PlayStation "Meeting 2013"

Exclusive "gameplay content" for PS4, bring on the Kratos unlockable.

Well outside of small pieces here and there.. I am underwhelmed.

Well, Watch Dogs wins again for the most interesting thing shown.

Which is very very sad.. a game announced/shown a year ago is still the most interesting thing they have for a new system.

Wait, are they seriously going to do this entire show without showing off the console itself?

They've done it.

They've managed to reveal a console in worse fashion than the fucking Wii U.

Good luck building brand identity when no one knows what the thing looks like.

Bleh, no system pics. Controller looks okay though.

I wonder how many of those sown will be launch titles, and ready for the Christmas 2013 launch date.

It seems like they're trying to minimize the console itself as much as possible, treating it as nothing more than a mere hub for all your other devices, like: Tablets, Mobile Phones, Dual Shock 4, PS Move Wands, PS Vita, and god knows what else.

I mean, they blurted out some specs, but most of their enthusiasm seems to be about integration and socialization.

Kinda looking forward to what the "critics" have to say about all of this in the coming days. After all the "doom" in regards to the Wii U and all that.

Well, not actually mentioning whether it can play discs certainly sidesteps the "used games" discussion.

Watch Dogs may have potential. But after Assassin's Creed 3, I'm going to be pretty leery of any Ubisoft joint featuring foot chases.

No new Ridge Racer, no sale.

But DRIVE CLUB! Can't you smell the experience??

And I still don't know how much discipline this thing will instill in me!

They did mention X86 basis and the ram specs - not 'detailed' obviously, but I don't think it was really the place to go into APU's and Jaguar cores.

They registered the trademark like eight or nine years ago, so you know they're serious.

Well, it looks like the ball is in Microsoft's court now, but I'd say that Sony has set a pretty low bar.

Makes me wonder if they'll just hand out a Tech presser now to cover that stuff.. Or just keep it quiet until E3.

I'll give them this, at least they focused on games and game-related services and features (even the social stuff) rather than parading around a bunch of services like Netflix, Hulu, Gamer TV or whatever the fuck else. I mean, I assume that support of the rest of that stuff is just a given anyway, and I really didn't want to see any time wasted on it -- especially since there probably won't be any huge leaps forward in that dept anyway, aside from individual network feeds or something.

The NextBox announcement will include at least 30 minutes of 'Kinect Advance is a paradigm shift in how we interact with games, and the world'

What's your point? I'm happy they spent their time trying to sell it primarily as a gaming device rather than some do-it-all living room party/tv box/all-in-one entertainment center.

I like how Sony's inability to generate enthusiasm bled into both the Blizzard and Bungie dudes. It's not a game, it's a feature.

Not showing the console was shitty.

Not showing the games was shitty.

In general, this show was shitty.

I liked how the Blizzard guy greeted the audience, asked how they were doing, sat there quietly through the uncomfortable silence, and then finally continued on with his schpeel. Very well behaved collection of 1200 robots audience members.

This "reveal" really just makes me want to quit my job. I hate the current trends in gaming anymore, and this looks like it's just going to twist the knife further.

I thought it was a competent showing. Better than what Sony has done in recent past. Some reveals were underwhelming, particularly Square Enix' half-assed effort. C'mon, Sony give you the center stage and you show a year old tech demo? Oh, and that Blizzard thing, while coming out of left field, was also terribly lame. Yeah, yeah, Diablo III will sell millions on PS4, Activision shareholders are ecstatic, great.

I don't really care too much what the console will look like (as long as it's not some horrible baby face). At least we saw the controller - which is the thing people actually hold and use. And they even gave us a look at the interface, which I did not expect so early on.

I'd like Sony to do well because there needs to be competition against Microsoft. However, their track record for actually implementing network systems and such is horrible, and that seems to be the crux of the entire PS4 concept. Will their Cloud stuff actually be any good? I mean, download speeds from PSN are usually HORRIBLE.

That Blizzard thing was pure embarrassment. I mean, It's great that Sony wants to show off their partnership with Blizzard and all, but Diablo 3? I feel as enthused about buying that for a next gen console as I did for Arkham City after finding out would be on the Wii U as a full priced launch title at a time when the game was selling on Steam for like $12, and somewhere around $30 on 360/PS3.

I wonder if the cost of the fiber connection I'm going to need for all these PS4 features will be included in the price of the console. Magic 8-ball says 'No'.

Okay, I didn't see the conference. Can someone give us a bullet list of facts we know at this point?

My thoughts, collated from my social media:

• Michael Pachter tweets: "Just a guess here, but I think the PS4 just made the Wii U a last generation console . . .", I reply, "Wasn't it always?"
• 8GB of RAM on the PS4, that's pretty sweet.
• First reveal of Knack is pretty fun. I'll play it.
• My concern is that they've said nothing about the player drain away from console to social and mobile.
• Video sharing feature and spectator modes are stolen from OnLive, pretty cool.
• Making "allow spectators" opt-out instead of opt-in is really smart.
• Prior gen titles on any device is a great idea, but do I have to buy the titles again?
• Glad that Sony is recognizing that the current boot-patch delay between impulse and gaming is unacceptable.
• Confession: I always get the Killzone and the Resistance franchises confused in my head.
• I want this DriveClub guy to present everything. His passion is awesome.
• (Midway through the inFamous demo) That speech was awful, but I'm still excited about a new inFamous game. Hope that's what this is.
• I wonder if I'll misunderstand Witness like I apparently misunderstood Braid.
• The Move controller is back. And now it loves you.
• Cool ending to the Deep Down presentation: call your friends for help!
• That Final Fantasy announcement of an announcement was disappointing.
• Don't have anything to say about Watch Dogs that everyone didn't already say last year at E3.
• Diablo 3 on console is finally announced! Cheers to my friends at Blizzard.
• I am probably alone, but as a games player it's been a long time since I've cared about a console shooter.

My summary of the PS4 announcement: It's the PS3 but with more power, better online social, and many of the PS3 annoyances removed. That's the good.

The bad is that this doesn't do anything to fix the problems with console gaming. If anything it exacerbates them. The number of developers you need to pay to take advantage of that power means that you really need to make a hit or else you're not going to be profitable. Console gaming will keep being a hit-driven risk-averse market, with real innovation -- and a lot of gamers -- going to mobile devices.

Yeah, that's a big problem actually, particularly in international markets. This focus on digital distribution and such means it might not be quite as accessible or useful for certain parts of the world.

The preloading feature also had me thinking. I can't imagine every game will support that, since developers will have to waste time optimizing and frontloading chunks of the game for instant play. But at least they might not have to create demos if streaming game trials become the accepted norm.

- It's called the PlayStation 4
- Holiday 2013
- x86 processor, 8-core combined CPU/GPU, 8GB of GDDR5 memory
- No word on HDD sizes.
- There's a new Killzone
- The silly controller we saw leaked is the actual controller
- Lots of tech demos
- No native PS3 backwards compatibility
- PlayStation Cloud - allows streaming of PS, PS2 and PS3 games
- We have no idea how the PS Cloud actually works
- Has a sleep mode, with instant wake, even in-game
- Ability to play while downloading a game
- Stream video from your current game session (with a controller button!)
- Friends can comment on your game live, interact with your game live, and even take over playing your game...live
- Lots of video streaming and social apps integrated
- It tries to predict what you want to buy next (like Amazon, hm)
- The Vita is the new WiiU controller, but for the PS4

Actually it's a PC with a Metro-like interface.

Is there anything console makers can do about that though? Without reducing licensing fees/certification obviously.

They could just serve up the OnLive/Gaikai version of the game while it loads in background. When enough of the game is on your local HDD, it switches from streamed to local at the next checkpoint.

Yeah, I get what you are saying. After this gen, I place something of a premium on the company that is willing to focus on making a box to play games, that has some useful new features but NO DUMB GIMMICKS and at a REASONABLE PRICE. It has yet to be seen whether they can deliver on the second one, but at least they were focused on presenting a box for gaming, and pretty much everything discussed was in the context of "how does this affect the gaming," and it included some features that nobody will be talking about even though they are clearly going to be *useful*, like the ability to turn off the console with the game state stored in RAM, so you can instantly restore it again later, which I guarantee is going to be a lot more useful on a day to day basis than anything that ridiculous Wii U controller does. Or the touch pad on the controller, which they barely talked about but which probably has more practical application than all the waggle in the world.

So on that sense they I'm willing to cut them some slack on not dropping any crazy bombs... IF the price is right.

I don't know exactly, but XBLIG with better tools and discoverability would be a start. Instead, MS is killing XBLIG.

You are not alone.