The Playstation 4 was released on Friday, selling one million units in the first day and kicking off the next generation of consoles.
Competing against the upcoming Xbox One and the growing mobile and computer market, this is a pivotal time for Sony. Consumers finally have the chance to play the PS4 and decide how it stacks up against not only its competition, but also the PS3.
Picking my PS4 up on Saturday, it instantly became apparent that Sony is bringing its flagship console into the modern era of smartphones and connectivity. Gone is the often rigid and out-of-date interface of the PS3. In its place is a sleek design that allows multitasking, much like a smartphone, as well as better navigation and connectivity.
The Playstation Store and its hub of games and movies are just a few seconds away, effectively nullifying tedious loading screens of the past. The PS4 bolsters connectivity by offering players the ability to create a party chat, a feature that was lacking from the PS3.
What the PS4 lacks, at least at launch, is the ability to playback media from CDs and USB drives like the PS3. If consumers want to play music on the console, they have to pay $5 a month for Music Unlimited. Music Unlimited in itself has quite the selection of songs and users can play any song while in-game. Still, lacking media playback is somewhat of a step backward for the system.
The PS4 is smaller and more sleek in design than its bigger, bulky older brother was at launch. It takes up less space, and its centralized power system makes it a quieter machine. A small complaint of the design is that those with larger, thicker USB drives will be unable to access the USB port on the front of the system.
The Dualshock 4 controller is a vast improvement over the Dualshock 3 controller. It is larger and wider, with concave thumb sticks that better fit your thumbs. The bottom triggers offer better precision when playing. The most notable change is the touch pad in the center of the controller and the light strip across the back of the controller. None of the launch games hardly used these features; they were more of an afterthought.
The lineup of launch titles is not the greatest with several titles such as “Assassin’s Creed 4: Blackflag” and “Battlefield 4” released on both previous and next generation consoles. “Killzone: Shadow Fall” is a fun experience despite its occasional setbacks, while “Knack” leaves a lot to be desired.
Having the ability to broadcast live feed of your games is another new feature that adds to the experience. Ultimately, the console-selling games like “Infamous: Second Son” and “Watchdogs” will trickle in at the beginning of the year.
Sony has created a system that will allow developers to achieve much more over the next few years. The next few years will also truly be the test of how the Xbox One and PS4 perform.
