http://news.yahoo.com/playstation-4-games-warn-ps-style-surveillance-135426994.html kinda reminds me of how MS' kinect may work on the "720" I keep seeing one too many reasons to oppose both systems
The PlayStation Meeting: Under the Microscope
Kevin VanOrd and Martin Gaston go head to head on whether or not the PlayStation 4 announcement was a success.
The PlayStation Meeting: A Giant Leap Towards Nowhere In Particular
by Martin Gaston, News Editor Follow
On Wednesday, as Sony unveiled its PlayStation 4 in New York, an assembled trove of developers leapt one-by-one to Sony's stage before muttering about the creative constraints of old technology in their multimillion dollar productions of yesterday. They were here to pledge their total allegiance to Sony's new machine, and their current multi-multimillion dollar productions of the future. This overlong sales pitch was, perhaps unsurprisingly, very much a case of down with the old, and in with the new, the social, and the innovative: the PlayStation 4.
Before long the ceaseless procession of executive prattle became so cloying it seemed like the PlayStation 4 was being designed to transmogrify simple button inputs into intense bursts of concentrated adrenaline, but perhaps this is to be expected from any product launch in today's hyperbolic technology industry. The PlayStation 4 was to be such a leap of innovation and creativity, intimated Sony with its mighty buzzwords and rhetoric, that its gamers/consumers (that's us) would end up so empowered by such rousing sentiment that we might as well stomp our PlayStation 3's into a dozen pieces this very second.
Don't Panic: The Hardware Was Exciting
At times, underneath the thick layers of honeyed narration, the idea of the PlayStation 4 felt perfectly designed for the future. Perhaps the most significant symbol of the whole night, in retrospect, was Mark Cerny announcing his own game Knack. Admittedly Knack hardly amazed, but the sight of the PlayStation 4's lead systems architect using the fruits of the machine's engineering labour to make a genuine video game is about a hundred million miles away from spirit of the PlayStation 3. Seven years ago Sony embarked on an ill-fated decision to snub developers by opting for a wholly confusing and awkward system architecture that managed to baffle some of the world's most talented coding minds, and the company was clearly working overtime to assure developers that such an action was not happening again.
Other features, too, left a good impression. Having a part of the machine dedicated to background downloading will help fix one of Sony's most oft-criticised mistakes of the PlayStation 3. Making the PlayStation Store more immediate and predictive should help developers with the problem of visibility in these increasingly-crowded digital marketplaces. And the Share button, as far as I'm concerned, will likely become one of the most oft-used parts of the console for today's new generation of gamers who digest a vast majority of their gaming media from Let's Play videos.
The more I think about the specifics of what Sony announced, the more excited I get. The PlayStation 4 could quite easily end up an utterly fantastic machine, and Sony seems to be doing its best to shed the problems that have afflicted it for the last generation. I'm hugely excited to see the finished product.
Panic: Where's The Software?
But for all these laudable new features, what was the first harvest of software from Sony's latest machine? The exhibited nuggets of Sony's developer-led, developer-focused, developer-friendly mentality managed to produce, at first glance, some of the finest examples of box-ticking, laundry list games publishing I've seen since the last time new hardware was announced.
Sony's Evolution Studios took to the stage to say that it's taken a decade for technology to catch up with their dreams of making a social-led driving game, one which could integrate the very kind of social features we've been seeing and using in driving games for the last four years; Sucker Punch presented another entry in the inFamous series; and Guerrilla Games stood up to present a visually stunning demo of Killzone: Now With Blue Skies And Ropes, albeit one which proudly exhibited almost every single trope of the modern first-person shooter in the first three minutes of screentime.
The folks at Sony in charge of actually making the games seem to lack the same conviction of those presenting the hardware. Before the show I fully expected Guerilla Games to unveil a new IP for a new hardware generation, free from the stigma of their dampening Killzone franchise, at the very time in a console's lifecycle where new IP has its very best chance to flourish and thrive. It's a massive shame it didn't, though of course Killzone looks like a real work of technical accomplishment from the engineers at Guerilla.
Ubisoft knows the power of new IP better than most, having ran away with E3 2012 by showing off Watch Dogs for the first time. Carried aloft on this wave of hype, Ubisoft managed to steal the show once again with its second showing. While it was fantastic to get another glimpse at one of the most promising upcoming games, Watch Dogs is hardly a system seller--I'd be utterly amazed if we don't see the game again as soon as Microsoft decides to announce its next Xbox. The same goes for the other third-parties on show.
I find it very hard to feel particularly positive about a game titled DriveClub, though its gorgeous aesthetic managed to pique my interest. The game feels like SCEA's shot across the bows of Gran Turismo developer Polyphony Digital. with Sony's American publishing arm likely wanting a successful racing franchise it can crank out at a bare minimum of every other year, and Polyphony Digital only managing one entry in its vaunted Gran Turismo series for the entire lifespan of the PS3 thus far. DriveClub is a game clearly more about franchise and function rather than form, and that's fine. But it's hardly exciting.
Red Alert: PlayStation Move Sighting
But, still, Sony's software on show considerably let down the promise of the hardware. And then Sony decided to parade a string of its more eclectic developers to validate the machine's innovative credentials. An intriguing presentation by Jonathan Blow gave the line-up some promise and hope, and Media Molecule were wheeled out to remind us that nobody, nobody at all, cares even remotely about the PlayStation Move.
Between the two was time for Heavy Rain director David Cage to confidently dismiss an iconic, medium-defining movie--1903's The Great Train Robbery, considered a milestone of filmmaking--before singling out the need for emotion in the next-generation of games and showing a floating old man's head as if it was the missing piece in gaming's puzzle. In many ways Cage was inadvertently retreading the same path Sony took in 1999 when it unveiled the PlayStation 2, its Emotion Engine processor, and another floating old man's head as a tech demo. Cage, in his attempts to convince us of the future, ended up reminding me about the past, though he was by no means the only one guilty of this during Sony's PlayStation 4 unveiling. The more things change, it seems…
417 comments
Honestly, I don't mind buying the PS2 and PS1 games all over again if I can download them onto the PS4 system. I still have my PS2, and I'll be keeping my backwards compatible PS3 for as long as it keeps working.
Kevin, perhaps Gakai will work for you, as you live in a big city in the USA. I wonder how good it will work to the majority of PS customers that will suffer the lag for being too far from the servers. Personally, streaming will not work in my location. As such, Sony is offering a poor producte as the ps4 will not run all the software I already purchased from their service and will offer only a small upgrade in graphics. I will do better with my ps3, especially because it seems most developers will keep supporting it.
@Ronaldo27 The streaming will work very similar to how Netflix works on the console. As long as you subscribe to a remotely decent internet service, you shouldn't have too much of a problem.
@Vodoo @Ronaldo27 until you realize that unlike Netflix, you have to take ping into account. You can have netflix streaming smoothly at 600 ping, you the viewer are not making inputs, just viewing content. It doesnt matter how long of a delay there is between content delivery and it appearing on your screen as long as it is all synced at the end. When you take into account that playing a game requires precision input from a controller, having even 20-50ms of delay on pushing a button or moving an analog stick and having that actually HAPPEN on screen can be extremely jarring. Just take for example how many people were up in arms over controller lag in killzone 2. Blogs were made, large gaming media companies like gamespot devoted whole pieces to the issue. Sites ran videos of high frame rate footage showing under 20ms delay between a controller press and the subsequent in game movement delay... and that was under 20ms. Imagine having to connect to a remote server where you are likely going to experience a minimum of 50 or so ping due to your location and distance from the content server. Then add in the small delay of transmitting to the TV and then add in the small 2-3 ms delay of input from the wireless controller. Suddenly something that works ... like say netflix, turns into an unresponsive mess of a game, especially in precision gaming like racing, shooters, etc. It doesn't matter your bandwidth, or how good it looks, what will make or break this technology, like OnLive before it, is ping and latency, and currently the only way to fix that is to have a large amount of dataservers available at all locations around any specific country, something that is expensive and unlikely to happen. Enjoy using Gaikai in say, Idaho.
@Vodoo @Ronaldo27 My local connection is fine but I live in South America, far from any Gakai server. Netflix service works fine because my AppleTV keep a memory cache to compensate any instability in the streaming. This will not work in a game as it will have to respond to the commands I will be inputing. The same problem will occur in most smaller cities all around the world. In the end, customers will have an uneven service that will work fine in some major centers but not everywhere else.
1 Like I really think the touch pad on the controller will be revolutionary. Imagine if you had this in sleeping dogs for all the safe cracking and hacking it would have been fun instead of annoying and clunky. Not sure how it works yet but if it accepts swipe gestures it could be used to navigate menus ect. which would also be much better than a clunky analog controller. As a xbox user right now I hope microsoft add a feture like this on their controller. I wouldnt be suprised if the d-pad becomes a touch pad on the xbox. If not I think it will be an epic fail on their part. Sitting on the fence for this generation so I leave it to them to impress me so far sony has my attention.
3 Like If you're not impressed with - Trying new games out for free instantly, taking a game over for a friend to help them, -downloading games in the background instantly/as you play them thus severely reducing/eliminating load times, -uploading game video with the press of a button. --Suspending and resuming a game without loading?- Remote play with vita, smart phones, tablets? - Something is wrong with you as a gamer. I didnt mention the touch pad or move or eye or social networking crap but the other AWESOME features some of you are pretending dont exist!
As far as Software, in what decade has Sony NOT delivered? By my count they once again had the most and best variety of exclusives over MS.
Square and Nintendo. Two companies that need to stop trying to relive their hay day. Get out there and CREATE!
2 Like @JukedSolid Well Nintendo is sort of the whole reason the kinect and move were created in the first place. Their hold on very large portion of otherwise untapped market (pretty much anybody could play the Wii) facilitated the growth of the motion control in modern gaming. At least that's how I see it ha ha. I totally see where you're coming from though.
@sknight175216 @JukedSolid Yes, Nintendo is to blaim for the downfall of modern gaming. Sony & Microsoft saw how the Wii sold and tried to make their version of the Wii, while in the process completely ruining gaming for core gamers. Burn Nintendo, burn! But fear not... Nintendo will soon be making games for Sony & Microsoft.
@Vodoo Why blame Nintendo for the actions of Microsoft and Sony. They weren't forced by Nintendo to make motion controls, they simply wanted a piece of a successful market. That being said, how are motion controls ruining gaming?
@Vodoo @sknight175216 @JukedSolid You think so? Don't forget about their handhelds though, and how popular Nintendo is in Japan.
The Playstation 4 showing did nothing at all to rouse my want to get their next system.
Ooh more Move no one asked for, more social interaction like Facebook no one asked for, sequels to established IPs and other games that are those IPs with different names that only the fanboys would ask for.
Next gen is already shaping up to be this gen but with more polygons, more higher definition of shades of brown and grey, and with much bigger budgets behind games; meaning the devs and pubs are going to whine all the time when their games dont hit the 5M sales quota just to break even.
Do I think the PS4 is impressive hardware wise? Sure, but I need to see more than brown and guns to be convinced that it is worth it.
Also, other than the Vita/PS4 connection, I thought the PS4 presentation was a MAJOR fail. The average gamer doesn't care about RAM. Doesn't care about teraflops of computing. All the technobabble, and then a few CGI cutscenes from games that aren't the major franchises (Killzone is close to a major franchise, but not quite there). Capcom had a chance to save it, but then showed some stupidly ridiculous knight thing. And what was with showing the old man for emotions? I couldn't see ANY emotion in that face. He looked like he just had a stroke. VERY Poor conference overall.
And Sony set the mood poorly too, by gifting random people $10 in the PSN store then thanking those people for their loyalty, but totally ignoring people who have spent hundreds in the PSN store, who have been registered as members since 2007. Sony pissed a LOT of people off, and sent them to the calming, loving embrace of Microsoft.
2 Like @tmarbleii Only the ones that can afford to spend the most on PSN should get the random gifts then? It wouldnt be very random then, would it?
I assume that even some high spenders got random gifts. If they didn't, then Im with you.
And for the record, most of the game footage we saw was not CGI movies, they were actual ingame renderings, even though some of it was from scripted sequences.
What's wrong with kid-friendly minigames? I think that's an untapped audience for Sony, that they should try to get a piece of the action. I know MANY families that want a PS3 to unclutter their livingrooms (wii for gaming, roku for streaming, blu ray player for movies) but went with the wii because it has games for kids, whereas the PS3 only has Ratchet and Sly Cooper. Two games does not a family system make.
giant leap to nowhere ? is gamespot staff trolling ? Im not even playstation owner this gen because i felt ps3 didnt worth my money but damn im excited with ps4.
what else you wanted to hear mr martin ? Make you pizza and coffee while you playing ? I dont get you ...Is this a serious gamespot article i wonder...
I thought they did show us the tools available to create new ideas, which is more important than just showing 1 already made idea that could potentially serve as a limiting factor (companies thinking that yeah so thats what its for) instead.
* Live video stream: Bug report tool through youtube, taunt/annoy friends with kill shots on them, etc.
* Touch pad: A laptop style mouse for multiple uses , scroll a game map, adjust things in the UI, etc.
* Move light on the DualShock: adjust ingame view direction, and, err.. I cant think of anything else :p
Just some thoughts from 2 mins of thinking. Some compiled of ideas I saw others write.
Ofcourse, most of this is just gimmick ideas, and frankly I wouldnt know how any of it would translate in the real world when tested. I think the ideas of the live video stream and the laptop mouse cursor feature is the ones that could stick, but the Move thing kinda feels like a fun but pointless feature, possibly because im limited in what I already know about the usage of Move, which isnt much. And my lack of imagination with it ofcourse.
Man when people like Martin saying this is a GIANT LEAP TO NOWHERE , is a big statement there... Read Kevins article and you will understand what im saying .
To say a giant leap to nowhere to a console that provide some gimmicks controls that casuals love , a solid hardware for next gen games , way better architecture for developers , so many companies working already on PS4 games , show off some next-gen titles that coming on console ( even if are not the best , they are actually new games ) ... you calling this a GIANT LEAP TO NOWHERE ?!!
Is this martin guy forget that we are talking about CONSOLES and not PCs ? Consoles arent all about games ? If PS4 is a giant leap to nowhere with so many new optios for gamers what Wii U is then by MArtins logic ? A giant leap backwards?
Just go read Kevins article .. This martin guy is out of his mind. period. I cant think a single reason why PS4 should be GIANT LEAP TO NOWHERE ?!! Really ? Nowhere? Worst article i read in gamespot since 2004 i first came. And im not even a Sony fan to begin with.
1 Like Msfanboyspot.com Anything Sony is immediately bashed. Their system specs and technology are great and worthy to be excited about. That's the bottom line. MS will have a worse system and GS will sing it's praises because they like the powerpoint presentation better.
2 Like @judahstarguy Did you notice that there were two takes in this article? I spent the vast majority of my portion praising what we saw. Even Martin in his second opinion praised the hardware a great deal. I don't know what you're on about.
@judahstarguy I'm a fan of Sony products. Always have been. I think the PS3 was and is a great device. It was great when it came out and it's great now, not simply as a game system but as a media hub. If I only watch films on it I would still use it every day.
Their tech has always been great. But the shark has jumped due to an old way of thinking.
And I'm sorry. In today's world, a product announcement without a product is simply NOT exceptable. It just isn't.
@focuspuller I would consider this a product preview rather than announcment.
Why does it have to be black and white? We learnt a great deal of useful information about the system and it's possible features. IMO, it's better to get what we got rather than nothing until November when the product is final and ready for release. It gives developers and consumers a greal deal of time to take in and respond to it before the window is closed as far as input goes.
Frankly, how the console looks is much less important than what it does.
Square Enix could have been a bit wiser though with their announcement about announcing something later this year - that's just plain stupid.
@focuspuller well sounds about right we get announcements about announcements now, they're actually becoming quite frequent lately it seems
1 Like @CaptainGamespot I second that.
And I'm sorry, this is the second decade of the 21st Century. They really think talk is enough? Apple has shown a product at EVERY announcement since the mac. And ALL were shown working.
The emperor is not wearing any cloths.
"All games are downloadable". That's a deal. FYI: Do you know guys that I bought the ps3 thinking that was already true? That I could directly download games (so I don't have to search for the game I want from one mall to the other). When I learned it wasn't, I kept wondering what people do with the hard drive space of the ps3. The ps3 is some kind of freak machine. The PS4 is the real thing.
@vatorus Considering that this is an article about the PS4 and it's features, do you think that he should have just bashed it because it wasn't and xbox or pc, and write that it simply sucks even though he thinks otherwise?
At least they TRY to be objective as much as possible, instead of ruling it out based on comparisation with something that doesn't exist yet.
You yourself is most likely either a fanboy or a hater. Possibly both.
Some people should be forced to take a license to be able to connect to internet... sheesh.
9 Like @vatorus Did you notice above how I was called an MS fanboy? I wonder--do trolls cancel each other out? If we put people on opposite sides of the system war into a small room, is it like when you combine an acid and an alkaline? Would there be an explosion, and only a mess of water and salts left behind?
Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't it be realistically improbable / impossible for PS4 to have backwards compatibility? Considering their new chips are now x86_64 architectures, wouldn't this mean a complete re-compile from the source code from PS3 games to actually work?
@skittzo_s Correct, if you want to run the game native. Software emulation is not an option, because PS4 simply isnt fast enough.
However, Ive been thinking about this subject a bit, andthe only possible solution that I could come up with is if you create a true software emulator program (with 100% compbaility guaranteed), then recompile the game with that emulator and store the new game executable(s), so that it runs with native x64 code instead.
It could run with less overhead than a run-time software emulation, but Cell/RSX specific optimization would probably be lost in the process and most likely make the game run worse than the original. Also, system specific stuff for timing/synchronization, threads (multicore) and whatnot, could be major headaches to overcome.
It's not a small task to emulate a PS3. The older consoles is in a different league really, because they are much slower and less complicated.
@mike9876543210 @Eldeorn You sure? Sorry mate but you are incorrect in how threading works on a CPU. Threads on the AMD cpu is the same as they are on an intel, they are not executed at the same time. They share the core, running chunks/slices in a serial manner managed by the CPU itself. Each thread gets a certain ammount of time to run before next takes over. 64 actual parrarell threads is way off what current tech is capable of. Only one core each can execute code at the same time as the other 7.
The effect of multithreading on a single core LOOKS like they are running simultainiously, but they are in fact not.
@Eldeorn each of the ps4's cores can run 64 threads at a time so it can run a total of 512 threads of data at a speed of 1.8GBps
Indeed, its not eight true cores like the PS4 has. The SPE's can only run 1 thread each.
Im treading into unknown waters here a bit, but can modern cores execute more than one instruction at a time? (apart from certain code instructions that indeed are parrarell that is)
@Eldeorn@mike9876543210@skittzo_sanother fun fact. In November 2010 the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) created a powerful supercomputer by connecting together 1,760 Sony PS3s which include 168 separate graphical processing units and 84 coordinating servers in a parallel array capable of performing 500 trillion floating-point operations per second (500 TFLOPS). As built the Condor Cluster was the 33rd largest supercomputer in the world and would be used to analyze high definition satellite imagery. considering the ps4 has been predicted to run at 1.84 TPLOPS, just over 300 ps4 connected together would be more powerful than 1,760 ps3's connected together.
@mike9876543210@Eldeorn@skittzo_sThe CPU runs at 240 GFLOPS on PS3. On PS4 its the GPU running on 1.84.
"Single-chip custom processor, with eight x86-64 AMD Jaguar CPU cores and 1.84 TFLOPS next-gen AMD Radeon based graphics engine" <--- 1.84 radeon graphics engine.
The CPU part is not that fast.
@Eldeorn@mike9876543210@skittzo_sthe ps3 doesn have an eight core processor, it has a 3.2 GHz PowerPC based Power Processing Element with 6 accessible Synergistic Processing Elements, and a seventh runs the OS and security software. and the eith is to improve production yeilds. the ps3 can run at a maximum of 230.4 GFLOPS while the ps4 can run at a predicted 1.84 TPLOPS
@mike9876543210 @Eldeorn @skittzo_s because those 8 cores have to emulate another really fast and extremely different 8 core processor that is Cell. Plus it also has to emulate everything else on top of the CPU, including GPU calls (relay them) and the system specific stuff like OS calls, file system, and so on.
@mike9876543210 @skittzo_s The only way to make it backward compatible is to download PS1, 2 and 3 games from the PS4 Store.
@skittzo_s @Eldeorn They most likely will, considering that they've had 8 yeras now to modify, modernize and improve the toolset.
If they are better than Sony's or not is something we will have to see later on obviously, but if Sony's new tools are as great as people claim them to be, MS do have their work cut out for them. I don't doubt that they will succeed though.
@Eldeorn @skittzo_s ahh see i thought 360 was x86, i didnt look it up and took a shot in the dark, Microsoft must provide better developer tools in that case for being praised in better to code for.
@Eldeorn@skittzo_sthe xbox's cpu is quite similar to the ps3's, it is based on an IBM PowerPC instruction set architecture, consisting of three independent processor cores on a single die. These cores are slightly modified versions of the PPE in the Cell processor used on the PlayStation 3. Each core has two symmetric hardware threads (SMT), for a total of six hardware threads available to games. Each individual core also includes 32 KiB of L1 instruction cache and 32 KiB of L1 data cache.
@skittzo_s@EldeornI don't really know much about how PowerPC on 360 differs from x86, but they are defenitly not the same. I've heard that PowerPC has a good ability to emulate other CPUs, but the other way around is another question. The GPU is an ATI (AMD), but according to sources on the web, DirectX11 is expected on the new one instead of the customized DX9 on 360.
Microsoft do have a tendency to never strip out old stuff in their Windows, so they might do the same with DirectX on the new one. Only speculations from my end though.
They might pull something out of their hat just to annoy Sony, but me personally wouldnt bet on it really. It still adds alot of overhead on the hardware, and are most likely not worth it for them. They suffer the same problems as Sony - they cant solve it with run-time emulation software alone.
@Eldeorn Thanks, I'm just going by my time in programming with C#, Java, Objective C etc. etc. and just to compile statically can take a long long time. I'm not very cluey about the architectures but after I heard PS4 will be using x86_64 cpus, it got me thinking about backwards compatibility and my own knowledge off programming and compiling (Because like on linux I compile for that cpu architecture). But this should be a win for elder scroll fans lol, considering with skyrim they said they were having trouble with the PS3's api's/sdk's etc. But i also guess this can give microsoft the advantage towards backwards compatibility though, I also guess they shouldn't have an excuse either?
@skittzo_s @Eldeorn @mike9876543210 @Baroni88 Aye, a common complaint and misconception - that PSN games is somehow different and easily transferable like they were some multiplatform builds already.
Your post is one of the few that actually reflects the reality we are facing from a realistic and logical standpoint. And a more educated one.
@Eldeorn @mike9876543210 @Baroni88 @skittzo_s My main point really was about the others complaining about collecting dust on the old PS3 games... Also they would have to pay for the game again if it was to be sold on PSN.
@mike9876543210 @Eldeorn @Baroni88 @skittzo_s Multiplatform titles might be a fair bit easier I believe. I'd guess that PS3 exclusive titles is another story though, since they probably don't have the code framework set up for porting to begin with.
Ofcourse, not all companies are keen to remake their old games to begin with unless it's very easy to do. They are too busy making new stuff.
@Eldeorn @Baroni88 @mike9876543210 @skittzo_s it did take an age for ps2 games to be ported to ps3, look at ratchet and clank, they had already released the second trilogy before releasing the ps2 hd trilogy
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Table of Contents
Destiny
Not Following
-
X360, PS3, PS4
- Category:
- Action
- Release:
- TBA 2014
