New game machines are supposed to have The Game, the killer app that justifies dropping a few hundred bucks on a new machine. The transformational Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64. The first Halo on the first Xbox.
But that's not always the case anymore. Sony's shiny new $400 PlayStation 4 just hit the shelves on Friday, and what's it got? The action game Knack is getting middling reviews, and . Outside of Sony's own studios, software makers like Electronic Arts are mostly cranking out slightly prettier versions of games that are also available on the machines you already own.
Now add to that the fact that over the last year, Sony has released a slew of gorgeous games for PlayStation 3. When you look at The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls, PS4 almost looks like a downgrade in comparison. Taken by themselves, the lineup of games is not screaming 'the next generation is here!'
But the next generation is here. It's not in the games, it's everything around them.
Among other neato whiz-bang features, PlayStation 4 lets you stream your gameplay via the websites Twitch and Ustream. So you can turn your private gameplay session into a public broadcast. This isn't online multiplayer gameplay, this is as if the whole world could sit on your couch with you and watch you play through Killzone, or Knack, or anything. They can see your face, hear your voice and type chat messages to you that pop up on your TV underneath the gameplay.
You can already do this with your current game consoles - but you need to hook them up to a PC and run all the feeds through specialized hardware and software first. It's expensive and requires some technical skill and willingness to futz around with settings until everything looks good. In other words, it's a total nerd thing.
PlayStation 4 handles it all with a single button press. Hit the 'Share' button on the new DualShock 4 controller and you are on the air. There's some setup at first, of course; you have to create an account on Twitch or Ustream and enter the details into your PlayStation profile. But that part is quick and painless. (And free: Even though Sony will charge for online multiplayer gaming on PS4, requiring a $50 per year subscription to PlayStation Plus, streaming is available to all PS4 owners.)
Did it change the way I played? Absolutely it did. Since I was streaming my gameplay of Knack before PlayStation 4 had actually hit shelves, I had lots of viewers who had never seen the game before and who had lots of questions about PS4 in general. But I also had lots of viewers talking with me about each part of the game as I approached it, and we discussed the design and the graphics.
When I accidentally walked past a hidden item, viewers told me to go back and get it. When I finally defeated a certain enemy that had caused me some consternation, they text-cheered for me.
I honestly don't think I'd have played Knack as long as I did if I wasn't streaming. Not only did I feel some obligation to keep going to keep entertaining people, but it took what was turning out to be kind of a repetitive game and turned it into a fun communal activity.
PlayStation 4 also features some hardware accessories that make streaming much better. The PlayStation Camera is an optional $59.99 accessory (unlike the Kinect camera, which is bundled in with each Xbox One). Among other uses, you can use the camera during streaming by pointing it at your face (or whatever), and this video feed will be displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. If you don't have a microphone, you can use the Camera device as a room mic, and it will broadcast your audio on the stream along with the game's soundtrack.
However, you do have a microphone, since each PS4 does include a small headset in the box. It looks like a single earbud, but it has a microphone. It plugs directly into the PS4 controller, and you can clip it to your clothing. So basically if you don't use the earbud and just clip the wire to your clothes, it's like having a lavalier microphone - my viewers said it sounded much better, and also prevented the TV audio from going into the mic.
I'll be the first to admit that I doubted Sony would really pull this off. Historically, the PlayStation division has been the kings of overpromising and underdelivering; the features that sound the coolest are either missing or only half functional at launch. But this actually works, right out of the box, and it's awesome.
Does it need to be upgraded? Yes. Right now, when you start a stream, you can automatically update your Facebook wall with a link to the stream. This is about as relevant to me as if the PS4 offered to automatically update my MySpace blog. Nobody's checking Facebook for up-to-the-second updates on what their friends are doing right this second. That's what Twitter is for, and it seems like it should be trivial to have the streaming app auto-generate a Tweet, too.
And not just one tweet. If you're streaming for hours, and you want more viewers, you have to alert people multiple times. So there should be a function that lets you either schedule tweets or send out another one with the push of a few buttons, without having to stop gaming. Hey, the PS Camera does voice commands, so how about 'PlayStation, send a tweet'?
Also - and this is something Sony says it will fix - the streams on Twitch and Ustream can't be archived, like every other broadcast. So my performances? Gone forever. This is a big deal; if you want to build up more audience members you've got to be able to let them see your past streams and decide whether you're a player worth following, right?
Microsoft's $500 Xbox One, to be released on November 22, will also have a Twitch app that is supposed to allow game broadcasting - but we haven't seen it in use yet, and it's not looking like it'll be available at launch.
PlayStation 4′s other big hardware features are generally themed around taking the work out of play. We didn't really understand, going into the last console generation in 2005, how games and consoles these days would be fluid, changing things. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners know that you have to constantly update your firmware, install games, download patches, and a million other little annoyances.
Like Xbox One, PS4 doesn't get rid of those processes, but it does automate them. As soon as I got my machine online, it started downloading the latest firmware. When I put in a game disc, it starts installing it. The background downloading feature will, upon the release of the next firmware update, pull it down overnight so it's ready to be installed when I wake up.
In other words, don't get hung up on waiting for the next generation of gaming hardware to play totally new types of games. Maybe those will come later, but for now, it's a significant enough upgrade to get to play the same old games with a more convenient wrapper. That's your next generation experience (even if you'd rather have another Super Mario 64 moment).
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