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Yep, Sony had another worst kept secret. In New York tonight, the company put on a show to announce the advent of the PlayStation 4. The company spent a lot of time early on talking through the specs of the new system, which, while they did a good job of presenting, seemed like they weren't nearly as unique as they wanted the crowd to believe.

There were plenty of developers there showing off some new games, though the tropes all felt familiar. There was a driving game that looked lovely. There was a FPS - being Sony, it was a Killzone game. There's an Infamous game.

There was some interesting stuff. Johnathan Blow was there, he of Braid fame, talking about his next game appearing on the PS4. Blizzard showed up to announce Diablo III for the new console (as well as for PS3). Bungie showed up to tell everyone that Destiny will be on PS4 too, which is a nice slap to Microsoft.

Yeah, though, I intentionally buried the lede. What did Square Enix do, right? Well, not that much. They showed the Agni's Philosophy demo, looked the same as before. However, this time they said it was running on PS4 hardware. Was it always? We don't know. Also, Final Fantasy brand director Shinji Hashimoto appeared to say: "yes, there's a Final Fantasy game coming for PS4" and that it will show at E3. Zero other details. Sorry!

The PlayStation 4 will arrive for Holiday 2013.

I was particularly interested in Sucker Punch's inFamous: Second Son and Capcom's Panta Rei (Panda Ray? Panty Raid?). The former is a new inFamous game with a new protagonist and a new city. The latter is a monster hunting game that ISN'T Monster Hunter or Dragon's Dogma.

...maybe I'll grab it in 2015.

Maybe I'm easily impressed but I thought they had a wonderful showing and I'm excited for the next gen, even if I do think it's a bit too soon. I'll definitely get one probably in 2014, assuming something must have is in the line up at that point. I am also more encouraged about getting a Vita now that I see it's planned functionality with the PS4. But I guess the biggest question for me is, get Diablo III for PS3 or wait even longer and get it for PS4?

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Chewbekah ^_^

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, Attack of the Firday Monsters, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Lego City Undercover, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix

Recently Finished: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Favorite Game: Suikoden III

I didn't get to see the conference because I was working, but reading the updates these are my thoughts:

-They had a really nice balance of new IPs, upcoming sequels and older games -- at least from what I'm reading here.

-It must have taken something really special to get Jonathan Blow on stage, he seems way to vain to do something like that just for money.

-8GB of DDR3 is HUGE, that's bigger than last generation by a factor of x16. I'm really excited to see how that will play out, and I hope the system OS doesn't tax too much of that

-Despite all of that, the announcement of a new FF is probably the most exciting for me. I was starting to get pretty confident that SE was getting out of the business of big, single-player "FF" experiences, especially after how the XIII series performed (or didn't) for them this generation. There is the question of just how "new" this new FF will be. I'm hoping they just cut their losses and move onto XV


All in all I was pretty impressed, it was definitely a better launch reveal than their 2006 disaster but I'm guessing they went to great efforts to make it that way. I'll probably start saving up money for one of the new consoles for this fall, now it's a question of how MS will respond to this...

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

I'm glad I'm not the only one that saw positives. I'll probably watch the Xbox stuff but I'm not sure how seriously I'll really look at it anymore. Buying Xboxes has been kind of a waste for me. I just never really liked the games. I'm a Japanese gamer not a western gamer and Xbox just doesn't have enough of that. I like Kinect don't get me wrong but after that my Xbox 360 just kind of sits there an everything I bought on Xbox Live Arcade eventually found its way over to PS3.

I was on another message board and people were complaining about the social connectivity. I actually really like it and wish I had more friends that played games to connect with.. I pretty much have my brother and my friend at work though we haven't traded gamer tags yet. But it would be nice to make more gaming friends, which has been a failure of a venture pretty much because I kind of only troll message boards and I get tired of seeing everyone complain.

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Chewbekah ^_^

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, Attack of the Firday Monsters, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Lego City Undercover, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix

Recently Finished: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Favorite Game: Suikoden III

I was at work so I couldn't watch it as well. But from what I got searching the news and updates on the PS4 is that.... well.... It's better than the PS3! Yay!

Until more games are announced I am not buying the hype just yet. Although I do love Playstations, but in my old age, I am grumpy and don't rely on blind faith.

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GS Forums: Come vist!
"I have no wish to change the world."
”Ramza Beoulve

Seems to me that games are reaching the point where it's never going to be a step up, just a step forward. The Wii U hasn't set the world on fire and changed the face of gaming, and no one gushes about how it feels so new.

I somehow imagine PS4 is going to be similar. More of the same that looks shinier. Oh, sure, there's going to be enjoyable games on it probably. But this is really just a hardware update rather than any sort of distinct generation from what came before.

Having said that, honestly, I don't see the technology being how games take a step up. I think the mindset of the industry as a whole needs to move to a new generation, not just the hardware. Microsoft might be the last chance for that I guess, because Nintendo and Sony have followed their patterns. Lack of backwards compatibility right now is rather annoying given that the PS3 has had no excuse but money for it for years now, and the lack of any serious details is also a bit questionable.

But it's interesting. Not exciting, but certainly of interest.

This post has been edited by Del S on 21st February 2013 09:55

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I think Del's right in that we're obviously not going to see the kind of jump that we saw from PSX to PS2, or PS2 to PS3. And I think that's significant - I think with the PS4, as well as the Wii U (and potentially the next Xbox), we're going to see a different consumer attitude. Before, one had to buy a next gen system in order to prevent their console setup from becoming obsolete technologically; now, the primary reason to buy a next gen system is to prevent one's game collection from going stagnant.

If this is indeed the case, as I believe it is, the next generation will be all about how well the games can capture their audience, and how well they can get the most out of their systems - something which, I think one could argue, a lot of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles did not do. We already saw what happened to the Wii U without enough solid launch titles.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

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Before, one had to buy a next gen system in order to prevent their console setup from becoming obsolete technologically; now, the primary reason to buy a next gen system is to prevent one's game collection from going stagnant.

And games don't really become stagnant, especially if they have a lot of content...and heck, especially when they're competing with digital downloads by the truckload. Therefore that should mean that this...

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If this is indeed the case, as I believe it is, the next generation will be all about how well the games can capture their audience, and how well they can get the most out of their systems - something which, I think one could argue, a lot of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles did not do.

...is a good thing, in that it's going to compel game makers to actually make good games, rather than make games that seem brand spanking sparkly new.

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We already saw what happened to the Wii U without enough solid launch titles.

I'm not familiar with this; could someone please explain?

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )