely cool though. Also, no select button!?
The Share button is... interesting? Constantly recording so that if I do something crazy I can save it without having set up the recording before hand was cool in Just Cause 2, and I expect it to be cool in every other game too. And being able to record right from the console and upload to youtube certainly makes life easier for Let's Play-ers. And letting your friends help you through some difficult part in a game with onscreen messages isn't an awful idea either, though I probably won't use it; I definitely won't be surrendering the controls to them over the internet because I couldn't get past a spot either, but I can see that being useful for some people.
Remote play for most, if not all, games on the Vita is brilliant (Assuming you have a Vita of course), and if they can get it to work with Tablets/phones it'll be even better, especially if Android gets basic Dual Shock 4 drivers built in like it did for the Dual Shock 3.
They didn't show the box itself, or even really give us much of any actual specs in the presentation, though apparently they did talk about the specs a bit more afterwards.
Seems like a pretty good console so far, course that means nothing with good games to back it up. The few titles we've seen seem fairly decent though.
Capcom's got a new Fantasy Action IP called "Deep Down" (Working title). Though no one ever actually said it was a PS4 exclusive, doesn't mean it isn't, but we'll see.
Bungie took this opportunity to show off "Destiny" some more. Bungie really like their First Person Shooters don't they? Though it's also coming out for the PS3 and 360, so I wouldn't really consider it a reason to upgrade.
Diablo 3 is getting a console release, not quite surprising as Blizzard said it would probably happen.
This one is a PS3 and, obviously, PC game as well.
Driveclub, by Evolution Studios is another "Hyper Realistic" First Person Racing game. Not really a fan, but if you like that sort of thing, it's there I guess.
Infamous: Second Son from our friends at Sucker Punch Productions. I'll be honest, I was a bit busy during this trailer and not really paying much attention, but one can assume it's more Infamous.
Guerrilla Games previewed Killzone: Shadow Fall, which, at least graphically, looks VERY impressive. Though First Person Shooters have a tendancy of being very pretty recently.
SCE Japan showed us a platformer called Knack. I may have still been busy during this preview as well, so I didn't see much, sorry.
Ubisoft Montreal has Watch Dogs in the works, which seems rather interesting. Though I've always liked Hacking as a mechanic, and with a fair sprinkling of stealth components and parkour, this'll be a game to watch. Though is also a PS3 game, as well as WiiU, 360, PC game, and will likely run on the NeXtBox as well.
The Witness is a very colorful 3D puzzle game by Jonathan Blow; whom you may remember as the creator of Braid. We should see this one on PC, iOS, and probably the (for those who missed that last time) Next X-Box.
Last and very certainly least, Squenix, or Square Enix if you like. Showed off the same Final Fantasy: Agni's Philosophy, which may or may not ever become an actual game, Tech Demo they made for E3 2012. They then said they were going to reveal a Final Fantasy game at E3 2013 in a few months. One can only hope they aren't talking about Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns, which they announced back in September, despite no one liking Lightning, or FFXIII. Why do they insist on coming back to FFXIII when they should probably be making a much better game/world instead? The world may never know. Seriously though Squenix, can you guys go back to making good games?
Alright! Well, I figure I've made far too long a post already. Discussions!!! Or... opinions or something, I don't know.
Edit: EPIC FAIL! I forgot to mention it releases just in time the ensure maximum winter holiday sales for the year. (IE: likely Late November/Early December)
Streaming Demos from the cloud without me having to download anything seems awesome. Sure you get the a bit of input lag, but it's a demo, if I like it I'll get the full game and play that one without the lag. Especially where it's downloading the game in chunks, so that you can start playing while it's downloading the rest in the background.
You can also stream PS1, PS2, PS3, and maybe even some PS4 games over the cloud, though I assume that'll be a subscription, or part of PlayStation Plus or something. Lack of any other form of backwards compatibility is disappointing, but understandable; Hopefully there's not too much lag on that streaming service.
It's stand-by/off mode apparently keeps it on enough to do updates. So the constant firmware updates should be less of a problem than on the PS3.
The Dual Shock 4 looks less comfortable to hold, though I could be wrong on that one, probably am. The controller's Touch pad seems useless. There's no screen or anything for feedback, you're not even pressing the back of the screen like on the Vita. So I can really only see it used for virtual buttons or dumb "swipe" motions. Why not actual buttons? But maybe someone'll find a good use for it. Integrating the Move into the Dual Shock also seems limited in scope, but this is still just me not really seeing a good use for it. They've put a mono speaker in the controller, I still don't understand why that's a thing. The Headset port is definitely cool though. Also, no select button!?
The Share button is... interesting? Constantly recording so that if I do something crazy I can save it without having set up the recording before hand was cool in Just Cause 2, and I expect it to be cool in every other game too. And being able to record right from the console and upload to youtube certainly makes life easier for Let's Play-ers. And letting your friends help you through some difficult part in a game with onscreen messages isn't an awful idea either, though I probably won't use it; I definitely won't be surrendering the controls to them over the internet because I couldn't get past a spot either, but I can see that being useful for some people.
Remote play for most, if not all, games on the Vita is brilliant (Assuming you have a Vita of course), and if they can get it to work with Tablets/phones it'll be even better, especially if Android gets basic Dual Shock 4 drivers built in like it did for the Dual Shock 3.
They didn't show the box itself, or even really give us much of any actual specs in the presentation, though apparently they did talk about the specs a bit more afterwards.
Dual Shock 4 and PlayStation 4 Eye picturesSingle-chip custom processor, with eight x86-64 AMD Jaguar CPU cores and 1.84 TFLOPS next-gen AMD Radeon based graphics engine
8GB GDDR5 memory
Built-in hard drive
6x Blu-Ray and 8x DVD drive
USB 3.0 and auxiliary ports
Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1
HDMI, analog AV-out, and optical S/PDIF audio output
DualShock 4 controller, with two-point capacitive touchpad, three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer, vibration, light bar with three color LEDs, mono speaker, micro USB port, stereo headset port, extension port, 1000mAh battery
PlayStation 4 Eye camera, with two 1280 x 800 cameras, f/2.0 fixed focus lenses, 85-degree field of view, 30cm minimum focusing distance, four-channel microphone array
Seems like a pretty good console so far, course that means nothing with good games to back it up. The few titles we've seen seem fairly decent though.
Capcom's got a new Fantasy Action IP called "Deep Down" (Working title). Though no one ever actually said it was a PS4 exclusive, doesn't mean it isn't, but we'll see.
Bungie took this opportunity to show off "Destiny" some more. Bungie really like their First Person Shooters don't they? Though it's also coming out for the PS3 and 360, so I wouldn't really consider it a reason to upgrade.
Diablo 3 is getting a console release, not quite surprising as Blizzard said it would probably happen.
This one is a PS3 and, obviously, PC game as well.
Driveclub, by Evolution Studios is another "Hyper Realistic" First Person Racing game. Not really a fan, but if you like that sort of thing, it's there I guess.
Infamous: Second Son from our friends at Sucker Punch Productions. I'll be honest, I was a bit busy during this trailer and not really paying much attention, but one can assume it's more Infamous.
Guerrilla Games previewed Killzone: Shadow Fall, which, at least graphically, looks VERY impressive. Though First Person Shooters have a tendancy of being very pretty recently.
SCE Japan showed us a platformer called Knack. I may have still been busy during this preview as well, so I didn't see much, sorry.
Ubisoft Montreal has Watch Dogs in the works, which seems rather interesting. Though I've always liked Hacking as a mechanic, and with a fair sprinkling of stealth components and parkour, this'll be a game to watch. Though is also a PS3 game, as well as WiiU, 360, PC game, and will likely run on the NeXtBox as well.
The Witness is a very colorful 3D puzzle game by Jonathan Blow; whom you may remember as the creator of Braid. We should see this one on PC, iOS, and probably the (for those who missed that last time) Next X-Box.
Last and very certainly least, Squenix, or Square Enix if you like. Showed off the same Final Fantasy: Agni's Philosophy, which may or may not ever become an actual game, Tech Demo they made for E3 2012. They then said they were going to reveal a Final Fantasy game at E3 2013 in a few months. One can only hope they aren't talking about Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns, which they announced back in September, despite no one liking Lightning, or FFXIII. Why do they insist on coming back to FFXIII when they should probably be making a much better game/world instead? The world may never know. Seriously though Squenix, can you guys go back to making good games?
Alright! Well, I figure I've made far too long a post already. Discussions!!! Or... opinions or something, I don't know.
Edit: EPIC FAIL! I forgot to mention it releases just in time the ensure maximum winter holiday sales for the year. (IE: likely Late November/Early December)
Comments
The next XBox will probably sport very similar hardware as far as CPU/GPU are concerned.
Though what really has me curious is how integrated the CPU and GPU really will be. Will it have the HSA features that AMD's future Kaveri APU is supposed to have? For AMD's sake, it would be really good if it does. If that was implemented in the PS4 and next XBox it could create a market for using those features and push programmers to actually use them.
Though 1.0-1.5 octa-core seems fine if it's all optimized right, and what with it being a console it will be.
So PS4 is like Kaveri, but with eight little jaguar cores instead of 4 steamroller cores and a beefier and somewhat custom GPU portion that more resembles a radeon 78xx. Oh and a GDDR5 memory controller instead of the usual DDR3 controller their APUs normally use. Not bad really.
EDIT: Man, I must be in a bad space today, that was scathing as hell.
I do remember hearing something about unified memory, so I'd assume that's a yes.
I'm not sure it actually does game progress updates or other facebook/twitter spam. But if it does, that's awful, and it should feel bad. And yeah, you should DEFINITELY wait a year or two to see if there's anything good on the system before considering getting it; Early adopting a system for the Kingdom Hearts game you were POSITIVE was going to show up eventually, only to have it never happen, is awful. (Stupid PS3...)
It would definitely have to be optional, and a real name should be limited to only be visible to known friends, but even in that case, known friends would likely know your real name even if presented with a screen name.
EDIT: Oh, and there's a difference between unified memory and unified memory addressing.
Fair enough. I wasn't quite sure if that's what you'd ment or not. Clearly not.
EDIT:
I didn't watch anything related to the PS4 event, so I'll just assume that video was completely accurate.
I think what I'm more curious about is how they plan to spin the news.
Reportedly they're not.
I'd point out that Steam blocks used games. Chew on that statement for a bit...
Kind of hard to put a price on something used digitally. I think the fact that they're cheaper to begin with, and have frequent sales balances that out.
That said prices are another discussion.