So, E3 press conferences done and dusted, what do you think? I reckon the PS4 is onto a winner myself, no restrictions on Second hand gamines and GBP80 cheaper. I think MS might have shot itself in the foot this time, especially over the second hand gaming restrictions. Some great looking games as you’d expect, Titanfall looks especially rather cool, as does Ryse and Battlefield 4 looks bloody great. I’ve preordered both, but i suspect that unless MS do something extraordinary between now and launch date, or some of the must have games are XB exclusives, i’ll probably cancel the XB….something i didnt expect as im a total Sony-hater.

Waiting to see what Sony does on the sharing games, and 2nd hand side of things, and always-on phone-home requirements. There’s still time for them to mess it up too.

So far every Xbox1 and Xbox360 owner I know are flicking a finger at the Xbox1, and are either waiting for Sony, or declared that the era of consoles is over.

With the PS4, only disc based games can be traded and only once and it has to be to someone on your Friends list for at least 30 days.

Online play you will have to pay for with Playstation Plus.

With the PS4, only disc based games can be traded and only once and it has to be to someone on your Friends list for at least 30 days.

I thought that was xbox1’s take on second hand games.

My bad… You are totally right. 😳

PS have not released any info on 2nd hand games from what I’ve read.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kWSIFh8ICaA[/video]

Couple of things that concern me.

1) How much are next-next-gen games going to cost? I already refuse to pay upwards of £30 for a title, if they’re going to whack another £10-£20 onto the price it’s a deal-breaker for me.

2) Never mind the second-hand market, it’s going to knacker the rental market. I have a LoveFilm subscription which includes games, and it’s been brilliant for me as I’ve a tendency to really really want games and then play them three times before losing interest. Paying £30 for a title and then trading it a week later for a fiver is a mug’s game.

Didn’t have a SNES or N64 then Cougar? 🙂

£60 plus for obscure Square RPG’s was usual.
Most of the regular games cost a bleeding fortune too.

I always keep a generation ot two behind these days, to keep costs down:
Currently still using my Wii, Gamecube (still superb), PS2 (can’t get TT Superbikes on any other machine), Dreamcast (I know, I know….) and DSi XL.

I’m looking forward to getting a PS3 or 3DS XL at Christmas. 😀

Didn’t have a SNES or N64 then Cougar?

No. Games were too expensive. (And you couldn’t copy them *cough*)

There’s no need to pay £30 or more. I’m slightly obsessed with XCOM currently, only cost me £25. And my life, my marriage, my home…..

To play multiplayer on PS4 you will need to have a Playstation Plus subscription. $5 a month, $50 a year 🙁 But it’s the same basis as on the PS3, free games each month and discounts.

For the full version of the 2nd hand, game swapping thing

Called the Official Playstation Used Game Instructional Video: Step-by-step how to lend games to your friends, it is a video that shows all the steps involved in trading. There is just one step involved in sharing a game, and that involves one person passing a game to the other.
And then the instructional video finishes, and we are left with the message that it is very easy to share games.
The same cannot be said for Microsoft, where customers will have to use pre-approved retail stores to trade in their games, and where games can be passed on only once.
There are other rules, such as the fact that you have to be signed in to the game, if you want to play it on another console at a friends house.

Looks like Sony just played the trump card (after making it cheaper to start with)

To play multiplayer on PS4 you will need to have a Playstation Plus subscription. $5 a month, $50 a year

Coming from the 360, I’ve no qualms about paying a modest fee (£30/year for XBL Gold) for improved online access. I might just have been unlucky but my experiences of the PS3’s free offering have not been favourable.

Why’s that, Cougar?

The games offered on playstation plus are generous in themselves. I’ve only been on it 2 months and have downloaded 5 games already.

To play multiplayer on PS4 you will need to have a Playstation Plus subscription. $5 a month, $50 a year

That settles it. Back to PC gaming for me!

Sony also just said it will be Region-free (probably not for blu-ray though) and the HDD will be upgradeable.

They seem to be going directly for the people who moaned at the XBOne reveal.

currently, I expect my ps3 to do me for another 5 years. barely play any games these days anyhow..

AlexSimon – Member

They seem to be going directly for the people who moaned at the XBOne reveal.

Got to admire the strategy –
Get in there first with a partial announcement, leaving quite a lot left out. Wait for main competitor to give full details.
Make another announcement undercutting every possible point about competitor’s product.

😆

Looks like Sony just played the trump card (after making it cheaper to start with)

But if you look at it from the other perspective, if you were choosing which console to develop your exclusive game for, wouldn’t you choose the one that would make you some profit from the second-hand market too? And knowing that you would make some more money this way, maybe the orignal price would be cheaper.

Interesting to see how this will pan out with respect to the software companies.
Whether they’ll have any say in this with respect to either platform. I really can’t see Microsoft releasing this without some back pedalling.
Perhaps one of the big games companies will try to introduce some form of control in software for Ps4 games to leverage income from secondhand games and to level the playing field, else there’s no advantages for tthem to Microsofts approach. Everyone will buy the Sony platform, and well carry on as we are today.

Will the PS4 be 4K capable?

In a chat with Kotaku, Sony has revealed that the PlayStation 4 will be able to playback 4K/Ultra HD video. However, it will not upscale to 4K or play games at 4K resolution.
Sony has also confirmed that it will definitely launch a 4K movie service on the PS4 and is looking at ways it can get around the 100GB downloads required.
Can’t wait for 100gb movie downloads!!

Been in and out of PC games mostly but the one thing that caught my eye was Watch Dogs

Actually, can anyone point me to a single XBOne feature that gives it an advantage in some way?

Forza 5 and Halo 5 seem to be the only attractants.

Mind you I never had a 360, so perhaps I’m missing some other good series that will be MS specific.

It was mentioned that some game publishers may impose rules on trading and online passes, which Sony would have no control over. So trading in games etc may cost something.

Why’s that, Cougar?

Mate bought a PS3 on a whim one lazy weekend lunchtime. By the time we’d got it working on his network, updated to current firmware and actually useable it was evening. This was a few years back now to be fair, but the whole online experience felt clunky and counter-intuitive.

I’ve dipped in and out on mates’ consoles since, and I’ve not really seen anything to revise that opinion. Updates take hours, and the interface is unwieldy compared to the 360 which Just Works.

I’ve no idea if my experience is typical. I might just have been unlucky, like I said before.

Updates take hours? Are you on dial up? It’s less than a 200mb download for PS3 firmware.

I will not mind paying for online gaming, as long as it is better than the PS3 online gaming. I guess we will find out at end of this year.

Imho, no console “just works” since the day they came with a network port. At least certainly not in the way that N64 etc. “just worked” – plug in, switch on, play.

That is the reason I got consoles, rahter than PCs years ago, after the Atari/Amiga era. If I’m gonna have to download updates, I’ll play the PC/Steam/etc. version of a game, and FPS etc are much better on a PC than a n00bstick anyway.

Wii just about was OK. Updates were rare, and then just to enable new features. Wii-U has lost it. All the casual gamers that just want to play are playing Tablets and Smartphones.

Xbox 1 (mark2) does come with Kinect though. That’s it’s massive selling point and the only thing to justify £80 more than PS4.

Actually, can anyone point me to a single XBOne feature that gives it an advantage in some way?

Red Dead Revolution. (Allegedly)

I dunno – updates are far less frequent now, haven’t done one for what feels like a year. And the interface is excellent, what you on about? Everything’s right there, a click away.

Why are you lot complaining about updates anyway? You want games with bugs? And I look forward to PS3 ones since they generally add something cool.

No I/we want games that are finished, bug free. Scope to fix things after it’s gone to market are where bugs come from. Atari, Amiga, Nintendo *have* to be right first time.

Maybe I should have said “network ports *and* internal HDD for game storage” in my earlier post.

The key point with MS is you never actually own the game, you pay £40 from game for Halo X, play it for a year, 5 years later you fancy some retro gaming so you drop your copy of Halo X into the disc drive and oops MS turned the sever off a year ago rendering the disc you have useless. MS has alienated so many gamers with its new software idea’s well not new but copied from the Steam gaming model. But as gamers we like to go back every so often and play an old game while MS hold the rights thats it game over.

Sony have been clever no DRM and stating you buy the disc you own the contents, yes if its an online yes the severs could go off, but if its singleplayer at home you won’t need the severs so you can go back and play the game.

PS4 for me, plus i have a vita which has great potential with the PS4 and the ability to shift the game from the tele to the vita console.

I wasn’t sure I’d go for this latest generation but reckon I’ll keep up a long history of PS ownership with a 4.

Anyone pre-ordered either of the offerings yet? Amazon have a pretty good set-up – you preorder now and are guaranteed the lowest price between now and launch date. Obviously they’ll drop in price after that anyway, but you’d be at the bleeding edge with the cool kidz!

Bollocks to the lot of Em, both Way too pricey IMO, I’m having an OUYA when it becomes available in the UK… 🙂

I’ve got nothing like enough time to play “Serious” games anymore, a cheap lttle box that streams all sorts of games and other content direct from the web makes far more sense for me now…

I think Proper consoles are actually aimed at a narrower market than they were perhaps 10 years ago, 16 28 Year olds with plenty of disposable income, free time, no kids and wanting a single box for gaming and home entertainment…

–Edit–

Wii just about was OK. Updates were rare, and then just to enable new features. Wii-U has lost it. All the casual gamers that just want to play are playing Tablets and Smartphones.

Just read that point and that pretty much describes me, Wii sat next to the telly, got a message from Nitendo that they are ceasing to support some of the features on it, I suppose it’s getting on though, any games I do play now are on my android tablet, which is about the level I’m expecting from the OUYA, but on my telly and with a controller, so a slightly improved experience… bleeding edge graphics don’t bother me, I just want to carry on playing GTA…

Updates take hours? Are you on dial up? It’s less than a 200mb download for PS3 firmware.

PS3 and game updates always seemed to take eons. Xbox360 ones were pretty rapid in contrast.

All irrelevant now anyway, as the PS4 specifically addresses that, and MS seem to have totally forgotten how to do anything right.

I dunno – updates are far less frequent now, haven’t done one for what feels like a year. And the interface is excellent, what you on about? Everything’s right there, a click away.

Why are you lot complaining about updates anyway? You want games with bugs? And I look forward to PS3 ones since they generally add something cool.

Like I said, this is all ‘in my limited experience’. The updates were just an example; on the Xbox game updates take seconds, I’ve done a full system update in about two minutes. The PS3 in contrast always took forever.

More exposure to it might easily change my opinion. I don’t own one.

I should point out as well, I’m not a “hater” and have no brand evangelism. I own several Sony products and my console ownership has been PS1 > Gamecube > PS2 > Xbox 360. (I also have a Dreamcast which I bought as a ‘retro’ console for about 10 quid, and an Atari 2600 VCS if it comes to that).

Going from the 360 to the Crossbone would be a natural progression if it was going to be backwards compatible. As it’s not, there’s little reason for me to stay on Team Green. Going from the PS2 to the 360 felt a bit odd, and going from the 360 to the PS4 feels similarly odd, but the former isn’t a decision I regret even remotely.

The Xbone looks revolutionary in a lot of ways, but they’re dreaming if they think people are going to put up with all that DRM-style nonsense. Some of it looks great – accessing your games library when round at a mate’s, for instance – but killing the second-hand and rental markets is insidious.

MS seems to have caved in too readily to pressure from the game publishers when it comes to second hand games. Hopefully they’ll find some more backbone before they release the Xbox One so there’s more of a fight in the market, but initial impressions (and launch pricing) seem to be stacking against them.

From the horse’s mouth:

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/connected

Pre-owned games have had quite a big impact on developers and publishers. The problem isn’t with lending, trading or selling, per se – the problem is with retailers like Game making it the core part of their business. When I was at uni, I worked at Game, and we were actively encouraged to push second hand games onto customers whenever possible. Eventually they even started a policy of storing the second hand discs alongside the new ones, so that if someone brought a new game to the counter, we could easily check if we had a pre-owned copy that we could offer to them instead. The customer got £5 knocked off retail price, the retailer made a profit and the developer got nothing.

They eventually started reserving more and more of the shop floor for pre-owned games, which reduced the variety and amount of new stock they’d get in/displayed, particularly in the smaller branches.

I’m not sure what the solution is – books and DVDs don’t seem to have the same problem (unless you count charity shops), and you don’t go into your LBS to buy a brand new bike and get offered a second hand one instead. I’m fairly certain the solution isn’t what Microsoft are proposing though – I don’t tend to buy second hand games, but I do lend out and share to friends and family members. Younger family members do trade in their old games, so they can buy new games on day of release.