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Posted By Shaun K. about 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Thumb Wars: Episode 28: After the Reveal: Examining the PS4,
Episode 28: After the Reveal: Examining the PS4
Welcome back to the show where we introduce the debate and you continue it. This week’s topic: Shaun & Skitch take an in-depth and technical look at Sony’s newly announced PlayStation 4.
Part 1
Part 2
Thumb Wars is a weekly show hosted/produced by Shaun Kronenfeld dedicated to starting and encouraging dialogue and debate on a wide variety of topics within the video game industry. Look for a new Thumbs Wars every Sunday. Comments, opinions, and thoughts are not only welcome, they are the entire point. Feel free to follow Shaun on Twitter @bigred_13 if you feel so inclined.
It’s disappointing that they decided to do nothing about BC, considering it’s one of the issues their current customers care most about. The streaming doesn’t qualify to be called BC. Besides, will they make every game streamable? Doubtful, given they didn’t get every game on the PSN. There are some obscure games I would like to play in the future without worrying about my previous console aging and dying.
Emulating software, or even peripheral hardware, would be a good idea. Hell, sell a peripheral Cell processor seperately. They had a seperate PS2 architecture within the original PS3, so I’m guessing it should be doable. Of course many people wouldn’t be able to afford it, but I’m willing to bet it would still sell.
“It’s disappointing that they decided to do nothing about BC, considering it’s one of the issues their current customers care most about.”
That’s kind of inaccurate to say, because look at what happened with the PS3 when they tried to make it BC with the PS2 out of the gate using original hardware – made the hardware prohibitively expensive, and it really didn’t address more major concerns of developers at the time (and, in a similar sense, consumers).
I would suspect that the PS4 is powerful enough to emulate PS1 no problem, and probably PS2 for that matter – emulating PS3 might be tougher, however, which is why I suspect they’re still trying to figure out that feature at the moment.
For Sony, it seemed more important to let SCEA/SCEE design a platform that was going to be enticing for developers than it was to have BC no matter what.
The PS4 does look like it has some great potential, but I’m worried about it on two points.
1) The streaming games has some wonderful potential, but I can easily see Sony favoring Japan (again) because of infrastructure.
2) The x86 chipset. If everything is x86, then everything is Windows. Sony has gotten in a good place for multi-platform launches, but it’s also failed to give developers a reason to prefer them over Microsoft.
That said, I’m left looking on at the PS4 with an academic interest. A $400+ pricetag puts me out of the running for the foreseeable future.
I call complete BS, though, on not being able to emulate older games: ePSXe works almost all the time, and it emulates PS1 architecture to x86. Heck, I’ve seen fan homebrew emulators run N64 games on a PSP: this isn’t because they can’t, but because they don’t want to…and with a streaming service in sight, I understand why. I’ll forgive the lie if and only if the streaming service they’re pushing earns it with quality, price, and a whole lot of titles.
“I call complete BS, though, on not being able to emulate older games”
They didn’t say anything about not being able to emulate older games. Yoshida specifically said that they had two options to being able to have BC – Streaming or Emulation. The statement issued, IIRC, simply was that the PS4 would not be backwards compatible at launch out of the gate.
I apologize if it was misframed, but Yoshida literally said that emulation was one of the options they were looking into for adding in BC.
“The streaming games has some wonderful potential, but I can easily see Sony favoring Japan (again) because of infrastructure.”
I would agree with you, but look at the system itself – it’s predominantly being driven by SCEA, which leads me to think that the American branch might have more control over the infrastructure. Keep in mind that Gaikai is an American based company as well, so it’s possible that America would have more infrastructure supporting it for streaming.
“The x86 chipset. If everything is x86, then everything is Windows. Sony has gotten in a good place for multi-platform launches, but it’s also failed to give developers a reason to prefer them over Microsoft.”
How do we know that? There are other incentives that can be in place (ie toolsets, publishing assistance, reduced licensing burden, ease of getting on marketplace) that can give developers a reason to publish on PS4 -as well- as Windows.
If anything, going for a different architecture would be equally bad, because it’d force developers to have to learn how to deal with a different hardware setup, resulting in either no interest, or subpar ports (ie. partly what happened on PS3).
Overall I’m very impressed with what the PS4 may have to offer but the biggest factor I think for a lot of people will simply be the price. Like you explained $400 is probably the max price it can reach without having the most spectacular launch library in existence to make the system an absolute must buy.
They focused on a lot of promises and maybes for the console, and even the final hardware specs were released after the conference for some reason. I know it was technically a dev conference and Sony business meeting, but the fact that it was livestreamed showed they knew gamers would be watching. So the lack of games for the PS4 only was a bit disconcerting. They also focused on material not promised to be available at launch. That’s nice a new Killzone but when will it be ready? Capcom “showed” a new game/game engine, but that really looked like a scripted sequence with a fake HUD overlay. I don’t know how inFamous 2 ends (or even the first for that matter) but the new game seems to remove a lot of familiarity from the first two. Of coarse I could be wrong somebody could correct me on that. WATCH_DOGS is going to be available for every major platform, so unless the PS4 really does something spectacular to improve the visuals or gameplay there’s no reason to get the console for the game. Knack looks enjoyable, but also very niche for a lot of gamers. While I’m glad they’re showing off a game that is more art style than raw graphical realism, I know a lot people will shrug it off as childish. The Witness looks nice, but if its a timed exclusive people will just wait for it to become available on their favored platform.
For me BC isn’t a deal breaker simply because I don’t get rid my older consoles (I still have my SNES, and my original Gameboy Pocket as examples) so I’ll be getting a PS4 for PS4 games. But the concept of streaming games worries me, simply because we don’t have the technology to stream at the speeds like a console or PC would. And while Sony “future proofed” the PS3 for HD tvs the difference there was Sony was pushing HD Tvs they made. They controlled how that market grew, but they don’t have a means of improving overall internet speeds across the world. Unless Sony becomes an Service Provider some how. Its partially why Nintendo didn’t do HD gaming with the Wii, they had no control over the market and didn’t want to force it on people who may have had no interest in it.
So overall I like what they’re doing. But they need to make more guarantees of what will be there rather than what might be there. Otherwise all there tech and flashiness will be for naught.
And Shaun I’m right there with you. I really want Nomura to finish up FF Versus XIII. I have hope that it could really be that new great FF title people have been waiting for. While that leaked footage wasn’t impressive to me it also looked very crude like alpha stuff. My only big concern is Nomura’s desire for perfection within limits. After seeing (and possibly working on) the Luminous engine, and seeing the PS4 specs I think it may be possible to see FF Versus XIII on the PS4, same applies with KH3.
In terms of games on the system, I would like to see either Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, or the next Persona, but I believe that two of these are going to appear at least. What is going to determine whether or not I will get one on release is the price and the exclusives. Games like Watch Dogs and Destiny will be available for other systems and, while I plan on getting Watch Dogs, there isn’t enough announced for the system to really get me excited. On the subject of the Vita, the remote play feature sounds really great but people are not going to buy the handheld for that feature alone. Sony really needs to learn from Nintendo and focus on the games library, because it is the games that most define the system.
“Sony really needs to learn from Nintendo and focus on the games library, because it is the games that most define the system.”
While that’s true, the side question is “whose” game define the system. The PS1 and PS2 were just as much defined by powerful third party exclusive titles that Nintendo didn’t have, and the 360 was able to get the lead as the ‘primary’ platform for a lot of these third party games, too, with the PS3 being typically less optimized due to the architecture.
This is probably why they wanted to make a powerful, but easier to work with, system for developers. While Sony will have to back some first or second/third party titles early on, having a platform that makes it easy to have the ‘definitive’ version of games can really help solidify the strength of the platform.
It took me a couple days to actually get interested in the PS4 based on the fact that I have a PS3 but hardly use it much in favor of the PC. I then looked at my game collection and noticed that playstation has the licenses to a lot of my favorite franchises. This may be hype based on a (personally) favorable history for the playstation brand but they could still do or say something that looses my interest entirely as I’m not 100% invested yet. I have to agree that the graphical jump is nothing too stellar but what the hardware will offer under the hood, as it were, it could make games deeper and fuller as far as environment content, interaction, and size.
Depending on what Sony says at E3 and what Microsoft plans for their newest console, I am pretty much sold but there is a lot of 2013 left so anything can happen
I was hoping for some real, full BC. I am sorry, but even the richest of households have days of low signal. Sometimes, the signal goes out completely! What to do then? How will I play my old games?
That, and how can I be sure the games on their server are the best versions? You know, many times the “Greatest Hits” releases had bugs and other problems fixed in them. Are those the versions Sony will put on there?
To be fair, any BC that is not relying on more or less original hardware (ie using emulation) is going to have faults as well, depending on the game you are playing, and how it interfaces with the hardware.
There are some PS1 games that don’t emulate properly period on PS2, and some PS2 games that don’t behave properly on PS3 – if authenticity is going to be what you value most, original hardware is what you’ll have to use regardless.
Honestly, pretty much all of the tech stuff about the system specs and streaming and ease of development and whatnot goes completely over my head, so I can’t say much to a lot of that.
In terms of some of the final things you were talking about though, I can. Am I sold on the PS4? No. What I need for any new system is primarily two things: games and price. We don’t have the latter at all, and we have scant little information on any of the former, so I’m not sold. Of the games we know of, I might be interested in Infamous once I try that series out (I just got a PS3 last Christmas), and I might be interested in Deep Down or Knack once we know more about them, but as-is, that’s all up in the air, and that’s all I’m even potentially interested in.
In terms of price, even $400 is starting to sound like too much to me, at least for my financial situation. If it’s that high, there’s a decent chance I’ll pass until a price drop barring some absolute must-have games. If it gets up to $500+, there’s no way I’ll buy it until a price drop. I can live with not getting the newest games for a while – would give me a chance to catch up on my backlog.
In terms of games I’d like to see on release, hm, that’s tougher. The one game that could all but guarantee me as a launch customer is Persona 5, but I don’t think that’s realistic, and I wouldn’t even be surprised if Persona 5 isn’t going to be next-gen at all. Beyond that, well, any big JRPG that isn’t Final Fantasy would be nice – Dragon Quest, Tales of, Shin Megami Tensei, Disgaea, maybe something from Mistwalker – but most of those have their next title announced for another system at this point, so I doubt that too. Hm, honestly, I guess I can’t really come up with a big one for me that seems realistic to hit the launch window at this point. Bit of a pity.
This would be soooooo much more interesting with some actual video.