PlayStation 4 and the future
The games console market is contracting.
Even with a new generation, the upsurge in PC gaming led primarily by Steam is
grabbing more and more gamers into its clutches, and even after being the
victor in the previous battle with the Wii, Nintendo’s Wii U has pretty much
been a nightmarish launch at retail. What can Sony do?
PlayStation
4
With Nintendo floundering in the home, and
rumors surrounding the new Xbox about it being the last, with Microsoft
seemingly under attack from every angle, the Japanese giant may just have a
chance at carving out the lion’s share of the future home console market.
The PS4 was officially announced on 20th
February, and as a result of the discussions between SCE, Sony’s own studios
and third-party game developers, the specifications of the machine will be
familiar to anyone reading this. The main processor is form AMD, and was
announced to have eight main cores based on Jaguar technology, as a well as a n
on-die GPU made up of 18 Radeon Graphics Core Next units, all linked up to 8GB
of unified GDDR5 RAM. A 6x speed Blu-ray drive and USB 3.0 are featured, along
with 802.11n Wi-Fi, and the other connections from the PS3 console. So yes,
it’s pretty much a PC, and many people couldn’t be happier. No physical console
was shown, but frankly what the console looks like is fairly irrelevant,
because you aren’t going to put it in a glass cabinet and look at it.
What was important was the new Dual Shock 4
controller – better (original PlayStation analogue controller style) sticks,
better triggers, a trackpad, and a Move-like light bar (which acts the same way
as the glowing ball on the Move wand) and the most important addition: a share
button. A new PlayStation Eye was shown off too, featuring dual cameras and
depth perception – a necessary development of the eye Toy/PS Eye technologies,
which appears to be coming as standard.
The
PlayStation 4 is essentially a Dual Shock 4, new Eye and a suite of software
and services running on a PC
However, the reasons to buy a console are
the games and the interaction with other players. Sony showed off footage from
a new Killzone, Bungie’s Destiny and Ubisoft’s Watchdogs
among others. It was the new interactivity functions, though, facilitated by
the Gaikai technologies purchased by Sony previously that grabbed attention.
From the share button on the Dual Shock 4 you’ll be able to not only share to
Facebook and the like, but also record video footage of what you’re up to, jump
into a cross game party chat and offer advice, and even remotely control a
friends game to help them past a bit they’re stuck on. Gaikai is also powering
up the Remote Play functionality, allowing the Vita to synergize with the PS4,
while mobile phones, tablets and of course the Vita will be usable as
controllers and second screens for the console.
it’s
easy to generate it, but there’s an inverse law in operation that results in a
lot of blowback if the goods you deliver don’t live up to the buzz you
generated. It can blow up in your face pretty easily. So it was curious to see
the teaser video from Sony about the Playstation 4
There is a clear movement here that is a
sensible one and may mean that the PS4 and in the future PS5 may take an
unexpected form. The PlayStation 4 is essentially a Dual Shock 4, new Eye and a
suite of software and services running on a PC. That may allow Sony to open up
the ability to play PS4 content on appropriate (and PlayStation co-branded) Pcs
in the future, just as PlayStation Mobile is stretching across to non-Sony
Android devices. As long as the base specification is covered, media center PCs
under TVs could essentially become PlayStation by stealth. Rumors are, however,
that PS4 will be launching at around $450, and plenty of software will be
coming, which should immediately put it in pole position and give it a much
better springboard than the PS3 had on its release.
