Sony Consoles and Updates

[DANGERMAN]

I do wonder how long it will take for level design to change. Games have been built around loading, and hiding loading, for decades now. We've gone from short levels, to mid level loads, to elevator rides, to slow walking and squeezing through narrow gaps. I remember Sly talking about how GTA throws traffic at you to slow your progress, games will often slow character movement, and of course levels will be design in a way you just can't see the next part.

 

All of that has to be drilled out of people, and even then some of it has benefits to pacing and offering a reveal, a change of scene, a moment to tell a story. I don't think we'll really see the actual paradigm shift for years yet

[DisturbedSwan]

PS4 was no slouch at launch, was the most powerful console out there until Pro then One X came out. But, yeah, both current gen launch iterations weren’t up to much compared to even mid range PCs of the time.
 

Similar to 2013 @Nag we didn’t see the form factor of the PS4 until June 2013 at E3, just the controller before then. We admittedly did see quite a few of the launch lineup before June though that time around.
 

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they just tweet out a picture of the PS5 one random Tuesday and it breaks the internet like the DualSense reveal did in all honesty but hope for something more elaborate. 

[one-armed dwarf]

My memory was that the ps4 parts were considered pretty ordinary and easily outstripped by contemporary PC.

 

The SSD stuff is actually bleeding edge, you cant find equivalent on PC at all right now. I tried to look.

[DisturbedSwan]

Yeah that’s true @Nag I do think this time around the consoles will be more innovative and powerful out the gate. They’re both like high end PCs this time round rather than low-mid at the start of last gen.

[mmmark]

PlayStation 4 vs. Xbox One vs. PC: In depth specs comparison

 

Every launch is the same so this won’t be any different.

 

Before launch - Wow these game reveals look great. Best grafix evrz.

 

Latch onto one launch day game and swear it’s genuinely good to justify spending £100s.

 

Weeks later first good game released. 

[shinymcshine]

The obvious thing is, regardless of this incessant march to better specs and graphics, the most innovative gameplay is often now found in indie games, by small devs using just a tiny fraction of processing speed/power.

 

Big hitting AAA games are few and far between, with a good number of them not bringing any gameplay innovation forwards, just instead being a neater, shinier, variation of their predecessor.

[mfnick]

Yea I like really shiney, high production games even if they are only iterations. FFVIIr as a current example of a game im loving for basically being a shiney version of a 20+ year old game. 
 

I do mainly play smaller games these days and of course horsepower isn’t everything but I do love a good UC4, God of War, Gears etc. Even if they aren’t doing anything new gameplay wise, them looking as good as they do definitely adds something to the experience. 
 

& games people say move gameplay on such as BotW, I wasn’t that bothered about..

[DisturbedSwan]

Even though I do love Indie games and they’re definitely more innovative than some AAA titles they just don’t really hit the same spot for me.

 

I’m buying a PS5 Day 1 (as long as I can get one) for Sony’s 1P next-gen output. I wanna play Horizon 2, God of War 2, Uncharted 5 and Spider-Man 2 amongst others possibly in the pipeline and there’s only 1 place I’ll be able to play ‘em. It’s an investment in the future of games for me, especially as my PC is getting long in the tooth at this point.

[Maryokutai]

For me there's absolutely no need to buy a Sony console in the first 18 to 24 months of their shelf life. They usually release a couple of solid high quality first-party games for their systems but none of them come out early in the system's lifespan. Considering that both Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch launch their biggest games of this generation mere months before PS5 comes out and that God of War and Spider-Man are barely two years old there's really not much that's going to happen early on. Even Guerilla might not be ready until at least mid 2021.

 

I bought both the PS3 and the PS4 approximately two years after launch and I didn't feel like I missed much. Will probably do it the same way again unless they somehow pull a Street Fighter VI out of Capcom at launch which I highly doubt.

[DisturbedSwan]

I kind of agree  @Maryokutai but I want it in my hands as soon a possible, despite the games not being there at launch (possibly, we don’t know yet this time around) I wanna experience all the 3rd party games running on new systems and whatever launch exclusives Sony have up their sleeve. 
 

As Sony will have exclusives at launch whereas Microsoft is putting everything out cross-gen for at least the other two years there is - for me at least - more compelling reasons there (in games that are otherwise in accessible) to get one at launch if you’re as inpatient for new tech as I am ?.
 

We’ve not seen the launch games yet, the PS2 had a rather good launch lineup if I remember rightly, the PS3 and PS4 not so much. I’m not willing to write anything off before they’ve been announced. Sony haven’t even announced a 1P AAA title since 2017 so they could have a stacked deck, we won’t know until they let us. 
 

I just hope the Demon’s Souls Remake rumour is true most of all, I don’t think a new Ratchet and Clank at launch is out of the realms of possibility either.

[DisturbedSwan]

PS5 Reveal Event on June 4th to feature ‘An entire slate of games. A lot.’
 

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PlayStation 5 Reveal Event To Have An Entire Slate Of Games. that’s according to Jeff Grubb who posted on also Twitter a slew of events for the rest of the summer. Last week Microsft held an Inside XBOX event that promised to show off next-gen gameplay. Although it did, in fact, show off games coming to next-gen it left a lot of gamers kind of underwhelmed.

 

In his list of events, Jeff Grubb has “Slate of PlayStation” set for June 4th, 2020. This is the same date that has been rumored for the PlayStation 5 reveal for a while now. When responding to a fan Jeff Grubb clarifies that the State of PlayStation “Should be an entire slate of games. A lot. Whether this is all PlayStation 5 titles or some PS4 titles as well is something we’ll have to wait and see.

 

 

[mmmark]

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Maryokutai]

Taking the initiative. Would be nice if true, Microsoft's showcase in July is still so far away.

[DANGERMAN]

they did say they had one coming soon. 

 

The downside to there being no E3 is that I've no idea when any of this stuff is happening, these direct style things never stay in my head

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[DisturbedSwan]

GamesIndustry.Biz: Sony's Jim Ryan: “It's time to give fans something that can only be enjoyed on PlayStation 5”
 

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"A great deal has happened since we last spoke. Terrible things happening in the world, which puts everything that you and I do into context. You have to measure all this conversation against that."

 

Sony Interactive Entertainment's president and CEO Jim Ryan wants to give us an update on where things are with PlayStation. We spoke to him in November last year about the firm's ambitions for PlayStation 5. Back then, PS5's biggest threat was its competitors, now it's biggest challenge is launching during a time of immense economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 crisis. 

 

Is it going to be delayed? Will big games miss the launch? Is it going to just arrive in select markets?

 

Ryan wants to put that uncertainty to rest. PS5 will launch this year globally, and its first-party games are on schedule. But that doesn't mean it's been business as usual for the console maker. 

Jim Ryan, PlayStation

 

"It's been a real rollercoaster of a year," Ryan tells us. "We realised a couple of months ago that we were going to have to spend a lot more time paying attention to the PS4 community than we had anticipated, as that community, along with everybody else in the world, went into lockdown. 
 

"We have devoted a lot of effort to making sure out network works. I am really proud of what we've done there. The days when Sony was criticised for the resilience of its networking activity, that should be consigned to history. The levels of engagement are just off the radar screen, both in terms of the number of people and the amount of time that they are playing. And the network has stood up just fine. 
 

"We are going to get The Last of Us Part II out at the end of next month, and we're going to get Ghost of Tsushima out the month after that. And both with only small delays. And really, they were delays that were born out of complete uncertainty about the distribution scenario when we had to pull the trigger. It was like the world was heading into this big black hole, and we didn't know whether the internet would be working, we didn't know whether warehouses would be able to operate. So we took the cautious approach. But the games are ready to go and we are feeling really good about them. 
 

"And then there was the Play At Home initiative, where we made a couple of games available for, well, everybody, but with particular relevance to those who are financially strapped.

 

"But we are obviously principally occupied with getting ready for PS5. I think most businesses would find themselves challenged with the working-from-home environment, and I do think the way that the various groups within PlayStation have responded has been magnificent. There are the hardware engineers who are having to work without being able to get into China, where PS5 will be assembled. That's kind of tough.
 

The software engineers who are building these great features, who are building a great PS5 UI... some of that can be readily done in isolation. But when it comes to putting it all together, that's not easy to do remotely and they're doing a great job. 
 

"And finally, the people who make games. We, and our partners, seem to be coping really well. And so we are on track. We are going to launch this holiday and we're going to launch globally. We're really looking forward to it and it's going to be a blast."

 

"It was like the world was heading into this black hole, and we didn't know if the internet would be working, or if warehouses would operate." 
 

Back when we spoke to Ryan in the before times,he spoke about the transition between PS4 and PS5 happening "at a scale and pace that we've never delivered before."

 

He says that ambition remains the same. Yet with the possibility of a deep recession, surely that poses a challenge when trying to sell a high-priced piece of consumer electronics?

 

"Recent history has told us that gaming is one of the pastimes, and one of the businesses, that benefits in economically difficult times," Ryan suggests. "It's quite logical, people don't have the money to go out so they stay at home. Now, who knows how this recession is going to look, how deep it will be and how long it will last. It could be that the historic templates, the historic models, that have applied in the past may not apply in the future.

 

"I think the best way that we can address this is by providing the best possible value proposition that we can. I don't necessarily mean lowest price. Value is a combination of many things. In our area it means games, it means number of games, depth of games, breadth of games, quality of games, price of games... all of these things and how they avail themselves of the feature set of the platform."

 

As with each new generation, there is a pressure to find a large audience quickly. The Unreal 5 demo from earlier this month showed what PS5 is capable of, but creating such a project looked expensive. 
 

PS4 sales have spiked since the lockdown

"I think, to the extent that the technology enables the graphics side of it to become more interesting and life-like, [the games] will become slightly more human intensive and capital intensive to produce," Ryan notes. "So yes, we think there probably will be an increase in development budgets. We don't see it as being a massive increase, and that's why we want to do more faster than we have ever done before, to provide a fertile install base for people who make games to be able to monetise against. If we can keep pace with a likely increase in development costs, then the industry can continue to prosper."

 

The speed in which players adopt PS5 is important, but Sony does have that 100 million-plus PS4 install base to fall back on. And that install base is growing, with console sales jumping up since the lockdown began worldwide. 

"We have always felt that we had a responsibility to serve that [PS4] community for several years after the launch of PS5 and that it represented a huge business opportunity for us," Ryan says. "The numbers are quite straightforward. If you say in broad brush figures that we have a community of 100 million PS4 owners right now, and in the first couple of years... I don't know, somewhere between 15 and 25 million might migrate to PS5, that still leaves a huge number of people with PS4s. And that community is demonstrating an amazing stickiness, and willingness to stay engaged that, I think, the events of the past few months have just reinforced what we knew already. 
 

"But it's certainly been eye opening. Whether it's because we had a big spike in PlayStation Plus subscriptions, we make sure that that proposition remains interesting and that people want to renew. Or whether it's because all of these people have got their PlayStations back out over the last couple of months, so we try to find a way to make them want to go and buy The Last of Us: Part II or Ghost of Tsushima. I don't think we've learnt stuff that's completely new, but everything is very definitely amplified."

 

One way to keep PS4 users engaged would be to make upcoming PS5 games playable on the older machine, just like Microsoft is proposing with its Xbox Series X games being playable on Xbox One. Yet Ryan says that's not something PlayStation is interested in doing. 

"We have always said that we believe in generations. We believe that when you go to all the trouble of creating a next-gen console, that it should include features and benefits that the previous generation does not include. And that, in our view, people should make games that can make the most of those features.

 

"We do believe in generations, and whether it's the DualSense controller, whether it's the 3D audio, whether it's the multiple ways that the SSD can be used... we are thinking that it is time to give the PlayStation community something new, something different, that can really only be enjoyed on PS5."

 

The DualSense controller is one of the new features of PS5

The marketing challenge for Sony is showing off these new features. The big game expos are cancelled this year (or are expected to be) and it's hard to imagine players being eager to share controllers in a retail store while there's this virus in the world.

 

"Obviously the shows, whether it's GDC, PAX, E3, Gamecom... they've all gone," Ryan says. "We have to live in a world where that particular oxygen isn't available to the industry. It's not available to PlayStation or anybody else. We just have to come up with ways to communicate what we're doing, and try and engender the same level of adrenaline, excitement, buzz that we get with thousands of people in an auditorium in Los Angeles. And do that somehow remotely. 
 

"That's the challenge I've set: try to get the community as excited as if they were in the E3 auditorium" 

 

"That's the challenge I've set the teams: try to get that community, the 100 million people -- and all of the people who don't have a PlayStation we'd like to talk to -- just as excited as if they were in the E3 auditorium, or if they were watching the stream."

 

Another potential challenge for PlayStation is the impact the lockdown may have on physical retail. There has been an acceleration in games being downloaded since retail shops have had to close, which is potentially troubling for a company that relies on retailers to sell their physical consoles and accessories. But Ryan has actually been reassured by the sales he's seen in the physical space. 
 

"Obviously, the content distribution model is shifting from physical to digital. We, along with everybody else, has seen a blip upwards in that over the course of the last two to three months. But equally, over the last two to three months our traditional retail partners have been doing really well in our category. I am just amazed at the number of PS4s that we are able to sell in stores that I understood to be closed."

 

Not every part of the games industry has been pandemic proof, of course. Last month, PlayStation opened a $10 million fund in an effort to help indie developers, with 100 studios about to receive some vital finance. 
 

"I am just amazed at the number of PS4s that we are able to sell in stores that I understood to be closed" 

 

"I know a lot of indies from my time working in London, I know that community quite well," Ryan begins. "Some of these guys... I know how they work, I know how they're capitalised, or how they're not capitalised. It must be tough. It's easy for me sitting here with someone paying my salary. But if you're an indie with not much money in the bank, and you've got a game that might be within touching distance of getting made and getting published, but you're running out of cash... that's a pretty rough situation to find yourself in. Of all the stakeholders in the industry who are probably worthy of support, they'll be pretty close to the top of my list."

 

[DisturbedSwan]

I think the key piece of info from that is that PS5 games won’t run on PS4, so no cross-gen stuff like Microsoft is doing, PS5 games can only be played on PS5.

 

And yeah, the controller definitely looked black in that video, it could be just cause it was dark though, difficult to make out. It wouldn’t be the first time a console had different colours at launch but I still think it’ll be white.

[Maf]

Very exciting. Hopefully get to see some cool console features and some proper gameplay videos as well. Think this is a real chance for Sony to swoop in and kick Xbox straight in the nuts after their shambles last month

[DisturbedSwan]

Looks like Thursday’s event will just be focusing on games
 

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With each generation, from the first PlayStation to PlayStation 4, we aim higher and we push the boundaries further, to try and deliver better experiences for our community. This has been the mission of the PlayStation brand for more than 25 years. A mission I have been a part of nearly since the beginning.  

 

There are few things as exciting as the launch of a new console. While this road to launch has been a bit…different, we are as thrilled as ever to bring you with us on this journey to redefine the future of videogames.

 

We’ve shared technical specifications and shown you the new DualSense wireless controller. But what is a launch without games? 

 

That’s why I’m excited to share that we will soon give you a first look at the games you’ll be playing after PlayStation 5 launches this holiday. The games coming to PS5 represent the best in the industry from innovative studios that span the globe. Studios, both larger and smaller, those newer and those more established, all have been hard at work developing games that will showcase the potential of the hardware. 

 

This digital showcase will run for a bit more than an hour and, for the first time, we will all be together virtually experiencing the excitement together. A lack of physical events has given us an amazing opportunity to think differently and bring you on this journey with us, and hopefully, closer than ever before. This is part of our series of PS5 updates and, rest assured, after next week’s showcase, we will still have much to share with you.