Games
Sony’s PlayStation 4 is off to a great start, but here’s what it needs to win the war.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 has been a hit since it launched last year, with a stonking 7 million consoles sold worldwide as of April 2014: it’s even outshining the Xbox One in the US each month with more sales, according to the latest NPD report. But before Sony’s latest console can hit legendary status and knock out the Xbox One for good, it needs a few tweaks to help it win. Join us as we take a look at what the PlayStation 4 needs to land a TKO, and win the war, not just the battle.
True suspend/resume
Unlike the Xbox One, Sony’s PlayStation 4 can’t quite shutdown and wake up exactly where you left off instead you can only head back to the dashboard while your game is in a suspended state, which isn’t ideal when you need to pop out for a few hours whilst you’re playing InFamous: Second Son. We’d like to see instant resume much like when you flip open your Nintendo 3DS, just in full HD.
External hard drive support please
Sure, you can swap out the hard drive out of your PlayStation 4 and replace it with a larger one, but we want to use the ability to take games on the go. Simply plugging a hard drive into a friend’s console and playing a game stored on the drive straight away is exactly what we want, but there’s no word of that coming any time soon. Microsoft is adding exactly that feature with the arrival of the Xbox One June dashboard update, "but Sony’s console completely lacks that ability you can’t even play anything from a USB thumb stick although" being able to increase the PS4’s internal storage sure is handy. Take notes, Sony.
A touch of personalisation
Bored of the same PlayStation blue hue that’s on your home screen? Yeah, we are too. Unlike the incredibly customisable PlayStation 3 XMB interface, which let you swap everything from your backgrounds to your icons, and organise anything on your console in any way you fancied, you’re stuck with the same blue home screen that you first booted into on your PlayStation 4. Sure, you’re more likely to be engrossed in an actual game instead of staring at your PS4’s main menu, but a little bit of personalisation would be nice, right?
The PlayStation Camera needs a boost
Sony’s PlayStation Camera works well for when you’re messing around in The Playroom, which grants you some AR goodness from the comfort of your sofa, or for shoving your face into your Twitch streams, but when it comes to gaming, it’s still not on the same level as Microsoft’s Kinect sensor. What we want to see is the Camera get a better boost, with more games supporting it, and some sort of interaction with Sony’s upcoming Project Morpheus VR headset Sony has all the pieces of the puzzle for a truly immersive gaming experience, but whether the gaming giant can bring them all together, is yet to be seen.
DualShock 4 needs more life (and less glow)
The DualShock 4 is simply one of Sony’s best controllers ever, a finetuned version of an already solid design, and it made us (almost) forget about the horrific looking boomerang controller that was originally revealed with the PlayStation 3. It’s not totally perfect though: we just wish we didn’t have to plug it in so often, as its Achilles’ heel is its short battery life. We’d love for Sony to give its latest pad a battery boost, and to finally, let us turn off that annoying glow from the Light Bar. We know it’s for Project Morpheus, but we’d rather just switch it off until we can dive into Sony’s VR world.
Project Morpheus needs to arrive
Sony has an ace up its sleeve in the form of its upcoming Project Morpheus VR headset, which looks to be extremely promising, giving you Oculus Rift style powers right on your nextgen console but the only thing is that there’s no release date attached. We know this would give Sony a clear leg up over the competition, and could even take down the Xbox One if the price is right. Who needs Kinect anyway?
PSOne classics please
Despite all of it’s horsepower under the hood, and even the availability of PlayStation Classics on the PlayStation Network, your PlayStation 4 still isn’t capable of playing any of your childhood favourite games and that’s a huge blow, especially if you’ve popped your PS3 into storage with plenty of PS1 games tied to your account. Rumours suggest that PS1 and PS2 games will be arriving on the nextgen console through emulation, rather than streaming with PlayStation Now, but there’s been hardly any hints since the rumour first cropped up let’s hope Sony spills all during this year’s E3: retro gamers need some nextgen love too.
PlayStation Now, now with more included
PlayStation Now, Sony’s super streaming platform that gives you PS3 games on your PS4, still isn’t here yet, but even when it arrives, it’ll only pack in a selection of original PS One, PS2 and PS3 titles but what about the whole classic PlayStation library? Giving us instant access to the whole PS1 and PS2 catalogue would be one way for an instant signup, but until then, a “limited selection” just won’t do.
More media powers
Guess what: your PS4 is powerful enough to play top end games, and can also play Blu-rays and DVDs, but "and this may be surprising" it still can't play CDs, MP3s, and it can't even read any external drives either. Sony needs to up its media support for its PlayStation 4: even DLNA support would be handy for network streaming of video too. The older PS3 can handle CDs, MP3s, external drives and even 3D Blu-ray playback, but Sony’s latest console can't. We just hope it arrives in a software update and pronto.
PS Vita and PS Vita TV need to storm the front
Why waste time leaving the PS Vita TV in Japan? Sony needs to bring out its microconsole to the West to act as an extender for the flagship games machine and no doubt, every family will want one for the upstairs bedroom. Similarly, Sony needs to push harder on cross saving and purchasing between PS4 and PS Vita, making more games that offer this option and to really nail this home, a new PS Vita model with proper L1/L2/R1/R2 buttons for true remote play on all games. Now that would be perfect.
What else would you add to the PS4 to make it indispensable, and a true Xbox One slayer? Tell us in the comments below!
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