The Playstation 4 was released in November 2013, and it’s had an extremely successful year. Of course, Sony promised the stars when they unveiled the PS4 in February 2013. Did Sony make good on their promises, or did the PS4 fail to meet exceptions?
The Promises
- Instantaneously try any demo on the Playstation Network with a press of the button. Gaikai provides this service.
- Share gameplay video and screenshots with your friends using Ustream and Facebook.
- Allow friends to take over your game for minutes at a time using a share option.
- The Dualshock 4 will have a touchpad and speaker built into the controller to add extra features during games.
The Following Year
- The Playstation 4 has been selling extremely well, but not all of the features were available at launch. The option to share screenshots and video was available at launch, and it worked quite well. All you had to do was hit the share button, and you could record and upload short videos and random screenshots.
- The ability to let friends play your game for a few minutes was recently introduced to the Playstation 4, almost a year after the release.
- The Dualshock 4 includes a touchpad that could be used for extra features in games like InFamous: Last Light, The Crew, and Killzone: Shadow Fall. The Dualshock 4 also has a speaker to add little features like playing phone calls through the controller.
- You can play games while they finish downloading/installing in the background.
The Impressions
The Playstation 4 has been fantastic since its release. Yes, some of the features were missing during the early release, but Sony’s device did fulfill most of the promises. The Playstation 4 has been a device that works fantastically well. The only problem so far has been the recent firmware update that made standby mode kind of terrible. Thankfully, Sony has released a new patch to fix this issue.
Honestly, most of the Playstation 4’s issues have stemmed from the games that were promised at the announcement event. The three main games shown during the event in February were Killzone: Shadow Fall, Watch Dogs, and Driveclub. Out of the three games, only Killzone: Shadow Fall really lived up to expectations. Shadow Fall was a gorgeous game that was really fun. Watch Dogs was a disappointing game that failed to live up to potential, and Driveclub was completely broken from the start. At this moment, Driveclub still doesn’t function properly, and the free Playstation Plus version doesn’t appear to be coming anytime soon.
I’m quite happy with the Playstation 4 in the year since its release, and I can’t wait to see how the future turns out for the system. The addition of the promised features is great, now Sony just needs to release more games that live up to potential.
Score: B
