The official—and long-awaited—confirmation
of the PlayStation 4 from Sony was something that those in the gaming world
have been whispering about for years. And here it finally is! The event held in
New York City by Sony provided some insight into the direction the company is moving,
with a lot of promising ideas at the forefront.
One statement, however, resonated throughout the entire conference: the concept of PlayStation 4 “being
a saving grace for game developers”. And while this is good on one end, could
that possibly be a problem for Sony in the years to come? Many feel that the
PS4 should be a great system for both developers and the gamers that fuel the
industry. Aren’t those who buy the games supposed to be the first priority?
The new hardware for the
PlayStation 4 (PS4) presents a new level of creativity and innovation that
developers can harness to create new and exciting games with more complex
graphics, technology capabilities, features, details and story lines than we’ve
ever seen.
According to experts, moving
away from the Cell Processor and utilizing the X86 CPU helps developers push
the limits of the past generation of gaming. This too, is great. However, it
poses the problem that gamers will no longer have the option of backwards compatibility,
or the ability to play earlier generation PlayStation games (PS1, PS2, PS3) on
the latest Sony console. As many gamers have invested lots of money into their
games, it is inconvenient that the latest console does not cater to this need.
Even though through Sony’s
Gaikai acquisition older titles are made available on PlayStation Cloud, it
will still require gamers to repurchase titles they may have already bought recently.
This was a problem that occurred in the beginning days of the PlayStation 3.
Another inherent problem,
internet infrastructure stability—or poor and inconsistent internet connection--has plagued this generation of gaming and will likely effect the PS4. Much of
the features on PS4, such as streaming full games through PlayStation Network (PSN),
will require really stable and decently fast internet connections which will
also consume a lot of bandwidth. And while large quantities of gamers have internet
connections decent enough to play games online, there are still many others who
do not have stable internet to fully take advantage of such features.
If gamers have all these
features, but are unable to use them, they aren’t fully utilizing the newest in
gaming technology and thus, throwing their money away. Not a great marketing
point, huh?
It is obvious that Sony will
need to prepare for and remedy such issues to arise. This is the next
generation of gaming they’re dealing with, after all.
