The Paunch Stevenson Show free Internet podcast - www.paunchstevenson.com - DP FEEDBACK
Because if i told you about this amazingly great product and not even show what your working with for another year or whatever wouldnt you feel a lil cheated? I know i do. I mean i dont want the console now but still why bother telling me all these things now when i gotta wait so longti even see what it looks like let alone when your gonna release it.
Was i disappointed by what was actually shown to me? No. But i wasn't impressed. This upcoming generations consoles feel like just updated versions of current gen consoles. Just a few higher numbers in the tech field. Kinda like ps2 fat to ps2 slim.
I think the fact that most of the details were known before the conference just takes the impact out of it.
Personally, I was pretty impressed by the upgraded memory specs, but I don't want a console that has a user-facing camera as standard, which the PS4 very well might.
I like the controller, I'm looking forward to Driveclub and whatever Final Fantasy is going to appear, among other things. I don't really care about all the streaming or downloading stuff because I'll still buy physical copies of games, but that's great for people who enjoy that.
Backwards compatibility would have been a nice bonus but I'm not surprised. They want to milk the cow and get people to repurchase all their PS1, PS2, and PS3 games instead of providing a method for them to play their existing discs. All you have to do to get around that is simply keep those consoles. That can be cumbersome, but I'd rather do that than pay for the same games repeatedly.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the console itself is actually going to look like. I was disappointed we didn't get to see that. Price point confirmation would have been nice as well, as well as information about what the differences will be between the two models. I'd assume it'll come down to storage space more than anything.
There's still future events. Price was held back, the exact date was held back, and what the console looks like was held back. While the look of the console wouldn't do anything, the release date and price could affect sales of the PS3 for those interested in that system as well as affect sales of people wondering whether they should go to the Wii U or wait until the PS4 price is announced first.
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As for the event, I think it covered a lot we wanted to know. It didn't tell us any specific launch releases or launch window releases, but from the games I assume are going to be launch titles, the PS4 and Next Box have games I'm interested in already. Sony's wants to make the PS4 universal with mobile devices to stream content to wherever you're at, one of their goals being to allow the Vita to play all PS4 games through remote play. They didn't state that the Vita would, they stated it's their end goal. The PS4 is going to make recording game content and showing it to others easier than it's ever been, going so far as to allow friends to view any game you're playing so far as you allow them to.
Two things I didn't like about the event. The Media Molecule game looked stupid, and while I do like the idea that Sony only wants to shove products that I'm interested in down my throat, it'd be nice if they didn't shove any products at all down my throat. I don't want to open up the UI only to be spammed with constant advertisements of upcoming games. Although if it's like Steam, then go ahead and do so, because one click and I'm already at my friends list or library.
The thing I liked most is how Sony came right out with the basic specs of the console. We have no idea what the exact specs are, but we know it's got an eight core x86 processor with 8GB of DDR5. Unfortunately for die hard PC fans, console gaming has got extremely popular in the last few years and is what has been dictating graphical quality for awhile now.
PS4, PC, and Next Box fans have a few games to look forward to this holiday. Watch Dogs, Destiny, and the new Capcom game. The new Final Fantasy using Luminous ending might be Final Fantasy Versus 13, but who knows. One thing I'm impressed with is how noticeable the increase in graphical quality is for just launch games. Watch Dogs is an open world game yet graphically it looks much better than the best looking PS3 game. The game failed to impress me during its first showing because it felt like that entire demo at was predetermined with how it played out, while this showing it seemed to show off gameplay that was less predetermined, even though I'm sure it was as it's a demo to gain interest. I'm not really a fan of Killzone, but I think those were the best looking graphics in the presentation.
David Cage showed that graphics can look almost lifelike when running in real time, but said that they could have made it look even better than they did. For a system we know we'll be utilizing for a long time, it's very impressive for a console.
I would say that I was pretty unimpressed. There was nothing particularly innovative about the PS4. It's essentially a moderate spec PC trapped in Sony's infrastructure and ideas about what gamers really want. Personally, I could care less about sharing video of my game play or having friends watch my progress, let alone jump in and beat a particular area for me. I similarly have no interest in streaming games or having Sony decide what games I might download and filling my hard drive with those. The controller "upgrades" were pretty minor and the fact that they are still pursuing a Move strategy long after the peripheral failed and was supplanted by superior controller-less motion technologies like those in Kinect just seemed sad. I guess I'm not surprised, but what Sony showed is not going to catapult them to the top of the video game industry again and could very well be Sony's last console, especially if the next Xbox spec rumors are accurate and it's basically at a similar level but with a next generation Kinect included. In that scenario, I think the only possible outcome is another stalemate between Sony and Microsoft and with all of the other entertainment platforms out there including iOS, Android, Steambox, and who knows what else in the coming years, I can't see any way that either company survives to launch another money losing console venture.
On another note, I thought the conference itself was badly planned and executed. Two hours of people droning on about mediocre looking games and tech demos. Was anyone impressed in any way by Knack? It looked terrible IMHO.
Yeah, no idea whatsoever...
CPU:
Orbis contains eight Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz, arranged as two “clusters”
Each cluster contains 4 cores and a shared 2MB L2 cache
256-bit SIMD operations, 128-bit SIMD ALU
SSE up to SSE4, as well as Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
One hardware thread per core
Decodes, executes and retires at up to two intructions/cycle
Out of order execution
Per-core dedicated L1-I and L1-D cache (32Kb each)
Two pipes per core yield 12,8 GFlops performance
102.4 GFlops for system
GPU:
GPU is based on AMD’s “R10XX” (Southern Islands) architecture
DirectX 11.1+ feature set
Liverpool is an enhanced version of the architecture
18 Compute Units (CUs)
Hardware balanced at 14 CUs
Shared 512 KB of read/write L2 cache
800 Mhz
1.843 Tflops, 922 GigaOps/s
Dual shader engines
18 texture units
8 Render backends
Memory:
8 GB unified system memory, 176 GB/s
Also, everyone shut up about the used game thing.
http://m.ign.com/articles/2013/02/21...ock-used-games
I don't think it looks too bad at all. As people have pointed out - more memory, ditched the Cell processors. It all seems pretty positive at this point. The idea of games being linked in to Facebook (or whatever) appeals to me about as much as kick in the crotch, but the play whilst you download sound good.. so long as it doesn't break the internet.
He is the thing - when a game is trying to do "graphics" I expect it to do it well. Some games try to be graphically impressive and fall down horribly. The example that I always give is Deus Ex Human Revolution. In Deus Ex HR grenades would have no effect on the humble desk lamp and, for a second, I find myself looking and thinking "that's not right." Half Life 2 did decent physics in 2004. Red Faction did deformable terrain in 2001. Under a Killing Moon let you rummage through drawers in 1994. The more stuff moves, deforms and opens and closes like it should the better I find the experience.
Obviously, this doesn't apply to all games. Stuff like Baldur's Gate works for other reasons.
As someone who latched onto it and discussed it quite a bit in other threads, because I consider it a gamebreaker as to whether I'd buy a console or not, I don't consider it a stupid point. My point was that no one here was even discussing it in the official release info thread because it's apparently going to be a non-issue. So telling people to shut up about it seemed pointless. Even the Durango thread about used games has been fairly dead since the post about someone having information from a Sony rep from earlier this week/late last week.
That being said, I'll kick it off by saying that with Diablo 3 on the table, it'll be interesting to see how Blizzard handles that because on the PC that game requires having a Battle.net account and always being online even for single-player, and, as such, a key. Will they require a key and creation of a Battle.net account also for the console versions, or will it be a separate system? I have trouble seeing Blizzard being willing to give that level of control up, especially with the auction house features that are tied to the game so heavily. While that's not Sony preventing a used game from working, that would be a step in that direction, and I'd imagine would open the door to more developers/publishers showing interest in going that route on their own, especially if Diablo 3 was successful on the console (which is a topic of debate for another thread).
Sony confirms that the PS4 will NOT require a persistent/always-on connection to the internet:
http://kotaku.com/5985874/ps4-will-n...ine-connection
Stemming fears of the always-online requirement still rumored strongly for the next Xbox, a Sony PR rep confirmed to Kotaku that: "PS4 games will be playable without an Internet connection."
So, used games allowed (which by design requires the device to permit physical media), and games playable offline (where an internet connection is not somehow required to facilitate the core gaming experience).
Also, people don't seem to be answering my question how I requested, they're just citing what they didn't like about what was presented - so I'll rephrase with more clarity.
To those who claim to be "disappointed", we've heard what you didn't like about every thing that was presented. Avoiding focusing on anything/everything that Sony presented, besides the physical aesthetics of the "box" itself, what did you want to see or hear from Sony that, in your opinion they failed to deliver on? If you came away unimpressed, what SPECIFICALLY would have "impressed" you that Sony didn't present?
"And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"
I think I'll stick with my PS3 for a bit while longer after the PS4 is released. Maybe two or so years until a price drop and some of the hardware bugs are out of the way and more worthwhile games are released.
With the 3DS outselling the Vita by 7-to-1 and now what many are calling an unimpressive PS4 console, is Sony going the way of Atari and Sega or can they turn it around?
I'd rather wait until IGN receives clarification from Sony before advising anyone to shut up about this. High ranking execs have flubbed the facts before, even in my own experience with Sony. I was in a meeting with a higher up at Sony the spring or summer before PSP GO was released. He had one at the meeting and kept fiddling with it so I approached him to check it out afterward. I asked him point blank regarding the ability to transfer physical games PSP players already owned to his then-new digital-only system. He informed me in no uncertain terms that this was going to happen. He either flat out lied or they ended up cutting that option after we spoke.
I don't want you to hate me, I want you to want to hate me - GamersUniteMagazine.com
Well, they're clearly going to release a new console in 2013 and I expect them to be able to weather at least this next console generation.
What happens beyond that is anybody's guess.
As far as people being "impressed" after this first reveal or Sony packing it all in and throwing in the towel in the console/portable market ala Atari .... Sony almost always plays the marathon game and comes out okay long-term despite initial expectations. There were critics that said that the PSP and PS3 were respectively doomed out of the gate and at multiple points throughout both of their life cycles. Neither product went away prematurely.
Hardware is designed and console cycles are long enough now that they leave room for companies to alter/adjust their strategies mid-cycle via the firmware, hardware, infrastructure and reactions to whatever external things disrupt/change the market.
I'm sure that there will be plenty that feel compelled to call PS4 a "total failure" right now based on what has already been shown, but really, only time and the real-world markets will tell what happens.
"And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"