Are You Ready For PS4?

2013.  Next year.  That’s when the latest rumours for the next generation of consoles are marking the calendar.  Think about that for a second – if the stories are correct, we could be getting our hands on the PS4 and Xbox Next (or whatever they’re called) any time from between eight months to about twenty, with many still thinking that E3 this year will see some kind of unveiling from both Sony and Microsoft, even if it’s just a taster.

It doesn’t really matter what they end up being called – marketing and branding aside – what matters is what they’ll do, and what they’re capable of.  In terms of visuals, it’s clear that this current generation can’t really handle full HD, let alone 3D, without plenty of sacrifices, so hopefully whatever the manufacturers are working on will mean 1080p at 60fps before they start worrying about any other fancy technology.

But it’s not the boost in graphics that I’m most desperate for.  I’m a keen believer that Halo is the best first person shooter ever made because of one thing: the AI.  Running around blasting dumb enemies means nothing to me, but with Halo I always admired what Bungie had done with the squad intelligence and pack mentality, and the Elites – on the harder levels – felt like equals rather than bullet sponges.

If the next-gen can up the immersion this way – making things smarter rather than simply just prettier, I’ll be happy.

But there’s more to consider here – the latest on both new machines suggest that pre-owned games will be considerably crippled and, in the case of Orbis (the current codename for PS4) it sounds like backwards compatibility will also be out of the window, meaning that all your PS3 games (both on disk and digital download) won’t work going forward.  You’ll have to keep hold of your current console, basically, and that won’t please many.

Of course, all this is just rumour at this stage, regardless of the sources.  Even if elements are true, nobody knows for sure about what’s going to change right up until the machines are formally announced – but whilst the contents of the technical specs seem to differ from story to story, one thing seems to remain fairly constant: the date.  I’d be hugely surprised if we don’t get our hands on them both next year.

But is that too soon?

80 Comments

  1. I’m not ready for the PS4 as i’ve yet to get games from the last 2 years. I really hope every game won’t be 60FPS as i can’t stand it. It’s a bit too fast for me to handle. Well, at least in FPSes.

    I may not even get a PS4 if the punish the user DRM is used and would just build a gaming PC. :)

    Judging from the PS3’s annoucement, i think 2013-14 we will see it being annouced then the completed console at E3 2015 with a 2016 release. Hopefully, it won’t be up to £600 this time around.

  2. I’m already saving *sigh* Why must my hobby nearly bankrupt me?

  3. I wont be buying either initially because of the history of failure rates for both Sony & Microsoft with their launch consoles. Still at least Microsoft gave us the 3 year guarantee in the end, unlike Sony. Money will be a factor, and as Im perfectly happy with my 360 & PS3, I will be a late adopter. I’ll be going with just one console this generation, which’ll be Microsoft. Its nice having two, but very expensive and largely pointless. Apart from a few exclusives theres little reason to choose between the formats (apart from poor PS3 ports), and Im not prepared to buy a different console just to play Killzone or Uncharted, as good as they are. As I said, I was impressed with the 3 year RROD guarantee and Sony just point blank refused to acknowledge the YLOD problem, which is why I will not be supporting them after the PS3.

    • I have had 4 360s break no PS3s have.

  4. Why Sony!? Why you no like backwards compatibility!?

    • The easiest answer is to simply look at this gen. They have sold a fair amount of PS2 games that have been jazzed up for HD as well as probably selling a few of the ones that aren’t as well.

      I suppose what i am getting at is that if they can make money off of the same thing twice, they will.

      • It’s not that they don’t like it, it’s that it’s often incredibly painful to implement from one system to the next.

        The WiiU is still an evolution upwards from the CPU and GPU in the Gamecube, so for them, back compatibility isn’t so big an issue. From Xbox to 360, though, they switched to a completely different CPU design and GPU, meaning that they had to do thing in software. Luckily for them, the Xbox’s hardware was fairly standard, and so generally OK to emulate.

        The problem with Sony, though, is that they’ve had two generations on the trot where they’ve done some really crazy things with the hardware. The CPU and GPU in the PS2 had a huge number of quirks, and lets not even get started on the PS3 and its Cell processor. Developers have had to do some really crazy things and deep optimisations in order to get the best out of the PS3’s hardware, and the workload it split up in crazy ways. There will be ways for them to have PS3 support, but it simply won’t be an easy or pleasant process to get an emulation layer that can handle it put together.

      • …And therefore it would probably cost more to implement making the console price even higher (like the original PS3s).

    • Why no backwards compatibility?

      Sony make weird architecture that to emulate from one system to another takes too much work
      also, why offer back com when a couple of years later people will pay all over again to play to buy a new release of their old games anyway

  5. I’m ready for the PS4!! Hopefully it will release next year.

  6. If they don’t mandate 1080p and 60Hz, then they’re absolutely doing it wrong. Seriously.

    • Yep. Everything else can go jump, but not having 1080p titles running at a decent framerate absolutely sucks in 2012.

  7. I’m not.
    Spent €300 on the Vita, no way I could afford to spend it again (assuming the nextgen hardware was subsidised to Vita levels).
    I actually spent €390 on Vita hardware, if you include the 16gb memory card and now useless €40 GAME warranty.

    • Vita isn’t subsidised. Sony turn a profit on each unit sold, with the hardware costing much less than what we all paid for it.

      • I mean the home console would have to be subsidised, there’s no way I could pay PS3 launch price (or higher, it’s another generation, right?).
        The price would have to be at the level of the Vita.

        That said, I’m surprised it’s not subsidised at launch. The Vita is definitely worth the price, but if they could have gone lower to capture the market…

  8. I wasn’t ready at all until recently, but to me the market is stagnating and new home-console hardware is needed, provided it does enough to provide a higher perceived value.

  9. visuals are fine I think, its the lack of power for consoles compared to PC. It would be great to play Battlefield for instance, but with more players online. I also don’t want to download titles, and would want a blu-ray player.

  10. The next gen consoles need to also improve their online features 32 players should be the mininum for games (apart from sports games)

    Voice chat also needs improving by Sony.

    Faster to download firmware and patches.

    Maybe add xbox live type of features to plus users only. BUT they shouldnt lock out none plusers. Example if u sub to plus you have the choice between regular servers and p2p servers. It may mean the amount of games you get per month is cut. But i’d pay £40 a year for 1 game a month, cross game chat, cloud saving, auto downloads and being able to get on better quality servers. Or even scrap the free game and just give you 1 75% discount 1 50% discount and 1 25% discount. That way if you do cancel. All you loose is servers, cloud saving, auto dl and xgc.

    • Really? The cross game chat thing again?

      I thought that suggestion had happily gone the way of the dodo.

      • Why not on PS4? You’d be suprised how popular it is on 360 and PC have things like Xfire so a party voice system should be looked into for ps4. Its too late for PS3 but without this sort of feature the online experience on PS4 will suffer.

      • I personally (as well as many others once it was thought about) really don’t see the need for it – I understand chat when you are all playing the same game, that makes complete sense to me, but why would i want to know about how one of my friends ‘pwned a n00b’ in CoD (for example) when i am playing a driving game or something similar that isn’t related in any way?

        I just don’t see what purpose it actually has & i think that if it did get implemented through popular demand, it wouldn’t stay popular for too long. I think a lot of people want it for the sake of wanting it tbh (not saying you do of course, as you may have a genuine reason for wanting it).

        Personally, i would rather they spend development time on something that is actually useful in some way.

Comments are now closed for this post.