PlayStation Meeting 2013

[King Ellis]

Watch Dogs is on everything, pretty much. 360/PS3/PS4/Wii U/PC.

[Dan]

Ugh. That'll hold it back.

[King Ellis]

Maybe. Since the big thing was how it was running on advanced PC's at E3 last year and again last night, you'd imagine that the PC will be the definitive version. With 360 meant to be easy to port to and the PS4 is being billed as pretty much a PC in disguise, they should probably be fine too. It's just the PS3 that has the reputation of being a nightmare to do stuff for and I don't know what the deal is with the Wii U since it's only been out five minutes.

MEANWHILE

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida just told our friends at Engadget current-gen PSN purchases won't transfer across to the PS4.

I have like one thing I've paid for, plus the smattering of freebies from the PSN incident but for people who've paid however many tens, hundreds of £/$'s, this might be a big deal.

Does make me kind of worried for 360 though since I have a metric fuck ton of XBLA games. Different situation since Sony has had a hardware shift but still...

[thatshortguy]

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida just told our friends at Engadget current-gen PSN purchases won't transfer across to the PS4.

Not buying it, unless they plan on re-re-releasing all of the PS1/PS2 "classics" they have now. If that's the plan, then intercourse all of this.

[Maxx]

Maybe. Since the big thing was how it was running on advanced PC's at E3 last year and again last night, you'd imagine that the PC will be the definitive version. With 360 meant to be easy to port to and the PS4 is being billed as pretty much a PC in disguise, they should probably be fine too. It's just the PS3 that has the reputation of being a nightmare to do stuff for and I don't know what the deal is with the Wii U since it's only been out five minutes.

MEANWHILE

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida just told our friends at Engadget current-gen PSN purchases won't transfer across to the PS4.

I have like one thing I've paid for, plus the smattering of freebies from the PSN incident but for people who've paid however many tens, hundreds of £/$'s, this might be a big deal.

Does make me kind of worried for 360 though since I have a metric fuck ton of XBLA games. Different situation since Sony has had a hardware shift but still...

There's no reason purchases shouldn't be able to transfer over to the new Xbox, especially with how much they've been pushing cloud storage.

[Crybaby Bunting]

If data content doesn't transfer over with either console then I'm going to pick up a steam box and skip this generation until the 'winner' is under £200

I've got too much content to just leave behind and forget about forever.

[apsham]

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida just told our friends at Engadget current-gen PSN purchases won't transfer across to the PS4.

Not buying it, unless they plan on re-re-releasing all of the PS1/PS2 "classics" they have now. If that's the plan, then intercourse all of this.

It's total bullshit either way. There's NO reason that it shouldn't move over - total and utter bullshit.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

My PS3 Watch Dogs dream has been crushed.

Highly unlikely I'll be able to afford PS4 for a while and I've got sooooo many PS3 games that it looks like I'll be trudging along with my trusty console for a time yet.

Though I say that but I picked up the PS1, PS2 and PS3 within a couple of months of launch each time.

But it hasnt Hammy! The Watch Dogs guy was on the gametrailers post show and he said it will also be on PS3!

Wahey!

[Skummy]

The social stuff is pretty cool, and the only real innovation that I liked from it. The "Spectator Mode" is genuinely great, though has potential to just dissolve into nothing but awful videos of adolescents swearing over an FPS, so it'll be interesting to see if Sony give any kind of incentive for gamers to provide something of quality.

Nintendo doing social gaming works, because they have a very friendly, hands-on image, whereas Sony are very cold and impersonal, so I can imagine it just being left up to the users to produce whatever they like, whereas I'd prefer the odd contest or suggestions being thrown out there as to what gamers should be sharing, to get the ball rolling, and to move it into a more interesting area.

The idea that load times won't exist just seems unbelievable to me. Will believe it when I see it.

The fact that they did a "reveal" press conference without even showing us the console rings alarm bells. I don't really know how to feel about that, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth if nothing else. The fact that there's no release date or price given is disappointing too, though I expect that's more a case of playing their cards close to their chest so they can undermine any announcements Microsoft might make, and that makes sense. But from a consumer perspective, and from a "major announcement press conference" perspective, it absolutely sucks.

Lack of backwards compatibility is awful, particularly if PS4 continues to use Blu-Ray. Hopefully they come up with some form of "registration" system, where you can register your PS3 games to get a free - or at the very least, discounted - download of them to play on the "Cloud". I fully expect that won't be the case, though.

Even the game reveals were nothing too special. A lot of "oooh, pretty" footage of games we already knew existed, or else were dead certs to be coming to PS4 anyway. And all very Playstation. The only surprise was Diablo 3, a game that was released last year and was largely underwhelming. Yes, it's nice that they're bringing it to a console, but it's not a game changer. There was a complete lack of innovation, or really anything more than a glorified tech demo.

Like I said earlier, HD graphics and existing franchises just are not enough to sell a new console any more. Sorry to keep banging on about the WiiU, but it's my frame of reference, and the only available "next-gen" comparison I can draw; if you look at the trailers for WiiU games, the reveal of the console, the launch titles, and pretty much everything around it, every little thing was about how the games used the hardware, what the hardware was capable of, and what you could potentially do with this hardware.

In comparison, the PS4 "reveal" was little more than shaking a shiny ball in front of you. Only they didn't even do that, they just described the shiny ball.

[deli]

The social stuff is pretty cool, and the only real innovation that I liked from it. The "Spectator Mode" is genuinely great, though has potential to just dissolve into nothing but awful videos of adolescents swearing over an FPS, so it'll be interesting to see if Sony give any kind of incentive for gamers to provide something of quality.

Nintendo doing social gaming works, because they have a very friendly, hands-on image, whereas Sony are very cold and impersonal, so I can imagine it just being left up to the users to produce whatever they like, whereas I'd prefer the odd contest or suggestions being thrown out there as to what gamers should be sharing, to get the ball rolling, and to move it into a more interesting area.

The idea that load times won't exist just seems unbelievable to me. Will believe it when I see it.

The fact that they did a "reveal" press conference without even showing us the console rings alarm bells. I don't really know how to feel about that, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth if nothing else. The fact that there's no release date or price given is disappointing too, though I expect that's more a case of playing their cards close to their chest so they can undermine any announcements Microsoft might make, and that makes sense. But from a consumer perspective, and from a "major announcement press conference" perspective, it absolutely sucks.

Lack of backwards compatibility is awful, particularly if PS4 continues to use Blu-Ray. Hopefully they come up with some form of "registration" system, where you can register your PS3 games to get a free - or at the very least, discounted - download of them to play on the "Cloud". I fully expect that won't be the case, though.

Even the game reveals were nothing too special. A lot of "oooh, pretty" footage of games we already knew existed, or else were dead certs to be coming to PS4 anyway. And all very Playstation. The only surprise was Diablo 3, a game that was released last year and was largely underwhelming. Yes, it's nice that they're bringing it to a console, but it's not a game changer. There was a complete lack of innovation, or really anything more than a glorified tech demo.

Like I said earlier, HD graphics and existing franchises just are not enough to sell a new console any more. Sorry to keep banging on about the WiiU, but it's my frame of reference, and the only available "next-gen" comparison I can draw; if you look at the trailers for WiiU games, the reveal of the console, the launch titles, and pretty much everything around it, every little thing was about how the games used the hardware, what the hardware was capable of, and what you could potentially do with this hardware.

In comparison, the PS4 "reveal" was little more than shaking a shiny ball in front of you. Only they didn't even do that, they just described the shiny ball.

Nintendo did this with the Wii U in E3 2011 and no one batted an eyelid. Microsoft did this with their Xbox 2000 reveal as well. They are saving the big guns for this years E3.

[Skummy]

I'm not familiar enough with the XBox one to comment, but in the case of the WiiU, it was at E3, so I think that's a little different. To show a teaser of what's to come as part of a trade fair is one thing, to call a press conference and still not deliver is something quite different.

[Dan]

Yeah, they have to save stuff for E3, otherwise when Microsoft show off the new Xbox, that'll be the image stuck in everyone's mind. Don't blame them for that and really, the design doesn't matter as long as it doesn't look fucking awful (the only Sony home console I've disliked the look of was the original PS3 but that was mainly due to it's size). The pad is more important as you'll be using it when playing games and they've already shown that off, I'd be much more pissed off if they showed the console but not the pad.

Last night was an initial announcement, I don't think it was a bad choice and it'll certainly be down to marketing reasons. A lot more people on the fence will be watching E3 and Sony can avoid having to go over the initial specs etc which will give them more time to show off the console itself.

In fact I'd go as far as saying last night was a brilliant idea, it gives them a head start on Microsoft, like I said they can cut some of the crap from E3 which they've already covered and it got a lot of people talking about the PS4. If they revealed everything last night, E3 would basically be Microsoft's before it began.

[deli]

I am a bit miffed that they didn't show the console. I can understand why they haven't done it.

Also, here's a quick recap for people you didn't see it last night.

[King Ellis]

Spoilers: The PS4 will probably be black, either matte or shiny. It will most likely be curved, maybe some straight edges. In all likelihood you'll forget what it looks like after day 1 because it'll spend the entirety of it's life hidden under a TV shelf our what have you.

[Dan]

Plus they'll replace it 3 or 4 times anyway

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

"It's just gonna be a black box"

Exactly. I don't care what it looks like because when I get around to buying it I'll just shove it under my telly anyway, with the DVD player, sound system and whatever the hell else I have under there.

[LL!]

Spoilers: In all likelihood you'll forget what it looks like after day 1 because it'll spend the entirety of it's life hidden under a TV shelf our what have you.

That's bullshit. You'll have to look at it to put discs inside. You fucking idiot.

Also, Spoilers: It'll be fat at the start and later on they'll introduce a new one that they put on a diet.

[thatshortguy]

Also, Spoilers: It'll be fat at the start and later on they'll introduce a new one that they put on a diet.

...for $100 more than whatever the fat one costs at the time.

I am a jaded man.

[zero]

If they gotta save the big guns for E3, why bother with this circle jerk then? Don't set up a major event like this and not unveil the thing people came to see. Yeah, it's just a box, but a car is just a car, Honda's not going to unveil the new Civic without showing it.

The social aspect could help us finally set up a proper wrestling game league. And with WWE now under the umbrella of a confident company, I'm pretty excited about that.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

They unveiled the controller and everything the box does.

Don't you think they want something new to show any e3?