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Sony E3 2013 PlayStation
Sony E3 2013 PlayStation briefing roundup: PS4 takes E3 with $399 price tag
After two long hours of tease this past February, followed by a few fleeting glimpses in May, Sony's finally ready to show us what its next-generation PlayStation console actually, you know, looks like. And it's... well, it's a rhombus. A familiar-looking one.
"It is a design that is sleek and visually impactful wherever it is placed," said Andy House, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment said during the reveal. And that's probably true, or at least, it's fair to say that the PS4 isn't any more obtrusive than the PS3 was. But it still looks a bit bulky at first glance, like an onyx coffee table book that you keep propped up by your television.
We at least now a little more about Sony's content strategy: Sony's Video Unlimited service will be available from Day One on PS4, with a catalog of 150,000 movies and TV shows available to rent. Music Unlimited, with over 20 million songs that can be accessed from PS4, Android, and iOS will be available as well. The usual suspects like Netflix will be there as well, in addition to newcomers like Redbox. And Flixter will be added this fall.
None of this really differentiates the PS4, though, which might be fine. Sony's been positioning the PS4 as a gaming console, a counterpoint to Microsoft's Xbox One living room takeover. It's a good strategy on paper, but also implies that the Xbox One doesn't have any gaming appeal. DRM issues aside, that's a dangerous bet.
Games
Speaking of games, Sony had at least one major exclusive to announce for PS4. It's a steampunk romp with (big) guns and (scared) horses. There is shooting, there are bad guys, there are intentional anachronisms aplenty. It's called The Order, and while it might not be worth buying a PS4 specifically for, it definitely looks dope.
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Other games? There are other games. There's Drive Club, a racing game. Infamous: Second Son, a sequel. Transistor, which, okay, that looked awesome.
Sony played up indie developers as well, highlighting everyone from Tribute Games to Young Horses to Switchblade Monkeys to Ragtag Studios. Yes, that means Octodad. And every single one of them will be making an exclusive debute on PS4. Although "debut" is different from "lifetime."
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Maybe the biggest get, though, is Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III, both of which appear to be PS4 exclusives.
Fairing less well was an Assassins Creed pirate varietal (Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag), that somehow—aside from a few robust explosions—made both pirates and assassins seems dull.
The (Technical) Goods
We had already known quite a bit about what Sony's first new console in seven years does; the graphics are sublime, games boot "instantly" from sleep, games download in the background. And we know what's in it: an x86 processor, an 8-core combined CPU/GPU, , 8 GB of unified GDDR5 memory (versus the PS3's 512 megabytes), a local 500GB HDD. Sounds good!
But tonight Sony made much ado about the facial rendering capabilities driving the games of the future, showing the PS4 in action. Specifically, it showed a cut from a "12-minute demo" (awww you sure you can't show the full thing?). Again, it looked very good, but we haven't left the uncanny valley by any means.
Cost and Availability
The PS4 is going to cost $400, and will be available "this holiday season." That puts it at a hundred dollars cheaper than the Xbox One, although it's worth remembering that the Xbox One comes bundled with a Kinect 2.
It's an aggressive price, though, one that Sony needed to hit to make itself an attractive Xbox One alternative. If nothing else, the choice is clear: Do you want a living room portal that happens to play (some extremely good) games? Or a less expensive gaming machine (with some extremely good online content) that doesn't have much of an exclusive identity?
For the gaming community, the edge pretty clearly goes to the PS4 right now. Used games aren't tainted by DRM restrictions, the console itself is cheaper, the graphics are sublime. The question is: What about everyone else? We'll have to wait until the holiday season for any sort of definitive answer.
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