Yes indeed, the PlayStation 4 celebrates its first year’s birthday this week. But one year on has it managed to live up to the hype or has it even earned the title of a ‘next generation’ console? I, along with many other gamers are not truly convinced. I am going to attempt to give a rundown of this much anticipated games machine with my overview of the past year.
The Good:
The Sales – Few can argue with the PS4’s sales. We might as well say that it was a two horsed race; the Nintendo Wii U was never going to stand a chance to begin with so the only other ‘real’ challenger was going to be Microsoft’s Xbox One console, which despite having what some would say were better release day titles thanks to some momentous delays from the Sony camp and the fact the PS4 machine was released some 8 weeks later than the Xbox One, the sales of the Playstation 4 still kicked ass month after month in terms of the numbers of the machine which were ‘reportedly’ flying off the shelves. Now before the Xbox fan boys start blowing up my phone, I’d like to say of course we all know statistics can and are often fiddled but one year on and one thing is evident, the accountants of Sony are very happy as sales of the PS4 continue to trump the opposition from all corners.
The Graphics – Now I’m going to say the graphics of the PS4 aren’t as earth shattering as the original expo’s made out, (see the ‘Bad’ section below) and there appears to be less of a ‘step up’ in terms of graphics between the last and this generation, but one thing is for sure, PS4 runs faster and smoother for practically every game than its counterparts and that includes all but the most powered up PCs.
PS Plus – One of the finest things about the PS4 which many owners have reported is that it encourages them to take advantage of the PSN and PS Plus network. With the PS3 this deemed largely ‘non-essential’ but with the PS4 it is a no-brainer. Why? Well, being a PS Plus member provides numerous benefits particularly if you own more than one Sony Machine for example the PS3, PS Vita or both. If you are a member every month you can download ‘for free’ 3 titles for each machine on your ID. Far from being the crap games no one wants to play some of the games have been pretty huge. For example, over the past year titles offered have included Crysis 3, Bio-Hazard Inifinte and even Uncharted 3. With the early release of the machines you had a free one month’s subscription so you could try it out and I have to admit, I even thought about purchasing the PS Vita as I would have had a complete games collection by now. The PS Plus PS4 freebie games have not been that great if I am honest, but if the servers had not gone down last month PS Plus members would have had a cut down version of Drive-Club. No, I’m not kidding you.
Nice Hardware Touches – If you look at the PS4, there are some really nice innovative touches which show that the architects truly thought about what they were doing. If you put the PS3 and PS4 controllers side by side for example you can’t help but notice so much has just been chopped off the latest iteration, yet it still feels natural in your hand. The touchpad strikes you as a bit of a weird concept at first but in use increases immersion in the games as does the miniature speaker in the centre of the controller; as you play the game shots ring out, radio crackles or ghostly voices echo in the palm of your hand. Different but very nice indeed.
Share Play, Remote Play and Playstation TV – This is yet to truly surface but if Sony pull these off (and internet speeds continue to rise) what we will have will be incredible. I tried out the Share Play option a few weeks ago. You need a PSN account to do it but it means you can ‘share your game’ with people who don’t even have the title. By pressing a button you can ‘hand over’ your joypad and your friend can take over, thus helping you get through a tricky part of the game. Coupled with Voice chat this can be incredibly fun and with the time levelled at two hours before you have to start the whole process of ‘linking’ again, this could be the key to making games more social. This sounds great and it is, in practice though, my friend’s internet speed wasn’t as good as mine so although I could share with him, he could not share with me which was a shame. Remote Play too borrows a similar principle and allows the player to switch to another TV as long as their PS4 is on and they have has purchased the PlayStation TV box (around £80). Again in theory this is really exciting although it owes a great deal to internet speeds to whether there is noticeable or unplayable lag between the time you press the button and the time the character does their action. Racing games are when this really creates problems. The chances of most players having a fully LANed up house with high speeds in all rooms are probably quite small. A normal/high video quality option has been added, but come on who really wants to play a game in low resolution, those of you with ‘buffer faces’ may just switch the console off and wait until the guests have left.
The Bad
The Leap into this Generation – Now, I realise this is going to make me sound rather old but I remember the ‘birth’ of the last generation and that of the one before. I remember big releases such as Wipeout and Ridge Racer, games that really wowed the crowd in terms of graphics and sound revolutions. When the Wii was released and the Wii U they both had a modicum of ‘lets bring something new to the table’ type attitude. Now this is going to sound harsh, but this generation has been, well, rubbish in comparison. What do we have? A variation on the PlayStation Eye, is that all? What happened to the 3D games? What happened to Project Morpheus? The big release by Sony promised a big change to the way games were played – well that is yet to happen
The Quality of the Games – Despite the promise of what next generation hardware should ‘bring’ with it in terms of games, what we have had over the course of a year has largely been re-hashes of old titles brought up to date with new skins, better visuals and little else. Take some of the games releases of late such as Watch Dogs, Need for Speed Rivals and Wolfenstein and run them on the PS3 and PS4 and you will not see giant leaps of difference in terms of actual graphical quality. It has taken until Destiny and The Shadow of Mordor; games released nearly a year in to take advantage of even the basics of this generation’s hardware and both too were released on the PS3 – Shadow of Mordor in a few weeks’ time. There is just not a feeling of quality.
The Downright Ugly
Console Parity – One of the things to have surfaced of late within the gaming industry is console parity. It is purposefully underutilizing the available technology and power in a superior console so that a game looks and plays the same on inferior competing consoles.
When was the first time I became aware of this? When Watch Dogs was being hyped the night of the PS4 release and then it later emerged that it was running on a suped up PC, a version which never actually made it to the market. Why would developers do this? Well, to maintain a balance between versions; a balance by the way, that has never been actually requested by gamers or console makers.
It’s ugly because it really is an insult to gamers who invested cash on their console or PC, buying the machine hoping it would give you the best quality of games out there. In terms of the PS4 everyone knows it is a more powerful machine than the Xbox; developers have even bragged about it, yet the common practice seems to be to use the powers of the limited competing console, namely the Xbox One and base that as the ‘standard’. Now, some are saying that there have been ‘financial incentives’ for the developers to dumb down the PS4 and PC versions of games, others are saying that the developers are lazy, others have gone further by saying that if developers don’t do this then Microsoft have threatened to remove a games licence all together. For me this is just ugly, it’s monopolising the market as it means we are not truly in a next generation of gaming unless either Sony or Microsoft develops a title ‘in house’ where they can effectively ‘take the brakes off’. Overall it is very, very worrying and it makes you wonder what else do we not know about.
