Your parents come visit your house. Or the person you’re dating gets their first look at your living room and your entertainment centre. They see your hot new PlayStation. Sony hopes their next console won’t suddenly bring you shame.
The PS4 “was designed to be an impact product in an entertainment centre,” Sony’s VP of PlayStation hardware marketing John Koller told Kotaku last week, when asked to describe the intent behind the look of the new console. “We wanted the design to be something sleek, something people feel proud about including.”
Koller was talking to a reporter who opted for the purple GameCube over the black one, so please understand that what someone is proud to have in their entertainment centre might vary.
To Sony, at least, the research shows that people want something sleek and black. “We think it’s best, actually,” Koller said. Not white? Not colors? Black? “The research we’ve done show most people appreciate that,” he said. “For those who appreciate colours, we do offer them for other platforms. Nothing to announce here or plans for PS4.”
Koller believes that the blue light that crosses the side of the PS4 will become the machine’s visual signature. It lights up when the machine is on.
The console can stand with the help of a stand. Otherwise, it lies flat.
As we noted last week, at least one of Sony’s top people hadn’t even seen the PS4 console until recently. Sony’s head of worldwide game development, Shuhei Yoshida, told Kotaku he just saw it a couple of months ago, well after the February 20 public reveal of the PS4 DualShock controller, logo and games.
“We were heavily involved in designing the DualShock 4 even at the time that no idea existed, because it’s the interface,” Yoshida said. “We were there as a team. But the box, it’s just a box. When I finally saw it, it was near-final and I was amazed by the thinness and lightness of it. It looked already like the second generation of a console. I compared it to the second generation of the PS3. On PS4, first-gen is almost exactly the same dimensions. More than the aesthetics of it, the smallness of it. I am so psyched.”
PS4… it has a nice tilt to it, and it’s definitely less embarrassing than the Hey You, Pikachu! N64.
Comments
55 responses to “The PS4 Was Designed To Not Embarrass You”
If someone actually thinks less of you (women i mean) about the fact that you own a PS4 (or any console), that must be one shallow F bag and you’d be wise to dump her like radioactive waste
That’s not at all what they said. They are saying it is meant to be a prestige console, not meant to not look like a console.
It looks like a work of art…….
“Sony hopes their next console won’t suddenly bring you shame” that is what their saying haha
Yes, shame of having an inferior console. Clearly you have no concept of Japanese mentality.
Totally agree with you!!!
“For those who appreciate colours, we do offer them for other platforms.”
Whooooah, they’ve been speaking to the same PR firm as Microsoft 😮
“”Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity…It’s called Xbox 360.”
Edit: yes I’m kidding around.
Sony will already struggle to provide enough PS4s to meet pre-order demand alone. More colours would just kill them for now. Although you can safely expect more colours within a few years.
If you hate the colour so much just paint it yourself. Much easier than trying to bypass the 24-hour check in DRM from Microsoft.
Sony never release new colours until a few years down the track anyway.
i read it pretty much the same. lol. i actually wonder if that line really was yet another dig at MS, for their comment about getting a 360.
Does anybody know how many USB ports it has? One thing that annoyed me about my PS3 is that it only has 2 USB ports. It’d be nice to have 4.
2 USB 3.0 ports on the front. Dead centre. http://ps4daily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/PS4-front-2.jpg
There’s also 1 port on the back. http://i.imgur.com/hdeWIDL.jpg
Hard to see in this photo, it’s the right most input, next to the Ethernet port.
Pretty sure that’s for the PS4 Eye, think its marked Aux in higher quality photos.
That’s not USB 3.0. That’s the auxiliary port for the PlayStation Camera.
“Two in the front, and one in the back, she got so many ports, I don’t know how to act”
Sorry for butchering Flo Rida’s lyrics, but it was the first thing that came to mind 😛
“Sorry for butchering Flo Rida’s lyrics”
I don’t think you are the culprit for that one.
why do you need more than 2? (actually interested)
maybe use a usb hub.
Recharging multiple controllers at once, keyboard for FFXIV and etc… I only need two (which I mentioned), so it doesn’t bother me as much :>
Well I always have a controller plugged in and charging on one port. Then there’s PlayTV – I’d really like to have had a port on the back for that to keep it out of the way. But I guess that won’t be an issue with PS4 anyway (unless they release a version of the software for PS4 and let us keep using the old device). Then I’ve got an external USB HDD plugged in for backups and also storing some media on there to free up space on the internal HDD. And then if I want to plug in my guitar for Rocksmith then that’s another port. Also the PS Eye camera, although I never actually use that and I think the PS4 camera uses a dedicated port instead of USB (and I can’t see myself buying it anyway).
Obviously I don’t need to have all of these things connected all at the same time, but it would be nice to have at least one or two on the back for things like PlayTV and/or the external USB HDD that I don’t need to plug/unplug very often so they can be out of the way at the back and save the 2 on the front for things like plugging in controllers, guitar, etc.
On my PS3, we had the PlayTV box and a USB stick with movies on it. The Rockband kit I got had USB drums and microphone, but came with a USB hub for connecting it, due to the lack of USB ports
Don’t get me wrong. Having a hub wasn’t a bad thing, but sometimes I wished that the PS3 had USB ports on the back (for tidying up cables).
With the minimal amount of space USB ports take up (my Arduino has one USB mini, and my Raspberry Pi has two regular USB ports in such a small box) why couldn’t they put another two on there, or another two or three on the back?
Going by some pictures I’ve seen, it looks like there’s two in the front, not sure if there’s any in the back.
Would’ve been awesome if it had 4 like the original “Phat” PS3. I guess most peripherals will be bluetooth enabled.
I think it’s 2 ports and a dedicated port for the Eye
At least the Eye can plug into the back then. It was always slightly irritating having it plugged into the front of the PS3 on the rare occasion I used the Move.
That’s what it looks like – the USB port on the back is marked “AUX”, so it’s probably mainly there for the Eye.
There is definitely a dedicated port for the eye. I remember reading it.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2830/9012525924_1717945d3e_h.jpg
There are really no other options – the back is rather frugal when it comes to connections.
I’m guessing the front two will share a USB controller (and hence, bandwidth), and the rear one will have a dedicated controller and bandwidth, to facilitate the Eye. I remember the early days of Kinect (on PC) requiring a dedicated USB controller because otherwise it wouldn’t have the bandwidth to push its data, so I’m guessing the Eye will be similar in that regard.
So, it’ll likely be a case of “the Eye will only work if connected to the rear USB port”, but you can use that port for anything else if you aren’t using an Eye…
I want my console to be discreet. Not because I’m trying to hide it from other perse, but because I don’t exactly see consoles as a conversation piece either. I just want it to blend in with the rest of my entertainment unit.
What can be embarrassing is if this thing sounds like the engine of 747 starting up when you turn it on…lets hope these new toys got their thermodynamics right!
Every time I see that tilt I just want to reach out and straighten it.
If you stack a few of them on top of each other you could make a scale model of the Tyrell corporation’s pyramid-type headquarters building from Blade Runner.
I chose the purple Gamecube and added the worst looking brown camo faceplate to my 360phat.
I like ’em dodgy 😀
Dodgy makes them seem like they last longer, like old Nokia phones are to Smartphones.
My N64 has Turok stickers all over it.
Omg no way! Me too.
Got mine from n64 gamer mag. Still on it now.ha ha
I think that’s where mine came from too.
I think I attempted to take them off but they were going to leave sticky residue so I left them on there.
I never actually played Turok 64. Just liked the free stickers.
Pfff, when we were kids, I’m sure most/half of us wanted that Pikachu N64.
And I know a number of 25 year olds who still want one!
And I gather that it would be worth a pretty penny as a collectors item these days too
So glad Sony put that blue light in, hopefully it bleeds into all angles of the console. The ps2 blue spectrum was amazing and just so sleek.
howcome the first picture its rectangle shaped then second its all angled? can it morph without the stand?
Just an optical illusion in the photo. I think the stand is shaped with the same angle.
If you compare the placement of the PS logo on the two of them, you can see that what looks like a normal amount of perspective on the left-hand side of the first image is actually a front-on view of the slant of the side.
It’s confusing because we’re used to that 3/4 view as a product shot, but the first photo is straight on the front of the console.
At least it doesn’t have a proprietary ‘accessories’ port with no indication of what it’s for…
It really does look like it will blend in with whatever else you have there. The Xbox One kinda does the same thing. Just big black boxes, really. I almost yearn for the days for the simple beauty of the SNES or the original Playstation.
have to agree with this, you could glance at someones entertainment unit and go “Oh, you have a SNES or NES or Dreamcast etc, we should power it up a little later” now you barely notice its existence outside of a wayward controller on the lounge or discarded game case
Blend in? I can’t think of anything in my house that is all angled like that, it’d stick out like a sore thumb.
I just want it to wom when I turn t on and that blue light appears.
Remember the Wii ads where it made the wom noise? So sad that the actual system just made a weird clicking noise, followed by a menu clicking noise, followed by that anoying nintendo home screen noise.
I want wom.
What are you talking about?! My Pokemon Nintendo 64 is the center-point of my lounge room! It always has been. I like quirky stuff in my lounge room and the PS4 will be added to my collection if it looks the way it does. Blue stripes are always epic.
I am more worried about my Tranformers and WoW megabloks to be honest. Though I wouldn’t want to be with someone that didn’t take me for me so really I wouldn’t mind if it did embarrass me, just saves me some time 😉
Can’t wait to see what custom cases and skins can do.
psssh. It’s still not half as beautiful as my gorgeous little OUYA.
What happened to the sleek curves? This and the Xbone have the grace of an early 90s VHS player.
Yeah, I’m “meh” on all 3 of the new boxes. I too like them to stand out. I want something funky that makes a statement by the TV. I originally got the black Cube, then later wished I’d got purple. Oh well, all dull black boxes from now on, then. 🙁