Sony Playstation 4 Announcement

Sony have just finished with their announcement for the PS4, it was a pretty forgettable but solid presentation, I think that we’re looking at the relationship between Sony and 3rd parties tightening and hopefully bringing us some better games as the PS3 had little support and Sony didn’t fancy picking up the baton. The presentation seemed to be a gesture to devs that the console is very friendly to develop for but also powerful and flexible.

The console itself is based on PC hardware so I am wondering how they are going to sort out piracy as the games will be easier to copy, the new controller looks a bit of a mess, it’s not any bigger, the buttons look unintuitive and unergonomic, they pretty much did it first time with the normal PS1 controller and I’m not sure it needed much change.

The share button added for social media is a farce, nobody cares for the mediums we use to socialise and to be honest, the real money spenders, and by that I mean real gamers, are really not going to want to fucking tweet their progress every 5 minutes because they’ll be busy actually playing their games. There’s a Light bar that helps to identify players and where they are, or something, so basically a Move mote bar. Not sure how I feel about this as it’s really too late to be half arsedly incorporating this kind of hardware without much software support.

Noticeably none of the games revealed have utilised the features of their hardware, this is terrible as it shows how gimmicky the new features are, but also shows that most of the new games won’t use motion controls, so perhaps this is a kind of loyalty to the non-casual audience?

Strangely the console looks to be developed by Americans and not the Japanese, the guy who did the PS1 left the company last year I believe so this twinned with Japan’s lack of self-esteem of late is probably the reason for the sudden switch. It seems like a stab at Microsoft’s market, but with the reveal of Knack and some of the other features we’ve been seeing, I think the console is better suited to re-establish their fanbase and consolidate the family market and in doing so knock heads with Nintendo. With the new PC hardware we can hopefully expect even better indie titles and so maybe Sony will give Steam box a run for its money.

Killzone 4 was shown and was as it usually is but with Appleseed-style cutscenes that the character is swiftly taken away from for the gameplay segments of run-duck-shoot and I went and made a coffee during “Drive Club”‘s presentation, but I’m pretty sure I got the gist. There are cars. They are sexy.

Infamous 3 had a rather interesting introduction with a spoken monologue over shots and then some video, looks vaguely interesting but not particularly a killer app.

The Witness is the new Myst style game from Braid’s dev, looks pretty and possibly good, well as good as Myst can be considering it’s the least violent game in existence.

I was looking forward to the Japanese doing some presentations and was disappointed when Capcom had a fantasy game it showed off called Deep Down,but had no gameplay and it looked a bit Dark Souls meets Monster Hunter and Square Enix re-showed us Agni’s whatever-it-is tech demo from E3 and then announced they were going to make an announcement at E3, it always amuses me how they consistently treat their fans as stupid as they are themselves.

Watchdogs looked the most interesting whilst also looking playable, I can’t shake the feeling that this game is going to not quite meet expectations, I mean, now it looks like an open ended game with lots of possibilities, but the kind that will feel rather linear and scripted. In fact it really reminds me of the kind of hype and consequently scepticism from me that Rage had on its E3 showing. Anyway it isn’t exactly an exclusive so it’s a little sad the biggest thing going at this event was something that Microsoft will also have the pleasure of boasting about.
Unfortunately didn’t get to watch Blizzard’s bit as internet gave up with all the guff.

Overall rather bland stuff, not making Xbox quake and certainly Nintendo are let off the hook a little. No Vita price drop. No word on Last Guardian. No viewing of the PS4. No price for PS4.