Sorry for the all caps in the title, but I'm a little excited. As of six o'clock EST last night, the PlayStation 4 has become official. The system will launch during the holiday season this year. So that's all great right?
We didn't get to see what the thing actually looked like, which was a bit of a downer, but it's okay! I have faith that it's gonna look nice on my cabinet next to my PS3 and 360. That controller is different though. I'm glad that they didn't go with the LCD touch screen, and just decided to do a touch pad, similar to what the Vita has on the back of it. But otherwise, it looked pretty much like a normal DualShock controller.
The share button functionality is pretty interesting. I like that the system has a built in function to let you stream, or record and upload your own gameplay footage. Friends being able to watch what you play while you're playing it, and even offer help via text boxes, talking, or even taking over your controller for a temporary period is pretty awesome. The system seems to have a much more simplified connection to the various social networks and a much more social focus than previous generations when the social network boom was just starting.
Speaking of the Vita, remote playability of PS4 games on the Vita!? With the goal of making all PlayStation games available to stream and play remotely. The Gaikai aspect of everything is pretty promising too. I like that they said you'll be able to stream the games and play them before you buy them, sort of like the 60 minute trial with PS Plus on the PS3, but this seems like it could be less limiting. I'm looking forward to that capability. Going with the streaming topic, Sony has taken a hint from PC services like Steam and will allow PS4 users to play the games as they download instead of download forever, install forever, then finally play.
The tech specs for the system are very intelligent and make me think that Sony really did do their homework. The system is built kinda like a PC, which is going to help the developers making games a much more simple process than has been in the past. Using an AMD APU and 8 gb of RAM the system is basically a mid-range PC or Laptop at this point which means the coding should be nearly identical between PC and PS4 versions of games. The system will come with a Blu-Ray drive and support DVD playback. It also will NOT require an online connection to play. Debunking rumors of digital only and always online to play.
There has been an upgrade to the graphical capabilities of the PS4 as well when compared to the current generation of systems. The games that were shown off at the event were absolutely stunning, but this is where I'm very leery of what Sony has to offer with their games. Knack looked like a Pixar movie that you could play through. Infamous: Second Son's announce trailer was beautiful but there wasn't any gameplay. Watch Dogs and Killzone: Shadow Fall were both absolutely beautiful to watch. I'm more of a "meh" towards Diablo 3, which wasn't shown, but announced. Finally, Destiny again looked stunning while running on the PS4. Square Enix showed off a new engine, and I wasn't sure if Capcom's Deep Down was a tech demo, or an actual game, but it looked powerful. The video we've all seen for Unreal Engine 4 was shown running on a PS4 and looked just like the PC demo. So, cautious optimism for this new system's capabilities, but the future looks promising.
All in all, Sony's event last night was pretty fantastic, and if you can watch it, I highly recommend it. http://www.playstation.com/meeting2013 is the link for the video stream. All information contained in this article was pulled from that video. I'm not saying that this article is all inclusive, it just highlights some of the more pertinent information. I don't know about you, but E3 just got a lot more exciting. Providing there is a decent set of games announced for launch, I'll probably be picking this up on day 1. Leave your thoughts and comments if you like, I do enjoy reading the few that we get. And as always, See you online!
