Anticipation is building, and the release date is mere weeks away. There’s no denying that a significant chunk of the gaming internet is awfully excited about the launch of the PlayStation 4. I recently had a chance to sit down with the console’s big exclusive games and, without taking anything away from the console itself, found a reality less exciting than the hype would indicate.
Last Wednesday I attended a press event at Sony’s corporate campus in San Mateo, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco. The event was designed to give the press a closer look at the Sony-published games that will be launching exclusively alongside the PlayStation 4. After I arrived, the press was divided into two groups and shuffled off to one of two rooms. The first room was dedicated entirely to the first-person shooter Killzone Shadow Fall, and the other contained a handful of smaller indie games, as well as the family-friendly action game Knack.
Here’s a breakdown of what Sony was showing:
- Killzone Shadow Fall. This hardcore first-person shooter had its own room, which was dedicated to a 30-or-so-minute singleplayer demo and later in the day, a more lengthy multiplayer session. The game has wonderful, colourful graphics. From what I played, it’s pretty much a first-person shooter with an emphasis on tactics that’s on par with, say, a Crysis game.
- Knack. A third-person action/adventure game aimed at families, the development of which has been headed up by Mark Cerny, who doubles as lead architect of the PS4 hardware. I had a chance to speak with Cerny about Knack, and he explained why they’d included it in the launch lineup. “As chief system architect,” he said, “I pretty much knew what the launch lineup would be, and it was clear that there were going to be some extraordinary core games at launch. But looking at that, I really wanted to make sure that there would be something for the rest of the family as well. Sons, daughters, spouses, and the like. And it isn’t to say that’s the only audience we were thinking about as we made this game (…) but it definitely is part of the thinking.” Jason had a chance to play Knack a little while ago, and you can watch his impressions below. It looks fun, but doesn’t look like a game that most people would buy a PS4 to play.
- Resogun. A gorgeous-looking but fairly simple twin-stick shooter from Housemarque, makers of the Super Stardust games. It’s designed using voxel technology (rather than polygons), and looks awfully nice in action. It’s fun, though it’s also just a twin-stick shooter.
- Flower HD. An up-res’d version of Thatgamecompany’s lovely 2009 art game. The game looks great in HD, but it looked great on PS3 as well.
- Sound Shapes. Another PS3 game redone for PS4, Sound Shapes looks about the same as it did on PS3.
And… that was about it. The racing game Driveclub was supposed to be there, but it was pulled from the event at the last minute; Sony would later confirm that the game had been delayed into 2014. The other game at the event, Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, was probably the most interesting game there, but it won’t be available until next year.
Walking through the two rooms, I couldn’t help but feel a bit deflated — for all the hype and all the excitement surrounding the console itself, nothing here was all that exciting.
Watching this sizzle reel that Sony released yesterday — complete with ridiculously laudatory press pullquotes, sheesh — it’d be easy to get the impression that the PS4’s launch library will be vast, varied, and impossible to find elsewhere. And, to read a complete list of games available at launch, it does seem like there’ll be plenty of stuff to play on the console.
But if you strip out the cross-gen non-exclusives (e.g. Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Assassin’s Creed IV), the games that won’t be available at launch (e.g. Destiny, inFamous: Second Son, The Order: 1886, and the recently delayed Watch Dogs and Driveclub), and the games we’ve already played on other systems (e.g. Flower, FlOw, Injustice, Escape Plan), the pickings begin to feel more slim.
This, as people who play lots of video games know, is par for the course for a console launch. Sony marketing tells us it’s a huge fucking deal: You should be so excited! Look at all these games! Look at this sick hardware! OMG! But the reality is that on November 15, the PS4 will be a cool slanty box with a great controller and lot of potential, but not all that many games. At least not for a little while.
When chatting with my boss Stephen after the event, he offered the following: “Consoles don’t really launch, not in the way that a rocket takes off, shitting fire and screaming into the sky. They wake up, slowly stretch their legs, stand up. Pause and yawn. Make their coffee and maybe a few hours (read: months) into things, they kick into gear.”
That, more than anything else, was the sense I got at Sony’s big event. Of a console at rest, poised, but in a lot of ways still getting ready to get ready. The PS4 launch, for all the hype and excitement surrounding it, will likely be a more laconic affair than some may be anticipating.
Anyone who bought a PS3 at launch to play, say, Resistance: Fall of Man and this year played the infinitely more impressive The Last of Us knows how far games usually come over the course of a console’s lifespan. I asked Mark Cerny if, despite the fact that the PS4 is more of a known quantity for developers than the PS3 was, we could expect games to improve at the same rate they did this past console generation.
“I think we’ll see a lot of growth during the platform cycle, definitely,” he said. “I think that come the third and the fourth years of the platform, the developers will have really plumbed the depths of the hardware and figured out how to use all of the enhancements that we put in the GPU [Graphics-processing unit]. And we’ll really start to see perhaps more interactive worlds and more detailed graphics in that time.”
The PS4 launch, for all the hype and excitement surrounding it, will likely be a more laconic affair than some may be anticipating.
But November 15 will be a different story. We’ll take the thing out of its box, we’ll play some Killzone, and we’ll marvel at the graphics… they are quite nice, though from what I’ve seen the game doesn’t really look much more impressive than, say, Crysis 3 running on a decent gaming PC. We’ll fire up some cross-gen games and appreciate how much better they look on PS4 than on PS3… and then we’ll play them, same as we would’ve played them on a PS3.
We’ll set up our new real-name PSN accounts, and mess around with the new game-capture and sharing features. And then, we’ll start to check our calendars, gazing into the future at the release dates for Infamous and Destiny and the rest. (It should be said that as we wait, we’ll be able to pick up the odd indie game — a Transistor or a The Witness to tide us over. Though it’s not clear exactly when the bulk of Sony’s much-talked-about indie exclusives will start coming out.)
I can’t say any of this for certain, of course. Sony hasn’t yet sent us a PS4 for review, and a lot remains to be seen about how this thing will work in the wild. That’s one of the frustrations with events like last Wednesday’s — mere weeks from the commercial launch of a massive new console, the press is corralled for one more PR-controlled shindig. Shortly, we’ll be able to tell you exactly what we think of the PS4 and its launch lineup because we’ll have experienced it in its entirety, in our own living rooms. But not quite yet. For just a little while longer, we continue to make do with extended glimpses.
In the event’s big Killzone room, a dozen or so of the new consoles were set up, end to end. For all the dazzling explosions and high-res lighting effects coming off of the screens, I found myself far more interested in the black boxes encased in plastic below, and the nifty controllers attached to them. What potential does this thing hold? In two or three years, what games will we be playing on it?
That, more than anything else, is what I sense excites people about the PS4, and about next-gen consoles in general. Like any new gaming hardware, the PlayStation 4 represents a promise. The entire run up to its release has been Sony saying, essentially, “We want you to buy this thing, and over the years to come, we promise we’ll make you glad you did.” Gauging by the console’s overall online reception it would appear that, through a combination of good messaging, skilful PR, and a seemingly genuine desire to please people who play video games, Sony has been convincing.
But although Sony would very much like you to believe differently, buying a PS4 at launch won’t mean jumping onto a fast-moving next-gen rocket to the moon. It’ll mean getting a cool-looking piece of technology filled with mostly untapped potential. It’ll mean sitting alongside it as it wakes up, stretches out, and slowly goes about the business of becoming a fully-realised game console.
Comments
58 responses to “The PS4 Launch, Minus The Hype”
“they are quite nice, though from what I’ve seen the game doesn’t really look much more impressive than, say, Crysis 3 running on a decent gaming PC.”
Thats pretty freaking impressive! for people that dont have decent gaming PCs, ie a lot of console players, this isnt the ‘meh’ you think it is.
Yes, this is precisely what game journos and those relatively privileged few who own rigs simply don’t understand! For example, those lucky PC types who critique BF4 on next gen for being 60FPS at 900p clearly haven’t been playing BF3 on current gen at 30FPS at 720p! The difference here will be massive for current gen console gamers.
Great comment.
Don’t you mean 1080p Marcusjae?
The Xbone has the better launch library now that Watchdogs and Driveclub have fallen off the radar.
It’s hilarious to think that after all the bullshit Microsoft have dealt with (both deserved and otherwise) and the good moves Sony have made over the past year, come launch day (and probably through to mid 2014 given Titanfall) the Xbone is the console I’m excited to get my hands on ASAP. The PS4 launch is a bit deflating now.
Even with Driveclub Xbox has the better launch. Neither launches are really great but Forza 5 looks great. PS4 has some good downloadable launches (Resogun) and some F2P games but still think Xbox takes it.
But you’re also be playing most games on xbox1 with 720p to 900p resolution. Although I’m not a COD fan, it runs native 1080p 60fps on PS4 while it only runs 720p 60fps on xbox1.
Because of what, Dead Rising?
Each to their own. I rate the launch lineups on par, perfhaps the lead to Sony given I prefer shooters over racers, and I havent read anything endearing about Ryse.
For me it’s multiplat launch titles and Infamous and I am extremely inflated 😀
Sony the lead? Killzone and Knack beat Dead Rising and Forza?
Leave knack out of it…. That game looks shit
Couldn’t agree with your more Foggy and besides only a fanboy could argue that DriveClub will even remotely be on the same level as Forza5, also watchdogs is on both and graphics aside I think I’d rather play GTAV
The Exclusives for launch line up for Xbox one is a lifetime better
Forza 5
We know this is going to look and play amazing all forza titles have been Great
Dead Rising 3
not my favourite series but plenty of people are going nuts for this and will leave a bitter taste in Sony fanboys mouths after returning to Xbox exclusivity
Killer Instinct 3
It’s killer instinct! It’s free to play it includes the arcade original in HD!
Ryse
QT aside, every manager at EB games went to vendors and raaaaved about it’s graphics and addictive gameplay could be a dark horse of a launch title
I’d keep going but seriously what does Sony have… Killzone hahahahaha that franchise has always been 6 steps behind everyone else!! compare KZ1 to Halo and try tell me I’m wrong!
Sony Fanboys you may number largely for now but you are all antisocial dickheads my money is with Xbox were I can play with mates and chat clearly over a reliable service not yell at static voices using sonys signature double penetrator dildo controller enjoy dorks!
How were you able to turn a discussion about console launch titles so spiteful. We’re talking about video game consoles here. Boxes that simulate racing or shooting or whatever; virtual reality. You’re an even bigger faggot than those fat pieces of shit who argue over whos football team is better. You don’t contribute to anything related to either side besides mashing buttons with funyon stained fingers and swearing over a headset. Fuck you and fuck anyone who likes you.
Gamers play games, fan boys play platforms. Since you are yelling about how great one is against the other…guess what that makes you.
I will give you a hint: Starts with fan, ends with boy, does not contain the word gamer
Granted the xbox ones launch line up is better but wait and see how your precious xbox one holds up in the long run dumb fuck
“We set out to make a game console that’s absolutely not for gamers whatsoever, except we forgot to not make any games for it! /o\” – MS
It always was deflating for anyone not blinded by “ZOMG DRM!!!! ZOMG $399!!!!!”
When you strip away the bullshit, this is just Sony being Sony. Launching with fuck all and releasing the better games later on in the console’s life.
Happened with PS2 and PS3 as well.
Yeah and couple that with the ridiculously long wait if you missed out on a launch day preorder. I suppose that’ll make it more exciting if it “launches” for me personally in like February when all the awesome games are only weeks away.
You snooze you lose buddy.
Or you jump in early and have no great exclusive games to play on launch day! Hopefully Killzone wows us. But anyone who even tries to match up PS4 vs XB1 line up is kidding themselves.
im really to see which one is easy to use and has less load and better overall apps and support in AUS. for I am sure my PS3 will serve me nicely for the next 2 years. and all the promised games will be up there, then the choice can be more clear.
based on the PS3 cycle, if i was to bet i would say that sony will outscore MS in first patry games. MS strategy will most likely be paying big money to secure exclusive form 3rd parties .
I’m excited to see who Sony adds to their Worldwide Studios teams. Quantic Dream is a must.
I think Sony makes the better choice of buying talented studios. You just have to look at games like Bioshock and Mass Effect, games that Microsoft paid for exclusivity but only got timed exclusives. Those games made their way to PS3 and weren’t exclusives anymore.
Mamando you are a moron mate
Microsoft has waaaaaaaay waaaay more exclusives and sonys keep flopping or dissappearing
Motorstorm – Gone
Crash Bandicoot – sold out and gone
Had Metal Gear – now multiplat
Had Tomb Raider kinda – gone multiplatform
Had kingdom hearts – also gone multiplatform
now Phil Harrison worked at Sony – Gone, working for Microsoft now
And is it Insomniac who made ratchet and clank… Also gone to Microsoft after sour dealings with Sony
What’s left you fool?
Motorstorm – Gone? Motorstorm RC wasn’t released all that long ago. Not every franchise gets yearly releases. Hell, there’s only been 3 proper Motorstorm games.
Crash Bandicoot – That’s old news, it hasn’t been exclusive since 2001 when the rights transferred to Vivendi Universal and Wrath of Cortex came out on EVERYTHING EVER.
Metal Gear – MG has always been 3rd party. Kojima just developed for the system it best suited at the time. When MGS/2 were made, that was Playstation. PS1 was the only system to use discs, and therefore have enough storage to hold the game. PS2 was the only “Next gen” console out at the time. Subsistence was released for Xbox at the same time as it was PS2, as well as PC.
Tomb Raider – Was almost never exclusive. TR1 was on Saturn, TR4+5 were on Dreamcast. Only 2, 3, and Angel of Darkness *shudder* were ever PS exclusives.
Kingdom Hearts – A Japanese game made by a Japanese developer for a Japanese market, a market which has almost entirely ignored the Xbox. It would’ve been stupid to release it on Xbox. KH3, on the other hand, will sell truckloads in Western Markets.
Insomniac are branching out. They’re developing an IP on another console. This isn’t like HAL Labs leaving Nintendo. Insomniac is independent, and are just working with someone else for a change. They may never make another game for Sony, but it’s not a huge deal.
And Phil Harrison? He hasn’t been at Sony for 5, nearly 6 years. After that he was President at Atari, who he left in 2010. Seems like he was pretty much jobless until he landed the gig at Microsoft.
So yeah, do your research before you open your mouth next time 🙂
Need I remind you that MS’ biggest 2nd party dev partner, Bungie, jumped ship not too long ago to produce a multiplatform game? Or that one of the 360’s biggest franchises, Gears of War, was developed by Epic, who are also independent. Oh, how about the fact that MS bought one of the greatest development studios ever, Rare, and now has them making all the Avatar shite.
Both companies have their upsides and downsides, neither are perfect. Far from it, in fact. The only reason I’m getting a PS4 over an Xbox is because the games that have been announced for the PS4 are more interesting to me than what MS has for the Xbox. Not just launch, but after.
I use to prefer the exclusivities on Xbox, but really, they are just empty shells now…
– Rare didn’t make anything great since they left Nintendo. Today they only work on Kinect titles while the Killer Instinct series is going to Double Helix :/
– Cliff Bleszinski is no longer working for Epic (Gears of war)
– Peter Molyneux is no longer working for LionHead studio (Fables series)
– Halo is no longer developed by Bungie – and Bungie is working on multiplaform titles (Destiny)
– Bioware use to develop exclusive titles (Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1), that’s not the case anymore…
– Minecraft is coming to PS4 and PSV
What’s left ?
Great Article Kirk, I too have been caught up in the next gen hype only to realise it’ll be a while before we see anything that truly is a next gen experience.
Additionally with most of the current titles being developed for both this gen and next gen I feel as though developers are staying safe to ensure that they’re offering a playable experience for both generations, and i guess that makes sense considering the install base for current gen.
As a kid I almost wet myself when i saw Super Mario World on the SNES, crisper colours, moving backgrounds and foregrounds, Yoshi. Nowadays i sit there trying to get just as jazzed about water physics or shinier shrapnel and smokier smoke, but it doesn’t match that sense of awe i felt as a kid. I also agree with cardiacunicorn’s point that hopefully by Feb, both consoles will be finding their feet and it really will feel like next gen is here, until then though it feels as though the princess is in another castle.
You people really should think before speaking after reading a Articles
What’s with that weird audio sample at the end of someone saying ‘playstation’?
Clever 🙂
I don’t think anyone “gets” a launch console because of the games, I personally love new tech and consoles are the one thing that isn’t rehashed every year and is safe enough to purchase. (That $100 price drop by next christmas is the equivalent of less than $10 a month rental)
Especially when you consider how stale the current gen is, as a day 1 adopter I haven’t been excited about my 360 in years, those new updates that used to roll out ever 6-12 months giving nice sweeping changes became less and less interesting, no new features came out, we just got more and more crap cramped into a smaller and smaller dashboard and nothing new with the games we are playing. No huge leaps forward in any aspect, be it AI, open world physics and we never did get proper destructible environments, now every game that gets released s just slightly prettier there is no more grunt in the box to harness.
The games for next gen will come eventually, but its alot more than that. Its about the promise of the future, what games we can expect and how things we do expect can change. When you look at both consoles launch titles they are laughable, but when you look at whats coming in 6 months the story changes.
We go from having just another battle field and call of duty to Titan fall where we can see just how amazing (or not so amazing) the new cloud possibilities are, along with Kinect sports rivals we SHOULD be seeing a whole new kinect that works. On the PS4 we have games like Infamous which is looking to shake up its predecessors and tell a much more involved story for the player rather than just mindless kill spamming.
So its a not about the launch games so much, though obviously there still needs to be games worth playing and buying a console for. (You can’t pull a Wii U)What i’m saying is they don’t have to reinvent the entire wheel just to vindicate their existence and if you go in expecting an endless catalogue of games that blow your mind in every conceivable way of course your going to be disappointed.
You’re right but I think they still need to be able to say ‘hey, here’s the new Zelda you can get day one’ to get you playing the console after you take it out the box. It doesn’t have to be a technical revolution but they need to put something up there you can’t get on a current generation console. Whether it can be done on the current gen or simply isn’t being done on the current gen doesn’t matter as much as you just being excited about it.
I think in that sense publishers are sort of choking new consoles with multi-generation releases. Imagine how psyched people would be to get an XBOX One or PS4 if GTAV or Watchdogs were exclusive to that generation. That’s not to say I want new games only being available to those of us who are willing to sink major amounts of cash into consoles day one, just that it sort of makes new consoles feel a little unnecessary.
In effect, this is the same problem that the Wii U had. It was jammed with cross-gen stuff (if you count Wii U as next gen) like Mass Effect 3 and Arkham City, because third parties did not want to risk development budgets on an unknown install base. It’s also partially because a triple-A title takes several years to develop and a lot can change in that time hardware-wise (as we saw with the PS4’s RAM boost). I think that cross-gen stuff, money-hatted third party exclusives, and low-budget indies are all you can realistically expect from third parties at launch. Sony having Killzone and Microsoft having Forza are expected, but the absence of inFamous, Halo and other exclusives like God/Gears of War is due in part to Sony beating Microsoft to the punch by at least 6-12 months. Otherwise, we’d be looking at a much more robust launch library.
That’s OK though, because having Knack, Killzone and Ass Creed 4, plus some indies, will keep me going for a good 3 months or more, due to having a backlog on PS3 and Vita 🙂
Yeah see this is what I’m like, despite having both consoles pre ordered I only have 2 games as “must get”.
AC4 on XB1, Its my console of choice just because i got everything cross plat on 360 since it was the superior online and “account” stuff for the entire gen (and i was an original xb live person way back when mech assault was king, man that game was awesome, a next gen version of that would have me selling my soul)
then on Ps4 I’m getting Knack since its the only game i’m even remotely interested in at launch.
Then apart from Infamous, watchdogs and Titanfall when they come out everything else i’m waiting on reviews for and I’m fine with that initially because i still have about 5 current gen games to finish + southpark stick of truth in Dec So i should be able to finish my back log entirely before the juicy stuff hits. ( only have a backlog because i’ve been so sick for the last 4 years and can’t physically play most of the time =/)
On Nintendo I expect it a bit more though. I know Nintendo games are going to be spaced pretty thin but even if the console totally flops quality games are coming. With the PS4/XBOX One logically I know good things are coming but it feels a little less certain. Especially with both sides tendencies to overlook specific games while showing off stuff like social media features and media players, even though they both have solid libraries in the works (it felt like Microsoft completely forgot about games for the XBOX One, but Microsoft aggressively push exclusivity so there’s no way the XBOX One will lack content, players maybe, but not content).
I think it’s because Playstation and XBOX exclusives aren’t tied that closely to the company. Uncharted on the PS4 may turn out to be crap, while the XBOX One gets a game that plays similar to it but is totally awesome. The next Gears of War may stink up the entire franchise. With Nintendo I’ll get a Nintendo and some sweet Nintendo games, if they release a Mario game I can count on it being good, but with the PS4 or XBOX One I feel like I could potentially find myself regretting choosing one side over the other so I need a nudge.
I don’t regret buying my PS3, Metal Gear Solid 4 was awesome, but having both consoles and playing everything on XBOX 360 sure made the PS3 feel like a waste of money. The funny part is if I only had a PS3 I wouldn’t be unsatisfied because I would have played almost all the same games, only switching a few great XBOX 360 exclusives for a few great PS3 exclusives.
I still don’t get Killzone’s position in gaming. It wants to be the Playstation’s Halo but I never see it really get the reception a game like Halo does. I always get the impression the game insists it’s a system seller when it’s really just a solid shooter. People play it and enjoy it, but where something like Mario or Halo drives system sales it appears as though system sales drive Killzone sales.
Maybe I’m wrong but it seems like even amongst Sony fans Killzone gets held up for show rather than loved. It gets compared to the XBOX shooters on technical levels where it’s XBOX Fan vs Playstation Fan, rather than on the more personal level of Halo Fan vs Killzone Fan.
You don’t see the new Killzone making a minor change game to game that results in that huge backlash from the fans that you see with games like Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. It’s not a particularly pleasant sight but it comes with people being really invested in a series and caring about it.
I don’t think it really hurts the system, Playstation doesn’t need a spotlight shooter exclusive to sell, it just seems weird to me that Killzone doesn’t appear to gain much traction but continues to be pushed as a top tier flagship shooter.
The problem is exactly what you just said, “It wants to be the Playstation’s Halo”. No one at Guerilla ever said that, it was only the media that hyped it as a Halo-killer, back in the days when ANY fps game became a potential Halo-killer. It was the cool thing to say.
It’s just an exclusive FPS franchise for the PS. Who cares about is place in the market.
The problem with Killzone is, it was hailed as the Halo killer for Playstation. So the hype for it was huge, probably too huge and people got a bit disappointed. Halo sells systems because it came out when it did and changed shooters for good. If Halo came out this generation, where the market for FPS was ridiculous. I could see it as not being a system seller and just another FPS title.
It’s the name that sells the game, which drives system sales up.
Playstation has some of their own with God of War, Gran Turismo and Uncharted. Uncharted only became a system seller when they released Uncharted 2.
God of War has not been a system seller this generation
I’m sorry your opinions on Halo are greatly greatly uneducated it isn’t just the name the fanbase is massively divided by competitive Multiplayer purists split evenly by people who love the extensive lore and universe it’s like saying people watch got for the nudity… Just a really bad simplistic opinion of a ultra succesful franchise now Killzone has no right to be called a Halo Killer it’s not even a solid FPS it’s rubbish it’s clunky and terrible they have made what 3? 4? Games the series is going nowhere anytime soon
how much is Microsoft paying troll?
I will never know why people make so much fuss over launch release events almost so much that it determines the outcome of the console they purchase, lol.
All I know is that at some point I will be buying the PS4.
So you have just summed up pretty much all console launches in history?
I am getting my PS4 on day one, already paid off. So when the major deal games arrive (Killzone aside), I won’t suddenly realise that I need to fork out around $600 extra when I pick up, say, inFamous: Second Son. I will already have the hardware, great! Let’s face it, there won’t be a next-gen price drop for quite some time….
I remember getting my other launch consoles: Sega Mega-Drive, PS, PSOne, N64, GameCube, PS2, XBOX 360, PS3. Did al of them have the most exciting beginning? No. But not buying the last games of the current-gen, the final hoorah games (Arkham Origins, GTA V etc.), you are really missing out.
I agree that you wont see much of a next gen price drop for a long time, they’re releasing at pretty competitive prices for a next gen launch console, considering how stupid expensive the launch PS3 and 360 were.
Definitely, The 60GB Launch PS3 (which I still have) was around $1000 from memory. But it did have backwards compaitbility!!! Yay for still being able to play my original collectors edition of Shadow of the Colossus on my new PS3!
completely disagree with you there.
the N64 had Mario 64, waverace and to a lesser extent pilot wings. those were games that got me (and most others) genuinely excited for the console.
xbox launched with Halo whihc was amazing.
hell even the wii had a new zelda game (kind of)
There is currently nothing for either 2 consoles on launch that blows me away.
im still getting a PS4 using the same logic as normal, which is that there wont be a price drop for at least a year but there will be games within that year i want to play so why not get it at launch and give in to my early adopter nature
To be honest, the thing Im most looking forward to is seeing how well a dropped in SDD works in the PS4. If developers make more use of the hard drive and use it effectively if should help things a lot. SDD on some PC games means there is no loading time at all, now if we can bring that to all console games…. (I still dont know why the new consoles didnt ship with SSD drives, because that has been the biggest jump in the power of the PC over the last few years)…
I am thinking of picking up a 1tb SSHD for my PS4. Get similar performance to SSDs, with more storage space and for reasonable pricing. A SSD with close 1tb of storage costs more than the PS4 itself, whereas a 1tb SSHD costs like $150.
“But if you strip out the cross-gen non-exclusives (e.g. Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Assassin’s Creed IV) […] and the games we’ve already played on other systems (e.g. Flower, FlOw, Injustice, Escape Plan), the pickings begin to feel more slim.”
Why strip out those games? Why not count them, too? They’re still games you can play on the console.
I’ve never understood that either. I’m looking forward to playing Ghosts and ACIV on the PS4. It’s all well and good to complain that only exclusives sell systems but I hate Keyboard and Mouse as a control system and would like the better looking game over the current gen versions. Also I like the PS environment more than the XBox one.
Hence I’m looking forward to the PS4, multiplats and all.
And if the rumours continue to be more credible, then it seems that the PS4 already has the better multiplatform games.
I think Kirk is suffering burn out from the hype and is manufacturing reasons for it. Truth is, his body was just not ready…
Poor effort Kirk, poor effort indeed.
Gaming journalism is really turning into it’s own form of console wars, and opinion pieces.
Seriously, do you buy a launch console to be BLOWN AWAY BY ALL THE GAMES? No, you don’t. You do it because you want the console. Simple as that. I am buying the PS4 at launch so that I can play all the games that are coming out for it, at launch, in the next 6 months, and the future. And I don’t want to sit around watching everyone else play their PS4’s while I wait for it to come in stock.
Also, because I am sick of current gen games, they look and feel stale, and next-gen is going to revitilise gaming for me personally. Regardless of how mind blowing the games are.
BF4, KZ:SF, ACIV, and COD Ghosts. Can’t FREAKING wait.
Also Naughty Dog haven’t revealed what they’re working on for the PS4 yet.
I wee myself a little everytime I think about it.
Agreed. Half the reason I’m getting a PS4 is to revel in the graphical and performance improvements over the PS3 that you’ll see in the cross-gen titles. AC4 in particular is looking spectacular.
Pretty lame to call it a poor effort. It’s clearly an opinion piece, the dude can say what he wants. No need to be a dick about it.
You said it yourself that you don’t think you buy a console to be blown away by the games, it’s perfectly reasonable for a person to be slightly let down by a new console when you get it home and all it has is a bunch of current gen ports, sequels ect.
The bottom line is a month ago the PS4 had two interesting new franchises at launch in Watchdogs and Driveclub. It doesn’t anymore, if you’re hoping for something brand new on launch day its not going to happen. You get shiney looking versions of current experiences and that’s disappointing.
Also there has been launches where one game blows you away and clearly distances itself from the previous generation. Halo 1 and Mario 64 are probably the best examples. The PS4 clearly doesn’t have that.
“Also there has been launches where one game blows you away and clearly distances itself from the previous generation. Halo 1 and Mario 64 are probably the best examples. The PS4 clearly doesn’t have that.”
To be fair, neither does Xbox. The only game that I can think of that isn’t a sequel is Ryse and while the game looks nice and has a cool theme. We know it’s not going to be a game that goes and blows everything out of the water.
Agreed, unless Ryse turns out to be amazing the Xbone launch also lacks a killer app.
I suppose Dead Rising looks to be a significant departure from the previous games though and I would say that while not mixing the formula up much, Forza should be the best game in its genre.
I have a PC for the bleeding edge of the looks department. But I agree with you, I would rather just have the console already.
See the problem here is that even if you minus the hype – I’m still super exited for it 😡 Because I am getting a custom vinyled one from sony X
Plus who has time for more then a few games at a time – I will be flat out on cod alone I don’t know if i’ll have time for Killzone let alone any new RPG’s that come out. We will see a flurry of new content Q1 of 2014 then Japan gets the PS4 and with that will bring JRPGS 😀
Im gonna hold of for a while before i get a PS4, no point having two next gen consoles new at the same time…..
Microsoft seems to have got the console launch much better. Killer Instinct, Forza, Dead Rising, Crimson Dragon, LocoCycle, Zoo Tycoon, and Ryse are all looking amazing. Yes, some are sequels, but some are also doing things that just cant be done on current consoles. And it’s great to see some old ideas or franchises being given a chance.
Omg!!!! You mean to tell me Sony is releasing a new console with hardley any games? And some are delayed??
Well f@!$ me, if it was nintendo the world would want its head because it was so out of touch.
No Ridge Racer at launch?
Worst Playstation console launch ever.
I found it funny how the PS4 had more or less the same features as the XBOX ONE did and they didn’t get scorned for it like Microsoft did. their marketing plan was great but I wish they worried more about what games they are having on their console. I believe that their games will step up in the later months/years but we wont have them until all the new-gen console hype has died a bit.
Pretty lacklustre i think actually nothing interesting, I’ll wait a 1yr or 2 before buying i think. Or maybe I’ll just go buy an xbox 1 now not wait until end of 1st quarter to get a ps4 cause sony cant get their shite together.