- A Week with the PS4
- 21 Nov 2013 08:22:30 pm
- Last edited by Alex on 21 Nov 2013 10:50:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
My number was 22 at my preferred GameStop. 9:30p rolls around and I'm out side eating a burger and fries from SmashBurger while KPIX is stationed out front doing interviews in the store. 10:30p happens upon us and the employees start giving us t-shirts and posters for being here early. 11:30p, the line forms. We all find the number in front of us and wait patently for the next 30 minutes. 12:05. I'm back at my car with my PS4. Buckle the thing in the passenger seat and head home. I've been preparing for this moment the whole week. I ordered a larger internal HDD the week before (1.5TB to be specific) bought a replacement power cord and sold the Xbox 360 I never used. The power cable was easy to purchase since the PS4 uses the same power cord as the slim version of the PS3. I kept the box for my 360 which still had the component cables in their baggie. I let the HDMI (and ethernet cable) from the 360 remain and all I had to do was wiggle the "replacement" power cord from the wall to where my PS4 would sit, or rather where the 360 was.
12:30a. I'm home. Opened the box and immediately plugged my console into the waiting cables. It turned on without a hiccup. Proceeded to run through the setup to ensure everything was glitch free. 12:40a. The console was off again. Unplugged and sitting on my kitchen table with the glossy black top part separated from it. Unscrewed the 5 screws, swapped the HDDs and screwed everything back in. Popped the cover back on and hooked it all up. 1:00a. Operating system has been reinstalled. There was an issue at first because my thumb drive was two thick to actually fit securely in the two front-facing USB ports so I short hunt through my cable drawer netted me a 10 foot USB male to female cable and I proceeded to reinstall the OS from there. I started the 30GB downloads of CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS, BATTLEFIELD 4 & DC UNIVERSE ONLINE. In the interim I tried out "The Playroom" and started other downloads for CONTRAST, RESOGUN, WARFRAME and FLOWER.
I had previously bought GHOSTS, BF4 and FLOWER on PS3. The former two were preordered on PSN in October during the "Spend $50, get $10 PSN Credit" so after it was all said in done, I had $40 to spend on PSN. 20 dollars went to the 10$ upgrade fee for the PS4 versions of GHOSTS and BF4. FLOWER was free because I had bought it on PS3, though when I bought it doesn't matter I had purchased it almost two years prior. CONTRAST, RESOGUN & WARFRAME were free games for PS4.
Now, 7 days into the PS4s life I finally have an opinion worth sharing. It's not all that. This is about the PS4, not the games, remember that. The PS4 takes so many steps backwards from the PS3 that the steps forward that it does take aren't all that important.
First off, is the new user interface. There's no organization.Your games are sorted by last played and any apps you use (VUDU, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Music Unlimited) are mixed right in. On the PS3 You had different places for your games, video apps and music that you could sort pretty much anyway you wanted. The PS4 puts all those into one horizontal list. It does this because info related to the game/app is displayed below. It displays when your friends started playing, earned trophies or shared media (screenshots, video or streaming) from the game. The whole horizontal UI is my biggest qualm. I want my games and apps separated and I want to sort them.
The whole "SHARE" experience is also painful. There's no dedicated share app on the OS but you can open it by pressing the SHARE button. Which, will take a screen shot before opening depending on how it's setup; I had a few pictures of my home menu before I changed this. It would be cool to see the videos and photos I've taken by going to the respective photo and video sections or by selecting an app from the "list." Taking videos is weird too. The console is always recording, yes. But when you start a video it actually stops recording until you press it again. I haven't lost anything important or show worthy - only my buddy and I dancing in DCUO - but it'd be more convenient if starting a recording stopped the current recording and started recording all over again. It'd make trimming videos easier, especially when all you can do is trim videos down in ten second intervals.
The things that work well is the voice control whether from the camera or from compatible headphones plugged into the controller. Hold down L2 on the main PS4 menu and say a command such as "FLOWER" and the system moves over to the game FLOWER. Say "START" and it'll start the game. The ability to stream ALL audio to the headphones is also really nice. I can play while someone is asleep in the same room. Party chat is also pretty convenient. I had the luxury of LIVE for a while on the 360 and already knew how great this would be on the PS4. The PSN Store doesn't take forever to load anymore either. It loads right up which is super. Trophies are unlocked immediately as opposed to the PS3 where they unlocked about 30 seconds later - due to them being patched in to the OS later I assume.
It also supports CEC (like the PS3) which is super nice. My setup is a bit bulky. My TV has 4 HDMI inputs: 3 in the back and 1 on the side. The three in the back are taken up by my cable box, surround sound receiver and my computer. The one on the side is my only free HDMI slot. Luckily, my receiver has 3 HDMI ins, so I have my PS3 and PS4 plugged in here. My TV sees these devices and adds two more "inputs" respectively named "PlayStation 3" and "PlayStation 4." Selecting these from the input screen switched between both. back when I had my 360, I only had an option for "PlayStation 3" which meant I had to turn on my sound system and change the input on that to switch to my 360. Which was a pain because I only really turn my surround on for movie night and the occasional gaming when no one is around to disturb (or when movie night turns in to game night) with lots of explosive bass.
In all, the PS4 has major room for improvement. It'll be great to watch the console evolve and mature over the next few years. I also look forward to the imminent addition of MP3 & DLNA support - which is honestly not something I used heavily on the PS3 and used rarely on the 360 during gameplay.
UPDATE: Just discovered a cool new feature with CEC, when the system is on and your input isn't on the console, double tapping the PS Button will automatically change the input back. The double tap of the PS button in this way still engages the app switching mode.
12:30a. I'm home. Opened the box and immediately plugged my console into the waiting cables. It turned on without a hiccup. Proceeded to run through the setup to ensure everything was glitch free. 12:40a. The console was off again. Unplugged and sitting on my kitchen table with the glossy black top part separated from it. Unscrewed the 5 screws, swapped the HDDs and screwed everything back in. Popped the cover back on and hooked it all up. 1:00a. Operating system has been reinstalled. There was an issue at first because my thumb drive was two thick to actually fit securely in the two front-facing USB ports so I short hunt through my cable drawer netted me a 10 foot USB male to female cable and I proceeded to reinstall the OS from there. I started the 30GB downloads of CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS, BATTLEFIELD 4 & DC UNIVERSE ONLINE. In the interim I tried out "The Playroom" and started other downloads for CONTRAST, RESOGUN, WARFRAME and FLOWER.
I had previously bought GHOSTS, BF4 and FLOWER on PS3. The former two were preordered on PSN in October during the "Spend $50, get $10 PSN Credit" so after it was all said in done, I had $40 to spend on PSN. 20 dollars went to the 10$ upgrade fee for the PS4 versions of GHOSTS and BF4. FLOWER was free because I had bought it on PS3, though when I bought it doesn't matter I had purchased it almost two years prior. CONTRAST, RESOGUN & WARFRAME were free games for PS4.
Now, 7 days into the PS4s life I finally have an opinion worth sharing. It's not all that. This is about the PS4, not the games, remember that. The PS4 takes so many steps backwards from the PS3 that the steps forward that it does take aren't all that important.
First off, is the new user interface. There's no organization.Your games are sorted by last played and any apps you use (VUDU, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Music Unlimited) are mixed right in. On the PS3 You had different places for your games, video apps and music that you could sort pretty much anyway you wanted. The PS4 puts all those into one horizontal list. It does this because info related to the game/app is displayed below. It displays when your friends started playing, earned trophies or shared media (screenshots, video or streaming) from the game. The whole horizontal UI is my biggest qualm. I want my games and apps separated and I want to sort them.
The whole "SHARE" experience is also painful. There's no dedicated share app on the OS but you can open it by pressing the SHARE button. Which, will take a screen shot before opening depending on how it's setup; I had a few pictures of my home menu before I changed this. It would be cool to see the videos and photos I've taken by going to the respective photo and video sections or by selecting an app from the "list." Taking videos is weird too. The console is always recording, yes. But when you start a video it actually stops recording until you press it again. I haven't lost anything important or show worthy - only my buddy and I dancing in DCUO - but it'd be more convenient if starting a recording stopped the current recording and started recording all over again. It'd make trimming videos easier, especially when all you can do is trim videos down in ten second intervals.
The things that work well is the voice control whether from the camera or from compatible headphones plugged into the controller. Hold down L2 on the main PS4 menu and say a command such as "FLOWER" and the system moves over to the game FLOWER. Say "START" and it'll start the game. The ability to stream ALL audio to the headphones is also really nice. I can play while someone is asleep in the same room. Party chat is also pretty convenient. I had the luxury of LIVE for a while on the 360 and already knew how great this would be on the PS4. The PSN Store doesn't take forever to load anymore either. It loads right up which is super. Trophies are unlocked immediately as opposed to the PS3 where they unlocked about 30 seconds later - due to them being patched in to the OS later I assume.
It also supports CEC (like the PS3) which is super nice. My setup is a bit bulky. My TV has 4 HDMI inputs: 3 in the back and 1 on the side. The three in the back are taken up by my cable box, surround sound receiver and my computer. The one on the side is my only free HDMI slot. Luckily, my receiver has 3 HDMI ins, so I have my PS3 and PS4 plugged in here. My TV sees these devices and adds two more "inputs" respectively named "PlayStation 3" and "PlayStation 4." Selecting these from the input screen switched between both. back when I had my 360, I only had an option for "PlayStation 3" which meant I had to turn on my sound system and change the input on that to switch to my 360. Which was a pain because I only really turn my surround on for movie night and the occasional gaming when no one is around to disturb (or when movie night turns in to game night) with lots of explosive bass.
In all, the PS4 has major room for improvement. It'll be great to watch the console evolve and mature over the next few years. I also look forward to the imminent addition of MP3 & DLNA support - which is honestly not something I used heavily on the PS3 and used rarely on the 360 during gameplay.
UPDATE: Just discovered a cool new feature with CEC, when the system is on and your input isn't on the console, double tapping the PS Button will automatically change the input back. The double tap of the PS button in this way still engages the app switching mode.