PlayStation 4: My Perspective

It's been around 2 weeks since the announcement of PS4, the latest entry into the PlayStation series and the successor to the current PS3. Generally, the reception ranged from great to mixed, but I'm not here not talking about what other people think, I'm here to say what I think about PS4.

I love my PS3, I really love playing it. But despite how much I love playing it, I accept that it's time for a new one, due to the rapid advancement of technology these days. I was also amazed how much the staying power the PS3 has over the last few years, considering the computer tech has eclipsed the PS3. The most example of that is when you placed the PC version of Crysis and Battlefield 3 with the PS3 versions side by side. Hence, PS4 is needed.

From the announcement, I was pleased about the details they revealed so far. The PS4 engineering architecture is very very close to PC. This change in architecture is probably due to complaints by game developers that PS3 is difficult to develop games, as evident in certain PS3 games, which struggled to catch up with other game consoles and gaming PC. It features an 8-core AMD Jaguar processor unit, APU developed by AMD and Sony, an unspecified GPU unit and 8GB GDDR5 memory. It was impressive, even by today's standard, this will make sure games will be easier to work on and most of all, better longevity than other generations' of consoles.

Then, there's the controller, I have mixed reaction towards it. At first, it is exciting to see that they redesigned the R2-L2 buttons from the PS3, which is a bit clunky to use. But then, they slightly redesigned the DualShock form factor, which is very comfortable for me to use because of my smaller hands. So, I need to test it before I can judge the new controller.

Sony also announced the latest PlayStation Eye camera, which will have better resolution and better integration with the PlayStation Move. I'm won't go much into details about this, because I already have doubt with the current PlayStation Move, I need more details about it to convince me.

The highlight of the announcement was probably the social features, which might be catered towards social gamers and to the more connected and more social network-centric society today. This is obvious when they showed the "SHARE" button on the DualShock 4 controller, which allows gamers to share their screenshots, gameplay videos and other gaming content through social networks like Facebook or Twitter. I believe I might use some of the time considering I have been sharing my PC screenshots quite a bit.

Lastly, it's the game. Sony announced a number of games from the conference, such as Killzone: Shadow Fall, DriveClub, inFamous: Second Son, and Knack. Games from other developers like Bungie's Destiny, Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, Blizzard's Diablo III and others. But the only game we've seen with longer gameplay sequences and show the early potential of PS4 is Killzone: Shadow Fall by Guerrilla Games. The game ran on true 1080p full HD with bigger sense of scale and details than it's PS3 counter-parts. It is not a really significant leap, but considering the game is up and running just a few months in, it's quite impressive.

I can't wait for the PS4 to come, even though we haven't seen the design of the console itself and the pricing of the console. But considering PS3 still has a lot of games still left to play, I don't need to worry much and probably wait a year before I buy one.

Lastly, a PlayStation montage!