I don't know what to think about the PS4. I have mix filling about it. Has ups and downs.
All they pretty much showed at the press event was that its an "upgraded PS3". Which is good, but I guess I was expecting something more.
What I mean, is that even most of the games showed at the even are confirmed to be released on the PS3 (let alone XBox 360). There was nothing that really said "You could not play these games on the PS3 or your current console, you have to get a PS4 to play them as it has the power/feature/etc to make it possible". Expect the the Move game showed. That was a a good example showing what I am trying to say, what they should have done. The game said: Can I draw like this, or experience this game on a different console? No. Only the PS4 has the capabilities for this, I must get a PS4 to enjoy this gaming experience. That is the sensation I should have gotten with most of the games.
But there is E3... so there is still time!
For the specs, it's clear that the console is a powerful system. But I feel a bit insulted that they just throw fancy terms that most people don't know. It has 8GB of RAM! WOOOOOWWW, While it is impressive, it is being shared with the system and RAM. Now while, on PC shared memory graphic card are very poor performance, at least they used GPU optimized memory: GDDR5. But, the CPU will struggle.
For those who don't know, GDDR5 is modified DDR3 chips, where in exchange of reduce density and increase latency, you have high bandwidth. GPU doesn't really care about latency... it care and wants more high bandwidth over anything else. Why? Because it allows the GPU to store and load large data.. such as texture, and process scenes in advance, etc. The CPU in the other hand want low latency.
Also, we have no idea on the speed of the memory. Is it 400MHz? 800Mhz? 60000MHz?
Faster chip cost a lot of money... assuming Sony wants to avoid the huge loss they had with the PS3 on each sold, and wants to sale it at a lower price.. it's probably slow memory.
Also, we don't know how the GPU manages memory. Assuming it's a Radeon 7000 series architecture, those cards, while impressive, needs A LOT of memory compared to Nvidia offering with the 600 series. It's just how the architecture was designed. That is fine, but that it means that games have less RAM then thought about.
As the console record a segment of your play to share it, we don't know if it will be using an SSD/HDD to store it or RAM. If it's RAM, then games will have even less of it to work with.
Also, a lot of people are questioning the 8-core AMD... and saying it's really a 4 core CPU, with some technology to make it kinda 8. It's a bit like if Intel says Core i7, 8 core CPU... where they really mean 4 core, but with hyper-threading. That is what people believe, there is a lot of questions and ambiguity on this.
A lot of stuff that was said on the press event about the console where empty promises. There were at no point "We can do it", but rather "We think we can do it".
In addition, all they have been doing it throwing at us buzz words, like we will be exited about it... I guess that's was more targeting for investors rather than gamers, that fine.. but investors didn't buy in, as the stock of Sony went down.
Ok so the console is not ready.. that's fine, and that's fair. Probably Sony is still working on contract with manufactures to know what they can have as deal, to be sure on what specs the console they can have, at the price region they want. That's fine... Nintendo did the same. So how about the controller? Beside the share button, we know nothing. Does it have rumble or was that put aside like the PS3 at release? How about the MAIN FEATURE of the controller, the big fat touchpad? That's like Nintendo going on stage and saying "Here is the WiiU controller, that black box that looks like a screen turned off, we have no comment on it." I mean common. So far, I see no reason or point of the touchpad.. at least with the WiiU game pad, I kinda can see what Nintendo is going for, and it looks fun to try. I don't see it as ground breaking, but looks like a cool feature to have to change the game experience a bit. PS3 touchpad? heeuuuuu... rub my finger on it to make my charter do stuff? Maybe, tap on it, and is like an extra button? Come one! Now, that is gimmicky like crazy! And I am NOT using a touchpad to interact with a game as a mouse. That would be stupid. I would have wanted more info on this, is what I am trying to say.
And how about the console downloading games in advance without me knowing, as it thinks I want to buy it? That will kill my bandwidth limit. Not everyone live in a country that have 100 GB/s internet and unlimited bandwidth. It better have the ability to turn it off. Would be nice to have said if that feature was optional.
How about latency in streaming games over the net? How are you going to solve this problem?
So in result, I am a disappointing in this press event, it raised more questions than answers. However, it has some cool features, it looks interesting, the games looks very nice, I like the streaming demo feature.