Apparently the details for the new Playstation are being revealed tonight 11pm UK time.
I'll be interested to hear of the details and price (apparently in the region of £270, rumoured), but further mumblings regarding DRM and the inability to sell on games / purchase second hand games puts me off.
Is anyone else interested in this or even console game any more? Or are consoles a dying duck?
PS4
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Mr. Johnson
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Re: PS4
I barely use my PS3, and when I do it's for playing films from a USB stick. However, it requires such jumping through hoops (doesn't play subtitles, only reads avi's) that I don't bother anymore. And the stupid soundtrack DRM they added really killed it for me so yeah, not interested right now.
I'm starting to think the master race of gaming is going to make a big comeback.
I'm starting to think the master race of gaming is going to make a big comeback.
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Grimmie
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Re: PS4
I don't think they're gonna die any time soon. They're still big business, and all (most) of the triple-a titles are made for them.
I was going to say "Look at the high street retailers, and their stock consisting of 90% console games", but high street retailers aren't exactly performing so well these days. Can't really fall back on saying it was the PC game piracy that killed them off now, can they?
I was going to say "Look at the high street retailers, and their stock consisting of 90% console games", but high street retailers aren't exactly performing so well these days. Can't really fall back on saying it was the PC game piracy that killed them off now, can they?
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Dr. kitteny berk
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Re: PS4
Our consoles are mainly used for media playeringing, but games aren't unheard of when bored/have people over.
Servioo and lovefilm on the ps3 in the living room.
Servioo, lovefilm, iplayer, 4od, Demand5 and Sky thinger on the xbox360 in the bedroom.
Servioo and lovefilm on the ps3 in the living room.
Servioo, lovefilm, iplayer, 4od, Demand5 and Sky thinger on the xbox360 in the bedroom.
Re: PS4
I've bought two games consoles in my life. A PlayStation and a Wii. Both gathered dust under the TV for years. Just not my bag, baby. So I'm not interested apart from a 'professional'* interest in how it will affect PC gaming. However, consoles are huge business for the semi-casual market - most people don't give a shit about always online DRM as long as they get to play COD-Next - and I can't see the PC taking that away, so they're far from dying. Normal people will suck up whatever Sony and Microsoft may (they might prove to be quite good) fob them off with because they have little other choice.
*I'm not in the profession, but it's that sort of thing if you see what I mean
*I'm not in the profession, but it's that sort of thing if you see what I mean
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FatherJack
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Re: PS4
The key thing about the PS4 is Gaikai. (Urdu for faaabulous Universe)
It was a platform designed to stream high-end PC games to relatively low-end devices, like Android tablets and Samsung licensed it planning to offer a cloud game-streaming service through their internet-connected TVs.
Sony didn't like the sound of that one bit, and bought Gaikai out entirely.
Rather than bother to put the expensive, custom Cell processor the PS3 uses in the new PS4, they can just stream PS3 games over the service, thus reducing the cost of the new console. They can also iteratively improve the hardware powering the service, such that every six months you effectively get a PS4.1, 4.2 etc without having to upgrade the hardware. Naturally you will have to buy all your old games again, as they won't work off the CD.
It'll still have an optical drive, like the PS Vita didn't, but I would expect to see fewer physical releases as the ones purchased via the store/streaming service can't be traded away down the second-hand store by those evil customers who are directly stealing the food from the table of poor Mr Sony's family by doing so.
It was a platform designed to stream high-end PC games to relatively low-end devices, like Android tablets and Samsung licensed it planning to offer a cloud game-streaming service through their internet-connected TVs.
Sony didn't like the sound of that one bit, and bought Gaikai out entirely.
Rather than bother to put the expensive, custom Cell processor the PS3 uses in the new PS4, they can just stream PS3 games over the service, thus reducing the cost of the new console. They can also iteratively improve the hardware powering the service, such that every six months you effectively get a PS4.1, 4.2 etc without having to upgrade the hardware. Naturally you will have to buy all your old games again, as they won't work off the CD.
It'll still have an optical drive, like the PS Vita didn't, but I would expect to see fewer physical releases as the ones purchased via the store/streaming service can't be traded away down the second-hand store by those evil customers who are directly stealing the food from the table of poor Mr Sony's family by doing so.
Re: PS4
Streaming is great, except our infrastructure is terrible and not at all up to it, and then the more people who do it the worse the problem will be come. So quoth Gaben.
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FatherJack
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Re: PS4
I know it isn't great everywhere, but streaming of HD content is possible in a large number of places and the XBox and PS3 have had movie rentals and video streaming services for years.Dog Pants wrote:Streaming is great, except our infrastructure is terrible and not at all up to it, and then the more people who do it the worse the problem will be come. So quoth Gaben.
For many it's more efficient and immediate to have everything stored in the cloud and only download the active content you are viewing at the time, in some models this mode of operation can even see a decrease in overall network traffic over the 'download-all, play later' mode as people only get sent the content they need at the time and on average not everyone accesses all the content.
Of course the main flaw is that your internet slowing or becoming unavailable can interrupt a gaming session, but this is already true of streaming video services, online and even some offline games.
Re: PS4
Gabe wasn't talking about pure bandwidth, that's been been sufficient enough for ages, but more, er, other stuff. Obtuse explanations or what. I had to read some comments to try and figure out what he's on about.
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buzzmong
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Re: PS4
Not too bothered really, the days of Playstation exclusives is pretty much past and any games that are generally aren't the type I want to play.
It will be interesting though if the DRM rumours are true. I heard somewhere that bought retail copies will be tied to the console when you first use them. If that's true, it'll fucking hammer the sales of the PS4 as the second hand games market is a massive area that underpins the console's use. I don't think Sony will have been that stupid though and that it's probably just an unfounded rumour.
It will be interesting though if the DRM rumours are true. I heard somewhere that bought retail copies will be tied to the console when you first use them. If that's true, it'll fucking hammer the sales of the PS4 as the second hand games market is a massive area that underpins the console's use. I don't think Sony will have been that stupid though and that it's probably just an unfounded rumour.
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FatherJack
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Re: PS4
Just watched the livestream and it was pretty interesting. There were quite a number of PS4 exclusives announced, including a couple which could be seen as major coups.
Hardware-wise, it looks like they listened to the devs, who said "ditch all that complicated supercomputer parallel processing proprietary Cell shit and just put a fucking PC in a box". So they did.
An 8-core x86-based CPU with a DX11.1 GPU and 8GB of (shared) DDR5 memory. I'd have a punt that they're using AMD/ATi rather than Intel/nVidia.
As expected the controller has a Vita-like touchpad on the face, but also a Move-like 'lightbar' on the back tracked by a pair of cameras rather like two Eyes or a Kinect, enabling depth perception. The regular Move controller is still supported.
More interesting is the 'Share' button. One press and you can not only upload screenshots and vids, but also broadcast your game live to your mates. In addition to them spectating, they can chat away to you in-game even if they're playing a different one, but most intriguingly actually take over control from you and do the hard bits for you. The livestream lagged out a bit at this part, so I'm unsure as to how that all works, but I'd guess a game that's actually running in the cloud would be the only way to achieve this. PS3 games were specifically mentioned as incompatible with the base system, yet available through 'server-side emulation' - which sounds a bit flaky.
Apparently some games will also feature 'director spots' where friends can leave you messages and even items which you pick up in-game and there was some mention of player-created content using this feature - but I think stuff like that really hinges on the creativity of the devs to utilise it and I can't think of many that would. The potential of the Wii, yet the paucity of games which exploit it are testament to this.
You can start to play digital titles before they're fully downloaded and updates are done automatically for all (instead of just PS+ members) with a separate processor used to do just that. The store will pre-empt what games you like and download similar titles in advance of you purchasing them.
Gaikai wil be used to replace the existing try-for-an-hour system available to PS+ members. Instead of fully downloading, playing for an hour, then deleting trial titles, you stream them live. Remote play is extended from the PSP/Vita to mobile devices such as phones and tablets. They promise the infrastructure to deliver this, but obviously the broadband network speed is major factor in its actual practicality.
Games-wise, there's a Ratchet and Clank-a-like called Knack which seems largely designed to show off all the extra polygons, a Myst-like Journey-styled puzzle game Witness from the Braid creator, the inevitable Killzone, a predictable inFamous and a driving game DriveClub which utilises social features but rather looked like the bastard child of Burnout Paradise and Test Drive.
Then they had some special guests.
There were some interesting Unreal 4-engine demos, Media Molecule (Little Big Planet) were as delightfully-presented as always, embracing their new-found love for the Move controller and demoing some 3D sculpture and an interactive live band performance within a created world.
Square-Enix showed up with a tech demo that looked a bit too medieval to be a Final Fantasy game, before the rather incongruous old-Japanese-businessman director of FF games trotted on to announce in tricky-to-follow English that a PS4-exclusive FF game was in development. He seemed a little perplexed that his announcement was met by somewhat less than rapturous applause and just kind of wandered off the stage.
A more interesting new IP from Capcom called Deep Down was shown, which looked to turn the Japanese RPG scene on its head - looking more like something you'd see in an Elder Scrolls game.
The Heavy Rain devs had a nice-looking tech demo of a very realistic old man's face.
The first possible coup was Destiny - introduced by a rather trying-a-bit-hard Activision Marketing Man in a shirt-jacket-and-jeans. It's a new IP from Bungie. Yeah - the Halo guys. FPS ofc.
The other was the surprise appearance of Blizzard. Their representative oozed arrogance and disdain for the console market while talking up their roots in Lost Vikings etc, and how they wanted to connect with the console market, having them all join in with the revoltion/experience and so on and getting us all interested before announcing...Diablo 3. Um, right. Discarded scraps for the plebs, thanks Blizz.
There were no pictures of the base unit, nor any details on price - but £300 sounds a good estimate based on the hardware specs.
Wrt to Thompy's comments, yeah Gaben was mostly taling about lag (latency) or more specifically Lag-Sensitivity. Latency is generally okay on decent-speed broadband, but can be patchy. The killer is (as he describes) is our sensitivity to it. A bit of a dropout when you're playing a game on your own is usually forgiveable - but when the whole game mechanism is based around many players on many different connections it is crucial that they experience the same thing together at the same time - and when that craps out, for any number of a million reasons when the central server is the authorative voice, it ruins it for everyone.
I remember a game of SoupCum we played online, where one of us had a cacky connection. Defaulting to the lowest common denominator, all of our games slowed to an utter crawl to compensate. This is the current technology and I can't see how it can be fixed that easily.
Hardware-wise, it looks like they listened to the devs, who said "ditch all that complicated supercomputer parallel processing proprietary Cell shit and just put a fucking PC in a box". So they did.
An 8-core x86-based CPU with a DX11.1 GPU and 8GB of (shared) DDR5 memory. I'd have a punt that they're using AMD/ATi rather than Intel/nVidia.
As expected the controller has a Vita-like touchpad on the face, but also a Move-like 'lightbar' on the back tracked by a pair of cameras rather like two Eyes or a Kinect, enabling depth perception. The regular Move controller is still supported.
More interesting is the 'Share' button. One press and you can not only upload screenshots and vids, but also broadcast your game live to your mates. In addition to them spectating, they can chat away to you in-game even if they're playing a different one, but most intriguingly actually take over control from you and do the hard bits for you. The livestream lagged out a bit at this part, so I'm unsure as to how that all works, but I'd guess a game that's actually running in the cloud would be the only way to achieve this. PS3 games were specifically mentioned as incompatible with the base system, yet available through 'server-side emulation' - which sounds a bit flaky.
Apparently some games will also feature 'director spots' where friends can leave you messages and even items which you pick up in-game and there was some mention of player-created content using this feature - but I think stuff like that really hinges on the creativity of the devs to utilise it and I can't think of many that would. The potential of the Wii, yet the paucity of games which exploit it are testament to this.
You can start to play digital titles before they're fully downloaded and updates are done automatically for all (instead of just PS+ members) with a separate processor used to do just that. The store will pre-empt what games you like and download similar titles in advance of you purchasing them.
Gaikai wil be used to replace the existing try-for-an-hour system available to PS+ members. Instead of fully downloading, playing for an hour, then deleting trial titles, you stream them live. Remote play is extended from the PSP/Vita to mobile devices such as phones and tablets. They promise the infrastructure to deliver this, but obviously the broadband network speed is major factor in its actual practicality.
Games-wise, there's a Ratchet and Clank-a-like called Knack which seems largely designed to show off all the extra polygons, a Myst-like Journey-styled puzzle game Witness from the Braid creator, the inevitable Killzone, a predictable inFamous and a driving game DriveClub which utilises social features but rather looked like the bastard child of Burnout Paradise and Test Drive.
Then they had some special guests.
There were some interesting Unreal 4-engine demos, Media Molecule (Little Big Planet) were as delightfully-presented as always, embracing their new-found love for the Move controller and demoing some 3D sculpture and an interactive live band performance within a created world.
Square-Enix showed up with a tech demo that looked a bit too medieval to be a Final Fantasy game, before the rather incongruous old-Japanese-businessman director of FF games trotted on to announce in tricky-to-follow English that a PS4-exclusive FF game was in development. He seemed a little perplexed that his announcement was met by somewhat less than rapturous applause and just kind of wandered off the stage.
A more interesting new IP from Capcom called Deep Down was shown, which looked to turn the Japanese RPG scene on its head - looking more like something you'd see in an Elder Scrolls game.
The Heavy Rain devs had a nice-looking tech demo of a very realistic old man's face.
The first possible coup was Destiny - introduced by a rather trying-a-bit-hard Activision Marketing Man in a shirt-jacket-and-jeans. It's a new IP from Bungie. Yeah - the Halo guys. FPS ofc.
The other was the surprise appearance of Blizzard. Their representative oozed arrogance and disdain for the console market while talking up their roots in Lost Vikings etc, and how they wanted to connect with the console market, having them all join in with the revoltion/experience and so on and getting us all interested before announcing...Diablo 3. Um, right. Discarded scraps for the plebs, thanks Blizz.
There were no pictures of the base unit, nor any details on price - but £300 sounds a good estimate based on the hardware specs.
Wrt to Thompy's comments, yeah Gaben was mostly taling about lag (latency) or more specifically Lag-Sensitivity. Latency is generally okay on decent-speed broadband, but can be patchy. The killer is (as he describes) is our sensitivity to it. A bit of a dropout when you're playing a game on your own is usually forgiveable - but when the whole game mechanism is based around many players on many different connections it is crucial that they experience the same thing together at the same time - and when that craps out, for any number of a million reasons when the central server is the authorative voice, it ruins it for everyone.
I remember a game of SoupCum we played online, where one of us had a cacky connection. Defaulting to the lowest common denominator, all of our games slowed to an utter crawl to compensate. This is the current technology and I can't see how it can be fixed that easily.
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buzzmong
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Re: PS4
Hah, AMD have just solved their cash flow problems.
This is the offical Sony press release.
Page 4 has the PS4 specs and of note is:
This is the offical Sony press release.
Page 4 has the PS4 specs and of note is:
AMD are going to be supplying a modified version of one of their laptop APU's for the PS4. While it's not as powerful as some of the main PC cores, just the fact AMD are supplying will mean they should have a lot more cash to throw at improving both their normal CPU line and their Radeon lines.Single-chip custom processor
CPU : x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores
GPU: 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next generation Radeon based graphics engine
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FatherJack
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Re: PS4
Well, I won't be throwing my PC away any time soon either but the reason I play all the console games is so I can play games I can't play anywhere else. Nothing about the technology or specifications had me particularly excited and the new control mechanisms are largely just gimmicky.Grimmie wrote:Thanks for the write up, fj. Interesting read but I think I'll be sticking to my pc for now.
Aside from any must-have exclusive titles (which for me usually means Japanese RPGs) of which I don't see any named yet, the only other selling point would be the increased social aspect. I don't mean the posting of your videos to facebook, but the way it can extend the way I play consoles socially now - with other people in the same room, having a shared experience, watching each other play and swapping the controller so everyone has a go, or people do the bits they are best at - to people who aren't even in the same country.
Of course for that to work, friends would have to own the console too and most people here are primarily PC gamers. I do have a few friends who are console-only gamers though and it'll be nice to be able to play with them more often than just when we visit each other with the ease that we as PC gamers are already accustomed to.
Re: PS4
I'm not entirely convinced by it. The specs seem pretty good now, to be fair nothing you couldn't emulate from a PC with a bit of hard earned, but a late release could mean that the PS4 is using obsolete technology before it hits the shelves.
AMD processors look good on paper, I was going to buy a Bulldozer 8 core but then looked at the benchmarks, and the fact that no one has yet managed to effectively make software run over 8 cores and bought an i5 2500k. I know that the hardware techs are going to optimise the way the bits all interact with each other and the game developers will now have to start making things work with 8 core processors, which is a good thing as most have been reluctant to embrace more than 4 core architecture, but still, by christmas you could chuck the equivalent of a PS4 at your PC and have a better system in my opinion.
For me the advantages a console had was split screen multiplayer so you can have your mates round but that said a few of us have PS3's and we all prefer to play Borderlands and CoD over PSN because you get the whole screen to yourself and there is no physical violence when it all goes wrong. Also there was the traditional ease and speed at which you can jump into a game, however anyone who has a PS3 knows that at least once a month you will boot the system up to be told "System Update in progress" and then you have to sit there while it plays with itself for a bit; SSD drives have resulted in my PC booting up and getting into a game quicker than my PS3 can.
Really the advantages are all gone, and PC hardware will never go out of date as I can upgrade bits piecemeal. Once I can get my head round wireless controllers and split screen multiplayer for my PC I will probably move my tower downstairs and plug it into my 50" TV and let the PS3 gather dust.
AMD processors look good on paper, I was going to buy a Bulldozer 8 core but then looked at the benchmarks, and the fact that no one has yet managed to effectively make software run over 8 cores and bought an i5 2500k. I know that the hardware techs are going to optimise the way the bits all interact with each other and the game developers will now have to start making things work with 8 core processors, which is a good thing as most have been reluctant to embrace more than 4 core architecture, but still, by christmas you could chuck the equivalent of a PS4 at your PC and have a better system in my opinion.
For me the advantages a console had was split screen multiplayer so you can have your mates round but that said a few of us have PS3's and we all prefer to play Borderlands and CoD over PSN because you get the whole screen to yourself and there is no physical violence when it all goes wrong. Also there was the traditional ease and speed at which you can jump into a game, however anyone who has a PS3 knows that at least once a month you will boot the system up to be told "System Update in progress" and then you have to sit there while it plays with itself for a bit; SSD drives have resulted in my PC booting up and getting into a game quicker than my PS3 can.
Really the advantages are all gone, and PC hardware will never go out of date as I can upgrade bits piecemeal. Once I can get my head round wireless controllers and split screen multiplayer for my PC I will probably move my tower downstairs and plug it into my 50" TV and let the PS3 gather dust.
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FatherJack
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Re: PS4
Some of those can be fixed - paying the sub for PlaystationPlus downloads updates and patches and you can probably fit an SSD the same as you can fit a replacement hard drive. All games made for it are designed to run on the base system, so it doesn't need upgrading - if you bought a £300 PC today you wouldn't be able to play the latest releases on it in seven years time.Taraniis wrote:For me the advantages a console had was split screen multiplayer so you can have your mates round but that said a few of us have PS3's and we all prefer to play Borderlands and CoD over PSN because you get the whole screen to yourself and there is no physical violence when it all goes wrong. Also there was the traditional ease and speed at which you can jump into a game, however anyone who has a PS3 knows that at least once a month you will boot the system up to be told "System Update in progress" and then you have to sit there while it plays with itself for a bit; SSD drives have resulted in my PC booting up and getting into a game quicker than my PS3 can.
Really the advantages are all gone, and PC hardware will never go out of date as I can upgrade bits piecemeal. Once I can get my head round wireless controllers and split screen multiplayer for my PC I will probably move my tower downstairs and plug it into my 50" TV and let the PS3 gather dust.
Still, it's no replacement for a PC if you have the option, and my consoles have gathered dust for most of their lives once the thrill of the occasional exclusive title has worn off. I just like that they've looked at the advantages of PC gaming, such as a unified hardware architecture, actually-useful social media tools and the not-just-a-games-machine philosophy and taken them on, perhaps confirming what we already knew, that far from dying out, PC gaming has always led the way.
Re: PS4
I don't think console gaming ever lead the way and for the most part it is hype on the part of the console makers and the gaming media. What could you do with a PS3 when it was first released that PC gamers hadn't been doing for years? Don't get me wrong, I think my PS3 is good enough (I wouldn't have bought it otherwise) but I bought it at a time in my life when I didn't have the room or money to set up a decent gaming rig and the PS3 could give me a quick gaming fix between living life. If I had been able to blow a load of money on a PC and had the room to set it up I would never have bought a PS3.
Re: PS4
Cheers Deej, that's pretty much all I needed to know.