PS4

[AVFCRoss]

Picked up my PS4 this morning...Had to settle for a bundle, so went for the Knack bundle, along with FIFA 14 for a total of £405....Not bad considering I didn't even realise FIFA 14 was 55 fnarging quid!

Anyway, not gonna get much time to play it until later tonight since I'm about to head to the Villa, was hoping for a quick go on FIFA but had to do a mandatory install which took about 30 minutes.

Console design is nice, classic black and quiet slim and sleek and I can already tell the controller is a massive improvement. New interface looks was better than the old style XMB, but I'll give a more detailed verdict when I've played around and seen the console in action.

[Late]

How's she handling, then, Ross?


I see Sony have added another "freemium" game on the ps4 - "Blacklight Retribution" was added to the UK list yesterday.

Free games whether you have PS+ or not:
- War Thunder
- Warframe
- Blacklight: Retribution
- DC Universe Online

Free games With PS+ only:
- Resogun
- Contrast

[Late]

Nice announcement from Sony at CES. Their new "PlayStation Now" service will allow you to stream ps3 games to ps3, ps4, vita, tablets, phones, etc. Will kick off in the States this summer.


Playstation blog

[Late]

Drive Club has been put back again. The "launch title" might not make it onto shelves before 2015, now.

There are rumours (which I think unlikely to be true) that it's been delayed so that it can launch with Morpheus compatibility. You never know. It'd probably be a very good title for the tech - which seems better suited to games where you're in a seat/cockpit.

As for Morpheus, it's great to see Sony finally announce it. It's something that folk have been talking about for a long time, but we've had no official word until now.

(Hopefully Microsoft will announce their version soon. They're heavily tipped to be working on one, and it'd be folly not to.)



playstation blog

[harv]

Awesome sauce. I'm going to be all over this!!!

Would be better if it had a similar sort of 3D that the 3DS uses though.

[Late]

Well obviously the world would be better if everything was  Nintendo, but unfortunately copyright laws prevent that. Perhaps you could just print out a Nintendo logo and sellotape it to the side?

[harv]

That's why I said SIMILAR. Although you'd probably end up with motion sickness if it was 3D. No idea how 3D tellies work though, perhaps they could implement a similar sort of thing that tellies have and incorporate the glasses into the Morpheus headset..?

Will probably be too expensive though so can't see it happening.

[Late]

You're missing the tech completely, mate. Not by a little bit. You're miles off course!
3d is inherently natural with VR, in comparison to the difficulties you get on TVs and consoles.

Both 3d tellies and the 3ds project two images onto one screen. The TVs use glasses to ensure your left eye sees half of the image (the half filmed with the left hand camera); and your right eye sees the other pixels. The 3ds effectively does the same but without the glasses - it just asks your eyes to adjust themselves to each seeing the half they're supposed to see.
VR goggles are much simpler, in that they have two screens. So anything that's intended for your left eye is projected to the left screen, stuff for your right eye is shown on the right screen. There's no need to use interlace or polarisation tech or anything like that to make images three dimensional.

3d in that respect is a piece of piss. The main difficulty in VR is latency. The gyroscopes need to work with the software to show the image rotating within a millisecond of you moving your head otherwise you're gonna hurl.

Due to the way you're effectively only moving your head and not properly rotating your full body most folk find it still doesn't work all that well for most games and applications though. If you're sat on the couch playing an fps and someone behind you is shooting at you you obviously don't want to turn around 180 degrees in your seat to see and shoot them.
It does, however, work perfectly for games where you're sat in a cockpit or drivers seat. You wouldn't use it to turn the car/vehicle. You'd only use it for looking around as you turn with a wheel/joystick/joypad.
So it's arguably of limited use - but it's exciting all the same.

[harv]

Oh, okay. Sounds good then.

Hopefully someone's working on a William Gibson game, would be great considering he's the guy who came up with the concept, albeit without a headset. His idea was set in the future with hacker's 'jacking in' to the Virtual Reality world via a socket in their heads connected to their brains.

If you haven't read Neuromancer I highly recommend it, it's an awesome novel.

[jman]

This will be something I would buy a PS4 for.. so here's hoping Microsoft follows suit.. which I imagine they will do.  Who cares what it plays like.. how cool does it look !!!

[harv]

Going to be annoying if it remains wired though. Not sure if we'll see something from Microsoft though, Sony have been working on this for years. A shame they can't use Nintendo's wireless protocol (NI-FI if I remember correctly) that enables the GamePad to be lag-free. Still have no idea how they've managed to do that tbh. Probably Pikmin lol

It's probably going to cost an arm and a leg too but I'm more than willing to pay whatever they want for it, although I'll have to save up for a good while.

Will be getting a PS4 early next year, can't see this being available by then. We're probably talking about late 2015/early 2016 at the earliest I reckon.

[Late]

Wired seems likely to me. You reduce latency, and the battery life of something with two high def screens (not to mention processors, gyroscopes, etc.) is going to be horrendous.

It's known that Microsoft have been working on various VR and AR techs for a long time. They haven't announced anything on VR yet but I imagine they will before the year is done.

[harv]

Have just been checking out some Oculus Rift videos for the horror game demo, can't wait to play horror games using Morpheus. Last generation had some great horror titles, although the Wii had the best of the bunch for some weird reason, but this generation with VR is going to be amazing. Give us a proper Resident Evil, a decent Silent Hill, a Fatal Frame, a House of The Dead and bring back Clock Tower. Best. Generation. Ever.

[Late]

Amongst other things, today's ps4 patch allows you to set the brightness of the light bar on your controller. That'll be popular - I know a lot of folk were irritated by how bright it is, meaning it reflects on their tv.

[Late]

Oh dear.
Sony's PS-now service is now in beta - and is getting slaughtered.
Of course, with it being in beta it's possible things will improve. But it looks bad.
Whilst the infrastructure seems robust, and it's great to have cross-play and cloud saves (so play for a while on your ps4, switch to your vita for a bit, carry on on your ps-tv etc.) the pricing is ridiculous. Laughably ridiculous.
You pick your game then say how long you want to rent it for. 4 hours, 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days.
Like seriously - 4 hours?!

Anyway, Gameinformer have put together a little bit of a comparison table.



Deus Ex HR and FF-13 are fine examples. I'll ignore the 4 hour option. You're not likely to get out of the initial building of DXHR in that time, and you're not going to get much beyond cut scenes in the first few hours of ffxiii.
So you're looking at paying around £6 to access one of those games for a week. You could probably complete them in that time but you'd be missing LOADS.

Alternatively you could pick them up brand new for last gen consoles for about £10 or second hand for about £5.

Uh, thanks but no thanks Sony.
Such a waste of a fantastic opportunity.