So it's been craziness. I went to the midnight launch in our area for the PlayStation 4. It was crazy. Everyone was cheering for each console that walked out of the door. I stored mine away when I got home, and after work Friday me and my boss (who decided to come out to my unboxing party) pulled the box out of the bag.
Several fist pumps later, we took it out the box. Christmas came early. Just wanted to give you guys my two cents on my experience with the PlayStation 4. I threw an "unboxing" party at my house. The demographic consisted of all kinds of people, with various expectations. It was truly a great time and I'm grateful for everyone who came out to play and give their respective thoughts:
1) THE PHYSICAL UNBOXING
Everything came out neat and easy. Nothing was broken, all hardware ports on the system were functional. It included all the necessary components needed to play (of course.) I even found it novel that it had an HDMI cable in the box for it's native 1080p resolution. No AV cable at all. Further more, The generation I grew up in used RF cables (Sega Genesis, lol.)...ah the nostalgia... As you know, the PS4 must undergo a mandatory day one update in order for you to play properly. After removing the packaging and hooking the system up the update began immediately. The update went incredibly fast (lasted approx 2 minutes). After the update completed, the console restarted itself.
I put in Call Of Duty: Ghosts. The system initialized that game's download, then the console restarted after it was done saving the game to hard drive. That game downloaded with no issues and loaded ridiculously fast. I loaded my PSN profile up through an update too. Same thing, everything went super fast. The whole setup process only took me 15 minutes.
I give this part an A
2) PLAYSTATION NETWORK
At the unboxing party we all discovered that PSN was down. I got to ellicit everyone's opinion in the room. Honestly some didn't care that much. It was no surprise to me that the network was temporarily overloaded. When a million people jump on a newly integrated network over night it is pretty reasonable to have the servers get jammed up. However, Given Sony's shaky history with their PS3 online networking, this down time did bring concern to a few others. The general consensus would agree that on launch night, nobody wants to be stuck playing campaign mode or split screen against bots on Call Of Duty: Ghosts all night (especially if they aren't distracted by free food and beverages at a party......thankfully we were). Battlefield 4's online capabilities didn't even work at all (I hear EA also had something to do with that in Battlefield's case). There were drinks and pizza and a Sega genesis in my other room but I say this with all seriousness,
Ain't nobody got time for that
Regardless, Sony did a great job anticipating the unknown hiccups and had the network up by the end of the night. It ran great too!
I'll give that experience a B-
3) GAME PLAY
1080p up-scaled looks amazing as we all know. PS4's 1080p native looks amazingly better! Seriously. The graphics look smooth. For those who care about resolution I will tell you that it looks better than anything on the market currently (and supposedly the 360 and PS3 already upscale certain AAA titles to 1080p). Of course when Xbox One hits the shelves we'll be able to determine which is better. For now, I'm going to believe 1080p "native" makes a difference! Both Call Of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 looked and played like a next gen game should. No lag, no bugs, no problems...
Verdict? A+
4) THE CONTROLLER
For me, I love the feel of the Xbox controller since I came from the 360 system. So I was skeptical of the Dualshock 4. On the contrary, It felt better than I expected. Now granted I had played with it before launch, but it wasn't for any first person shooters or other games I usually play. It was for "Knack". Now, having played other games with it, I am convinced I will be able to readjust. I like everything about the controller and it feels OK when I play FPS games. I expect in a month or two it will feel more natural. All of it's features are spot on, looking forward to seeing how game developers utilize this controller in the future.
For now I'll give it a B+
FINALLY,
Setting the rest of the applications up didn't take long (Netflix, Hulu, PSN, etc...) I highly encourage you to consider getting a PSN+ account to fully take advantage of the premium experience that Sony is striving to provide. Even if you don't you can still access most non game-related applications with their free PSN. The PlayStation main menu has been revamped and made to look simple and clean, which I thought was much needed. It served very well as living room entertainment during the party. This year Sony made a comeback of sorts comparatively speaking in North America, but more importantly, they regained influence over the gaming market as a whole (and consequently, the non gaming market too).
MY overall first impression of PS4: A-
I'll get my hands on an Xbox One and let you know how that goes...
But for now, I feel like I spent my money on the right thing this year...
Here is a neat article which highlights Sony's most recent sales achievement:
Thanks to everyone who shared their feelings to me over the past year leading up to launch night.
Stay tuned for more.
Peace
- JA
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