The PS4 has been the center of attention for the last 9 or so months, whether NeoGaf was making Antonio Banderas gifs getting each other hyped or “Xbots” were trolling comments. It’s an understatement to say that this has been an exciting road to launch. Interestingly enough, Sony has successfully diverged the bulk of scandals and controversy that has plagued the Xbox One ever since its embarrassing announcement and pathetic E3 performance. Every time a question about the PS4 was brought about, Sony’s PR has had the answer that has completely destroyed the naysayers. But have they delivered on their abundance of promises? Lets find out.
Much has been said about the console itself, considering that the system is smaller than any Xbox product, sports a parallelogram shape and is about half the size of the launch PS3. With those facts some will question the performance and may fear overheating problems. I’m proud to say that the PS4, hardware wise, has not only managed to achieve its vision but eclipse it. The console itself is absolutely one of, if not the, best looking pieces of technology out there today.
With its sleek design of half gloss, half matte it catches the eye every time you walk into the room. Sure, its a finger print magnet but you’ll only notice the finger prints if you move it often. The bigger problem with the console’s finish is its tendency to collect a high volume of dust while only sitting for a day or so. I assume it doesn’t attract the dust but the glassy finish makes it very noticeable. Beyond the finish of the console lay a few other minor gripes I have with the hardware’s design choices. One of the first things you’ll find out about the console as soon as you turn it on is that it has no physical buttons favoring a touch sensitive button layout. This is a blessing and a curse at the same time. On one hand the less things that are physical also means the less things that can break on a console but on the other hand the buttons are not nearly as delicate as other touch sensitive layouts like the Xbox 360 slim’s, forcing you to rub the button for 5 or 6 seconds in order to get it to work. The icons on the buttons are way too little and excessively similar to each other making it unnecessarily difficult to turn on the console and eject a disk. But this is only really a problem 1 to 4 times a play session, making the problem more of a small pain in the ass than anything. The ability to turn off the console and eject a disk is also readily available in the menus of the operating system. The console comes with a swapable hardrive. I haven’t gotten the chance to swap the hardrive but it seems like a really easy task to accomplish, since all you have to do is disjoin a few screws. The Ps4 also sports an LED light across the console that parades the state the console is in. The PS4 can be in 1 of 3 states at any time: on, off, or standby. Standby mode puts the console into a low-power state and can be turned on remotely in order to update games and can charge controllers. Standby mode is a great addition to the console but I do wish that it was easier to switch between these power modes because sometimes the console goes into standby mode when all I wanted to do was turn it off. My final small problem with the hardware is the back of the console. The back, while nice to look at, causes a few problems for any person who moves their console a lot. The back has a bunch of boxes for air flow but that makes it difficult to feel for the HDMI port. So in order to plug the HDMI cable in, you must flip the console around and search for the port.
This is a small problem and probably not even relevant to many, but to the few who move their consoles a lot be warned. Other than those problems the PS4, console wise, performed beyond amazingly. With little to no disc sound, no overheating and amazing lighting fast processing I cant stress how great this console is straight out of the box. Did I run into the occasional freeze, processing hiccup or disc humming? Of course, but it was way too few and far between to be noticed. I haven’t come into contact with the HDMI port problem where the port didn’t function that was plaguing some launch consoles, but apparently there’s not that many people who have encountered that problem out of the 2 million plus consoles sold. The phenomena I believe has been contained to some Day One editions of the console. All around the PS4 console hardware is very nice. The sleek design, parallelogram shaped console and half matte half gloss finish really helps make the console stand out among the Xbox One, not to mention the processing power and how silent the console runs.
The controller side of the console has also been making a splash. With a brand new redesigned look and feel that has somewhat abandoned a few of the Dualshock family traditions, leaving some gamers happy and some PlayStation purists a bit skeptical at first, but they quickly came around. The controller itself feels very nice in the hand. The shape of it masterfully contours to anyone’s hands with its subtle grip and easily accessible sticks. The brand new triggers also follow the pattern of the controller by fitting in my index fingers very organically. The triggers now slope up which is a welcome improvement considering that during the last generation (Xbox 360, PS3) there was a rise in twitch shooters and the PS3 controller’s triggers just weren’t capable of offering that much accuracy mostly due to its sloped downwards triggers.
As usual on any PlayStation controller the face buttons, d-pad and “R1″ and “R2″ buttons are all perfect and masterfully placed. The new thumbsticks are really marvelous. The sticks are now concave rather than convex making for a simpler experience when playing any video game. With higher accuracy and a more comfortable time these sticks are awesome especially considering that this is PlayStation’s first ever time creating concave thumbsticks. I do have some questions about the quality of the sticks. I have 2 controllers, one I bought before the launch of the console and the other came with the console itself. I maybe have 20- 35 hours on the controller I bought before launch and already it feels worn. My sticks are dull and are really hard to play any game with. This is not a complete and utter disaster considering that I have 2 controllers but that’s still $60 down the damn drain. For anyone who doesn’t own 2 controllers this is frustrating. The fact that 30 hours of use can destroy a controller is inexcusable. The material on the thumbstick can be updated to something more durable in the future but Sony should be replacing controllers in the mean time. The most subtle addition to the controller, and quite possibly the best, is the inclusion of a headphone jack that is non proprietary. You can plug any 3.5 mm headphone into the controller and you can set it so the game audio is sent wireless straight to your headphones. This is an amazing feature that promotes ease of use. Instead of forcing us to buy proprietary hardware Sony realizes the bigger picture and that Sony doesn’t rule every market. The biggest disappointment on the controller is the slew of useless gimmicks. With a battery killing and distracting light bar, poor quality speaker and touch pad that is used in about 3 games, it’s quite clear that these features of the controller have already been abandoned. There’s absolutely no hope for these parts of the controller and if it is not heavily integrated in the operating system soon I will bet the gimmicks will be chopped of the controller and sold for half price. There isn’t even an option to shut off the battery killing light bar. All in all the controller is very good, with new triggers, sticks and a generally nice feel but questionable choices with gimmicky additions and materials used in the thumbsticks drag down the quality of the controller. The Share button brings life to the console by allowing anyone to share their favorite moments in game at the push of button. The streaming and video quality is very good and has little to no hiccups.
The PS4 doesn’t have many games at launch, even with that said it still has some great games like Assassins Creed 4 and in my opinion Knack. Some of those games might not scratch the itch your looking for and that’s what 2014 is for, with games like The Order 1886 and probably the next Uncharted a perfectly valid reason to own a PS4 at this point is to get ready for next year. If you have played Assassins Creed 4 or any cross generation game on last generation you aren’t missing much besides higher graphical fidelity and a more consistent frame rate.
The interface of the PS4 is where the console really shines, with the typical PlayStation XMB (cross media bar) that includes the essentials of a genuine PlayStation experience. Sony did listen to the gamers who dislike the PS3′s interface by adding a whole new layer to the OS. The new layer is a akin to the Xbox 360′s OS in regards to all data being displayed in boxes. All games are displayed in this new layer in the form of large cover art arranged from recently played. While visually appealing, the layer gets very hard to navigate considering there is no way to selectively choose which games are displayed and how they’re displayed. The new layer also houses the “Whats New” tab which shows what your friends have been up to. The new tab, while highly functional and easy to navigate, doesn’t serve much of a purpose other than gauging how many of your friends are playing a certain game.
A better feature would be to see what your friends are currently doing in a more easy to read fashion. The raw performance of the interface is unbelievably fast considering that there is no load times while jumping between the interface and games, it’s just a push of the PlayStation button away. The PlayStation store is virtually identical to the PS3′s but the raw performance of it has had a massive overhaul for the better. It looks and feels exactly how Sony wanted it to feel, dynamic. There are a few minor quirks with the interface including the fact that trophies still don’t automatically sync and that downloads are hidden in the notifications tab for some weird reason. By no means are those problems deal breakers but minor things that in the future Sony could update.
Overall the PS4 is a beast of a machine. It’s fast, sexy and dynamic. It’s not only a major improvement over the PS3, it’s a step forward for modern video game consoles. With it’s instant connectivity to the world through streaming, instant switching between games, and it’s interface, the PS4 right out of the box has future proofed itself for years to come. Even without Gaikai streaming the PS4 is still a hell of a machine, just be warned that at the time of this writing there are not many games available, but in just a few months that will change. The PS4 might not be for the casual gamer but it scratches that itch of new and fast hardware that the hardcore has been asking for years now.