Maybe you want a [Playstation 4]

Six and a half hours to go

I'm not sure if I know anyone around here who's getting one at launch. Lots of pre-order cancelations.

Should be getting mine today from amazon

PSN: SilentZero32

Did they get put in the correct basket ball at least?

My 72 hours of owning a PS4 commentary... first thing that greeted me was needing a patch. It took 25 minutes. LOL, same as the PS3.

First thing, the console itself. Smaller than I imagined, very simple design. Uninspired maybe, but it feels and looks solid. I like it. Hooked everything up. Shipped with an HDMI cable, yay. Shipped with a "headset". It's an earbud... with a mic... somewhere? I dunno. Total joke, screams of last minute throw in. The controller feels nice. Slightly larger than the old PS controls. I like the way it feels but then I never had issues with the other PS controllers. L2 and R2 triggers still have very little travel. Might as well be buttons. That makes them still nearly useless for throttle control in driving / airplane games compared to the 360 long throw triggers. Big light on the controller that does multiple colors. Why? I dunno. Also there is a tiny speaker in the center of the controller. Gimmicky first impression. Controller is textured slightly, doesn't slip in the hand. I like that. Little sheet of paper inside gives you a month of PSPlus, a month of music access and 10$ in the store. Use those codes!

After the OS patched, I went into the store and activated my free 30 days of PSPlus. Downloaded all the freebies. Or tried to. It kept kicking me out with a message that "store was under maintenance" ... only it would work for a couple things when I went back in. Clearly overloaded, but not down. Launch issues, no big deal. Anyways, got all the downloads queue'd... downloads in the background worked as expected. Vast improvement on the PS3 experience, minus the store issues but that's likely just launch rush issues.

Explored the options, set the "master screen size" ... and noted that OS downloads in standby mode do NOT require PSplus. Yay! But game updates DO require PSplus. Boo! Mixed bag there, but I guess since it removes one point of pain ... I'll call it an improvement on the PS3. Besides that, I am going to try PSplus for a year here just to see if I feel it's worth it. I'm giving this thing a full commitment. Show me what you have Sony.

Pop in the disk for NBA2k14. Presented with a menu with one option, play quick game. No team selection. In the bottom left the PS4 tells me that it's installing NBA2k14 to the hard drive. I go ahead and select the game. Game loads after a decent amount of time, think about 50 seconds. It's the NBA championship game from last year and I'm playing as the Heat. No announcers. The game warns that some features arent available until the disk is installed. Eh, whatever, at least I'm not looking at a loading bar. NBA2k14 on court graphics are superb. Very little aliasing, everything is crisp. The textures are very detailed and the player models are the best I've ever seen. Animations are great too, but not really any different than the amazing 360/ps3 previous NBA2k animations. There are a lot more of them though, which stops the deja vous syndrome.

The presentation graphics however in the mock broadcast... look lifted from the 360 and ps3 versions. Poorly at that. They have jagged edges and murky textures. Frankly they don't look as good as the 360 version of NBA2k13 which I played a lot of. Oh yeah, it's a next gen launch title with some cut corners. The audio presentation however is still stunning. NBA2k has this nailed. The announcers are responsive and the crowd sounds right. It just sounds like a real broadcast in every way. Same as the other NBA2k games. Everything controls well in the game and after a half I'm able to play at my old skill level with the series. Lots of fun. The installation is at 97% when I complete the quick game. Once it installs I kick off the My player mode which is neat. Very limited character customization options... and your dude will always talk like he's from the "street". Yo yo this game has some annoying dialogue. Anyways, I'm glad I picked this up. I love the 2k series.

Pop that out, pop in Killzone. It kicks off installation automatically while I'm in the menu. I walk away to grab some dinner and it's done when I get back. I fire that game up. Loads quick, 30 seconds from hitting start on the PS4 menu and seeing the game menu. After that, it all feels really smooth. Controls are a bit... hmmm... stiff. Hard to say why but compared to like a Halo or Call of Duty ... just somehow feels very easy to miss when aiming with a controller due to how the sticks seem to move the view. Sensitivity is set waaaaaay low to start with. Useless really. Turn that way up and you can now turn okay, but again there is just a lack of a solid gradient for me on aiming. Missing a lot of shots. The game is gorgeous however. Having just come off the Battlefield 4 campaign I can say that graphically Killzone does some more interesting things. I don't think the screenshots do it justice as the best thing in Killzone is the lighting in motion. It's incredibly dynamic. All I can think of is how fucking amazing a Mass Effect series game would look with this lighting. Mmmmmm.

At one point there is a "horror" section of the game. Audio tapes play through the little controller on the speaker. To really hear it I have to hold it closer to my ear, but I have tinnitus, your mileage may vary. I begin to ignore it, but as the audio tape is of a horror type scene there are some screams and such on it, I can hear those even with the controller down. And that definitely adds to the flashlight only darkness of wandering around some space ship. I imagine this little speaker will be very useful in horror / suspense genres. Killzone also uses the touch pad, just for swipes to change the mode of your little robo companion. It's limited yes... but I find it easier to use than the D-pad for performing similar functions. Still, it's not a MAJOR advancement of the controller so far by any means.

So that's it for my first impressions... Sum total...

The good:
Console is small, runs quiet.
Ships with hdmi cable
OS updates can be done in standby mode without paying Sony money
Graphics certainly seem to be very good
Controller is improved from previous PS3 options
Looks like they have party chat support. YAY!
Absolute joke of a headset included, which means multiplayer rooms will still be mostly silent.

The bad:
500GB hard drive is going to be gone in about 8 titles, massive installations.
Game updates require PSplus to do in standby mode. Real time updates takes longer than 360 still.
Light on the controller seems useless, distracts in a low lit room and reflects off a shiny LCD screen if you have it. Thank god I have matte screen.
Absolute joke of a headset included, which means multiplayer rooms will still be mostly silent.
Oh yes, these are launch software titles with cut corners. Oh yes they are.
The hyped "share" feature of video gameplay clips wants to share via Facebook or... via Facebook. LOL.

You'll note I put the headset on both lists because ... well I hate the silence when in a multiplayer game... but then again the public is so so stupid to listen to.

my software update took like 5 minutes.


I don't like you can only upload vids to facebook. Someone will create a way to link them off of facebook to other sites I hope because facebook only is dumb. I rather it go to youtube.

I thought the PS4 could "Share" directly to Twitch as well, or is that not in yet?

I'm sure that the update time depends on when you did it too. The PSN network was slammed on launch day ... and flat out inaccessible for brief periods of time. I probably got caught on that. Either way 5 minutes of a loading bar isn't a great console experience either, don't kid yourself. That it will do OS and game updates in the background from now on is a serious boost to the likelihood I'll even use the thing for video games... and not relegate it to the blu ray player that the PS3 became for me.

good question. I actually have no idea if it can be disable. I highly doubt it since they dedicated and entire button to it on the controller.


Also is the recording actually being saved to the drive during recording or being held in ram until you decide to save it? I doubt it's constantly being saved and overwritten to the drive but I could be wrong. Something like that I would think is being stored into ram until you're ready to pick your 15 minutes to dump onto the drive for editing.


And yea, day one patching is crappy no matter the time frame. I didn't mine because I did it at work while I had other stuff to do. I actually had all the updates done and didn't touch it until about an hour later.

quality I've seen isn't that high, but I really don't know. I'm sure they have ram and part of the HD reserved for the cache of this because you def don't get all 500gb of that HD

I found the recording thing. It's 1.5GB on the drive. For me at least. I don't care I'm leaving it on. But for the maniacs with SSDs... I think they'd want the option to not eat write cycles.

The ships were definitely the best part of AC3. No surprise they built a pirate game around it.

AC4 is almost overwhelming in how fast it opens up the world. So much better than the 10 hour tutorial in 3. But it's like they are almost trying too hard now, although it is still enjoyable.