Thoughts on the Playstation 4 Reveal.

As you all likely know, Sony held a conference on the 20th revealing their next generation console. The PS4.

Well, lets start with the bad. There was no new Crash Bandicoot game announced. Not even a HD remake. If it doesn't turn up at E3, I'm out.

Now then. The good.

First off, I was simply flabbergasted at the live stream capabilities  It takes an idea like OnLive to a whole new level. They were saying that you can see a game you like, ANY game, and jump straight into a demo or preview of it. Then and there. No downloads, no waiting. Search, click, boom you're in. It blew me away. They also talked about how games in the past may not have had demos, but now even games that don't  will give you a limited time to play it, or some kind of interactive preview. They put a massive emphasis on try before you buy, which is a massive step for Sony.

They also showed the fact that the new friends hub is more like a social network. You can post status updates, share your accomplishments  and even record a video to show off your skills (Enter: 10 second CoD videos everywhere). They also showed that you can watch what your friends are doing in real time on their page, even while you are playing yourself. That already impressed me, but my jaw hit the floor when they said you can be invited to take control of your friends game. So if your friend is stuck, and you know what to do, you can simply take over for a but, get the job done, then they carry on. It's an amazing idea, and I really hope it's as full on as they promise.

Along with the theme of this live streaming everything idea comes backwards compatibility with games. They talked about how you can stream PS4 games on the Vita, and that in the future, they plan on allowing you to stream PS1, 2 AND 3 games, all on the Ps4 AND Vita. That's insane. They have confirmed that there is no CD backwards compatibility, and no download compatibility though, so any old downloads of games won't work. Emulation in the future is an option though.

The announcement games were an interesting bunch. I was almost annoyed that some games like Watchdogs and Destiny showed up, because they aren't new games. We've known about them for a while now. Although granted the Watchdogs gameplay was pretty epic, minus the fact that lots of the GUI and effects are lifted straight out of Assassins Creed. They had a new Infamous game on the list, which I thought looked pretty cool. I almost missed it because my stream crashed, and I'll admit I got my hopes up as soon as I heard SuckerPunch followed by Superpowers. They also showed this odd looking racing game, based around an active world of clubs, and it's all first person based. The graphics in it were insane, and I'm really interested in seeing what Gran Turismo 6 will end up looking like when it has to stand up against that.

I'm not sure why Square Enix even showed up. All they did was show the tech demo they showed last year at E3, and then say they'll announce games at E3 this year. Pointless. Here I was hoping to see Final Fantasy Versus XIII as a launch title. Mostly so that Team Kingdom Hearts can get to work with Kingdom Hearts 3.

The only game they announced that was on my list of expected announcements was a new Killzone. It's a far cry from the older games, with a whole new dynamic on things. The graphics were amazing, and I almost couldn't tell that it was a live demo. I genuinely expected to see an Uncharted title pop up, and I was waiting for a trailer for it all the way though. Perhaps at E3 instead.

The power of the system is great. 2 terraflops of computing power with the GPU, and 8GB of ram is awesome. They have a game suspend feature so you can hit the off button, then jump right back into the game later. They showed a cool demo where they summoned one million random object shards on a map. They all looked like glass, and it ran incredibly smoothly. The lighting engines look good, and the part effects in games like Killzone looked epic. They also showed a tech demo of some dudes head, saying it had the same amount of polygons as a full human model in a game like Beyond: 2 Souls, but only used a fraction of the power of the PS4. They said that now you can have such strong detail, that you can show tiny flickers of emotion on a face, and games in general will become far more emotional.

There is also a new focus on helping developers develop. While they didn't really say much about it, I'm assuming that they have made it far simpler to make games for the PS4 than it was for the PS3. The Xbox 360 has a massive Indie scene because of XNA. It lets you code for the console, and publish your games with ease. This lead to it being a hub for wannabe developers looking to out simple yet fun games. The PS3 was the opposite. It's near impossible to get any kind of indie game to the PS3. You need to have specific kinds of code they don't tell you how to write, then send it to them, and if they don't like it, you get rejected and put back in the massive queue. With the PS4, it's looking like they will take a leaf from Microsoft and have a simmilar system to XNA. That's great news, especaily for people like me who are trying to become developers, as it widens the market for us.

The new controller is pretty cool. Though not as cool as it could be. It's got a touch pad on the front, like on the back of the Vita, but I think they could have made it more dynamic as an actual screen. There is also a light bar on the back, and a new Kinect like camera to replace the Eye. Apparently you can store your profiles on the controllers, and the camera will see your colour, and auto sign you in. Nice idea, and ties in with the whole instant action thing they have going.

Everything looks good so far, but they didn't give us the whole story. We don't even know what the console looks like yet. It's dated as a "Holiday 2013 release, but my sources say late November worldwide, in time for the Christmas rush. I think they might drag out the announcements over the year until then. We have Pax coming up soon, and E3 later on in the year, so hopefully we'll know more soon.

Microsoft have a lot to do to keep up with Sony now. I know they have brought a Cloud based company like Sony did, but i doubt they will have any better services for live streaming than Sony does with the PS4. There isn't much they can do past what Sony has already done, so I'm interested in seeing where they will stand on the innovations front.

Tell me what you guys thought of it. Good ot bad? And what do you think microsoft will pull out of the hat to match Sony.

Till next time.
~Awesomecake