PL4YST4TION 4

[JonCole]

Figured out what the lightbar was good for in the DS4. Seeing fire inside the controller when the PS4 is being microwaved -

 

[Ucantalas]

I love watching things that shouldn't be in a microwave get microwaved. But on the other hand, I am seriously disturbed by people getting a console right around launch and destroying them.

So altogther that video was neutral to me.

[clyde]

Figured out what the lightbar was good for in the DS4. Seeing fire inside the controller when the PS4 is being microwaved -

 

Comments on that video are a great read. Thanks for sharing.

 

I also appreciate how on the Ebay page, it's listed as a "NO LONGER WORKING NINTENDO PS4".

[JonCole]

I'm guessing they did a lot of research into what kind of capacity would be the sweet spot. It was uncharted territory with the last generation, but this time around the manufacturers should be able to make pretty accurate usage estimates based upon the last seven years. There's not much point in inflating costs and muddying the market when they can just make changing the hard drive a cinch and let people decide what's best themselves and/or upgrade as necessary (it's extremely easy to transfer from one disk to another).

 

After all, for every person saying 500GB should be 1TB, there'll be someone saying 1TB should be 2TB. I imagine that 500GB will be just fine for the majority of people — just not people like me who store their entire music and video collections on their console. Which brings me to a fun fact: the PS3 chokes if you try and have more than 512 items in a playlist. They'd better have that shit sorted out.

 

I think they did do a lot of research, but I also think that their research is dumb. A couple days ago Arthur Gies at Polygon said that many of the units they got to review games were already over half full with only launch games. That sucks ass.

[Frenetic Pony]

Research? Probably more like "basic economics". How much can we afford to give people versus cost?

 

Still, with the sheer size of games now I wouldn't be surprised to see a terabyte bundle coming out in time for next christmas if not sooner.

[melmer]

[Thrik]

Research? Probably more like "basic economics". How much can we afford to give people versus cost?

 

Still, with the sheer size of games now I wouldn't be surprised to see a terabyte bundle coming out in time for next christmas if not sooner.

 

I'm sure there was more to it than that. AFAIK the models of PS3s and 360s that had minimal hard drive space still sold very well — people just dealt with the limitation. But there's no such option this time. Sony could have easily bumped up the cost a bit to fit more space in, but would that have made sense when those who really want more space can easily upgrade when they start to run out? A 500GB target would have been a conscious decision, not merely 'How much GB can we get for the dollar right now?'.

 

It's not like 500GB is tiny, either. My PS3 was about that size and it still has 100GB+ of space left on it after six years, despite my entire music and video collections living on there along with every game I've ever installed. Sure data is bigger this time around, but not so much so that 500GB counts as paltry. That's still 10 AAA games you can have installed at any one time. Not particularly bad, and if you really need more there are innumerable very cheap options. Have you seen how cheap PS4-compatible hard drives are nowadays?

 

Personally, I think it's better for developers and gamers alike if it can be assumed that everyone has a nice 500GB hard drive rather than the obscenely small ~12GB ones that the last generation had which were literally impossible to install games on. I don't think it was a good thing having the confusion of multiple models and hard drive options, and I hope that Sony's realised that. Maybe an even bigger version would be a nice variation, but right now 2TB hard drives are much better value for money than 1TB so I wouldn't even go for that.

[melmer]

STATS!

1 million sold in North America on the first day (although probably no more stock will be available for the rest of the month?)

Source? The Internets

[Thrik]

Impressive.

[shammack]

Yeah, but you have to wonder what percentage of that was people who just bought them to make videos of themselves destroying them in various ways.

 

(But seriously, if that's accurate, I can't help but wonder ... why?)

[Frenetic Pony]

Yeah, but you have to wonder what percentage of that was people who just bought them to make videos of themselves destroying them in various ways.

 

(But seriously, if that's accurate, I can't help but wonder ... why?)

 

Video games may be, you know, like... popular man. I've heard stuff

 

Though I do wonder at all the jackanapes that howl about the PS4 and Bone selling less overall than the 360 and PS3. Sure the WiiU is a stalwart failure, but both Microsoft and Sony seem to know what they're doing. As the sales show experience counts for something, and as GTAV's billion dollar plus cume shows, it's not like "Triple A" is actually hurting, no matter how good a "Story" it makes.

[syntheticgerbil]

Well I got one of these in the mail today thanks to that taco bell contest. The sharing features seem really well integrated, though I guess you can only share video and screenshots with facebook and twitter?  They've made it really easy to both view and broadcast streams as well, so I'm really curious to see if/how that functionality is embraced. I didn't play much of it, but Knack isn't impressing...run down corridor, punch dudes, rinse, repeat. Pretty, though. Jumping in and out of system menus during gameplay seems snappy. In conclusion, I rate the PS4 3.5 out of 4.7.

Wow, I didn't know that was possible to win. What were the odds?

[BigJKO]

Wait, that graph.. The Wii U sold more in the first month than the 360 and the PS3?

[melmer]

i found the graph on twitter, but i've done some googling to see where it originated from:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=717572&page=21

 

i'm pretty sure i bought the original xbox, dreamcast, gamecube and wii at launch, but i never even considered the 360 of ps3 at launch, i think they were just way to expensive. Most people didn't have HD TV's back then

[Dewar]

Wait, that graph.. The Wii U sold more in the first month than the 360 and the PS3?

 

I imagine a lot of the graph pretty much equates to "How many consoles were manufactured by the launch date" since pretty much every console sells out, at least at first. Nintendo seems to have its supply chain in fairly good order, and it felt like both the 360 and PS3 were rushed a bit.

[Salacious Snake]

Remote play works a lot better than I anticipated. I've been playing FIFA 14 at work while the PS4 sits at home, and it's decently playable. It was useless on the PS3, even when connected locally.

[Justin Leego]

Weren't there supply issues with the Wii for its first holiday season? People re-selling it for crazy prices due to supply and demand, accusations of artificial scarecity encouraged by Nintendo in order to increase desirability, that sort of thing.

The Xbox 360 and Xbox One mantra has been exclusivity so I don't think it will harm the new box's chances that much. Microsoft (or Xbox spin-off) will market it as more of a high quality luxury good.

I mean, that makes sense to me, but I could be totally wrong about it of course.

[TheLastBaron]

Weren't there supply issues with the Wii for its first holiday season? People re-selling it for crazy prices due to supply and demand, accusations of artificial scarecity encouraged by Nintendo in order to increase desirability, that sort of thing.

The Xbox 360 and Xbox One mantra has been exclusivity so I don't think it will harm the new box's chances that much. Microsoft (or Xbox spin-off) will market it as more of a high quality luxury good.

I mean, that makes sense to me, but I could be totally wrong about it of course.

Around here people would line up hours before stores would open to get Wiis even weeks after it came out, when stores would get new ones in stock.

[JonCole]

Tested.com did a comparison test between the default HGST (brand owned by Western Digital) 500GB drive, a Seagate 1TB Hybrid Drive, and a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD in the PS4. The results were pretty interesting, the TLDW is that the SSD and hybrid drive trade blows fairly evenly and both leaving the default HDD in the dust:

 

 

Having watched this, I'll probably buy a 1TB hybrid drive when I get my PS4 and swap it right at the start. I just wish there were 2TB or 4TB options, though I don't seem to be able to find anything of that nature out there right now. 

[Nappi]

In regards to the PS4 in particular, I imagine that the endpoint of giving them reviews is that you see like

 

Wii U - 6.5/10

 

PS4 - 7.5/10

 

Xbox One - 8.5/10

 

Well, I guess the best console right now is the Xbox One. I have numerical proof! Gotta go buy one right now, BRB.

 

Xbox One won the console war by 0.5 points.

 

Quick, cancel your preorder.

[Roderick]

Without reading the review, let me preemptively hazard that the reason for the better score is that they have less sucky launch games.

 

[uPDATE] This review exposes what bores me so tremendously about these new boxes. It's all technical gushing, but what am I actually going to do with it? Play games, surely. No good games = a worthless thing, no matter how many carefully chosen decimal points Polygon chooses to express its value with.

[Justin Leego]

Huh. Seems like they scored it highly based on potential rather than present reality. Not sure about the wisdom of that.

[JonCole]

The thing that's potentially most disappointing to me about these lavish console reviews is that the editors of Polygon have said they'll update the console scores as they develop over time, yet the Wii U's review hasn't been updated since launch despite it's growth and actually fulfilling the potential it had (like the XBONE and PS4 are getting evaluated for).

[Thrik]

That's just stupid, really. You can't just keep perpetually editing the same review and score, and you're losing the ability to go back and reference that original review. Maybe review new revisions of the console or do it by year (e.g. Wii U - 2013 review).

[JonCole]

That's just stupid, really. You can't just keep perpetually editing the same review and score, and you're losing the ability to go back and reference that original review. Maybe review new revisions of the console or do it by year (e.g. Wii U - 2013 review).

 

They don't edit the review, they write up a new section detailing the mentality behind an updated score. Sometimes that updated section is quite substantial, sometimes it's just a paragraph. So you don't lose the original review at all.

 

Nonetheless, it's still kinda dumb.