The Guns of Navarro: Great Expectations

Regardless of whatever reservations I may have had a couple of weeks ago, I am forced to admit that I was impressed with this past Wednesday's unveiling of the PlayStation 4. Or, to be more accurate, the unveiling of the ideas behind the PlayStation 4. Sony's initial announcement event wasn't so much a full on blitz of information on its new console, but a primer on where Sony's head is at with this thing. We now know what its horsepower will be, what the controller and its related gimmicks will look like, what Sony's been thinking about in terms of how to improve the user experience, and we heard from a number of developers about how they intend to use Sony's new gaming platform. As an initial introduction to a new piece of technology, it was about as informative as one might hope for.

No, we obviously didn't learn the price of the device, its release date beyond a somewhat nebulous holiday 2013 designation, and the box itself was absent. On that last point, I don't really understand the concern there. I've seen the box's absence pointed out as a particular folly in multiple write-ups of the event, including this piece on Wired from Stu Horvath, a writer I typically agree with. While I'm partial to attractively designed electronic boxes, it's not really the main selling point to me. So to call Sony out as some have for not showing the box strikes me as petty and maybe just a little bit beside the point. After all, aren't we really there for the games and the technology driving them? The box, according to Sony, isn't totally finalized, but the specs and user interface are at least somewhere close to it. Also, as twitter user CorySchmitz put it:

So Sony showed what it knew it could, and held back what wasn't ready for prime time. Especially when one considers that they'll have at least one more major go at this in the US at this year's E3, the fact that Sony showed as much as it did was frankly surprising to me.

Not to others, it seems. I'll hardly call the reaction to Sony's event universally negative; heck, I'm not sure it was even 50% negative. But there have been quite a few vocal voices decrying the event as sub-par or outright tragic. Since the event, the press and consumers alike have spent many a word breaking down, examining, and criticizing every minute detail of the announcement, as is custom. Every game, every technology concept, every microscopic digital car seat fiber has been examined in excruciating detail, and the opinions remain divergent and scattered. Given all this opposing feedback, what consensus conclusion should we, the gaming public, draw from all this analysis?

How about that Sony has made a new video game console, which is more powerful and feature-rich than its predecessor?

Okay, so that's hardly a thrilling revelation, but really, what else were we expecting? Sony's PlayStation 4 is and was always intended to be a video game console, with all the trappings, trimmings, and ubiquitous buzzwords one should expect from such a device. It is a more socially active console, in that it is very concerned with you being able to put any stupid thing you feel like on the Internet with only the press of a button. It has the now requisite motion controls, HD camera technology, and other various controller gadgetry one would expect a new console-maker to dream up. It has big games from big franchises that you are already intimately familiar with. It also will have smaller, less familiar games, but other than Mark Cerny's Knack, and Jonathan Blow's The Witness, we didn't see any of those. That's not surprising, considering this was a first impression event, and when you're making a first impression in the video game industry, it's a lot easier to rely on familiar franchise shorthand than brand new IPs. More specifically, it's a lot easier to point to something people know and say, "Hey, remember how this used to look?"

Considering many of us doubted as to whether Sony would have more than one or two games to show at all, I feel like maybe we're being a little unfair if we're judging Sony harshly for its showing. Am I, a consumer, terribly thrilled at the prospect of a new Killzone game? Or a PS4 port of Diablo III? Or an as-yet-unnamed Final Fantasy sequel eventually probably hopefully appearing on the system? Not really. But honestly, I wasn't necessarily that thrilled the last time new console makers first unveiled games, either. Remember when Sony used Killzone 2 as a tentpole when announcing the PS3? We were all ecstatic because the demo looked amazing technologically--not necessarily because it was a Killzone game. Of course, that demo didn't turn out to be terribly close to the final product, and other impressive looking demos shown that day, like This Is Vegas, never materialized at all.

So perhaps I am slightly confused when I see people complaining that Sony's PlayStation 4 demos didn't look more outlandishly impressive, more technologically exciting, more otherworldly compared to what the PlayStation 3 currently offers. With the exception of Capcom's Deep Down demo, which was clearly a tech demo--albeit certainly an impressive looking one--with a HUD overlaid upon it, everything in Sony's opening roster looked basically believable. That Killzone game looked like a game that could exist as a launch title on a next-gen system. So did Knack, inFamous: Second Son, DriveClub and pretty much everything else shown during the event. Basically, Sony eschewed incredulity in favor of realistic promises.

For some, maybe that's not enough. After all, it's been seven years since Sony last asked us to upgrade our PlayStation systems, and while the PS3 has its share of legacy problems and limitations, it's still a highly functional console replete with myriad media options. To inspire people to buy a new, presumably expensive media box, companies are expected to over promise the world with spurious sounding claims of technological superiority. Comparatively, Sony's PlayStation 4 announcement was peculiarly direct and maybe even a bit sobering.

Now, if you want to criticize some of the presentation choices at the event, I'm right there with you. The choice of games Sony lined up for the event definitely had a hard time meshing with the messages of change that Sony's representatives put forth while speaking on stage. That cognitive dissonance was a big part of this thoughtful takedown of the event by The Gameological Society's John Teti. In his view, Sony's words didn't jive with the sameness of the games we were being shown, that the solutions Sony offered were to invented problems, and that eviscerating older technology as the hindrance to true emotional storytelling, as Quantic Dream's David Cage did, was more than a bit ludicrous. On this last point, I agree entirely. Cage's presentation specifically called out technology limitations as a barrier to emotional connection in storytelling, while simultaneously using the classic silent film The Great Train Robbery as an example of why movies weren't interesting until the technology radically improved. It's a lame argument, one that presumes that the quality of artistic expression and the rate of technological advancement are inextricably linked. Considering we've seen no small share of terrible storytelling in the last few decades, regardless of how technology has improved, I don't think this point holds water.

But I also don't think Sony did anything particularly egregious in showing the games it did, and allowing the names it did to appear on stage. Well, with the exception of Square Enix, who clearly had no reason being out there. But beyond that, the games Sony put on stage felt like the kinds of games a company about to trumpet a new console typically does. I understand that it's been several years since we've really gone through this kind of thing on an industry-wide scale, but outside of a few awkward presentations--creepy inFamous guy, I'm looking at you--nothing stood out to me at Sony's event as particularly off or displeasing.

This, I suppose, makes me an optimist compared with some, who have called the event a mistake, or flop, or whatever else. I guess I just don't know what those who had any strong negative feelings about Sony's first showing were honestly expecting. Maybe because it's been so long since we've really been to this rodeo, not having our minds blown by what was on display was simply unacceptable. If that's the mentality you're going to take, you're likely to be very disappointed with how this industry, and frankly all iterative technology industries progress from here, because revolutions are far less common than updates. Or, as Ian Bogost put it in his write-up of the PlayStation 4 event in the Atlantic:

"We mistakenly believe that the label "next generation" implies newness and innovation, a promise of the technological utopia we've been dreaming of. But if you pause to reflect on the matter, you'll quickly realize that all those earlier generations were once next generations themselves, for some previously current generation. Innovation is like a Chinese finger trap: the more you tug deliberately at progress, the less progress you make, because the deepest, most profund novelty is the kind that blinds us to novelty. Every "next" thing shouldn't have to be a revolution. It can just be what comes next."

I don't know about the rest of you, but what's coming next sounds just fine to me. At least, so far.

--

As a complete and utter aside to any of this Sony nonsense, I felt I'd be remiss if I didn't spend at least a little time lamenting another piece of news from the past week.

We've all undoubtedly heard by now that IGN, now owned by Ziff Davis, plans to shutter several of its banner properties, including 1UP, UGO, and Gamespy. Some of the staff of those sites sound like they'll be folded back into the larger IGN whole, and if we're being completely honest, many of the writers who helped establish those brands and make them the powerhouses they were have moved on over the years. But that doesn't mean that they weren't still quality sites, and that they didn't have a place in this industry going forward.

Ziff, apparently, disagreed. Considering the company's bottom line, which appears to be to promote IGN and Ask Men at all costs, while shedding anything that isn't those two key things, I guess there never really was much hope there. Ziff didn't necessarily want 1UP, UGO, or Gamespy, but they came as part of the deal. Speaking from experience, it never bodes well when your site is thrown in as part of a package sale, versus being the target of the sale at the outset. Those sites rarely survive in a recognizable fashion, if at all.

When I began my tenure at GameSpot back in 2003, Gamespy was still a strong, independent brand that had yet to fold into the larger IGN conglomerate, UGO was still basically IGN's less video game-focused rival for the attention of young, Internet savvy males, and 1UP hadn't even launched yet, though it would soon after my arrival. People seem particularly pained by the loss of 1UP, and I don't blame them. Back in the early days, they were viewed by many I worked with as competition to be shunned, as was generally our custom. But when you met the people who worked at 1UP, and read, listened to, and watched the content they produced, you got the impression that that mentality couldn't have been further from theirs. You always got the impression that those folks cared as much about what the rest of us were doing as what they were doing, that they were paying attention, and had an active interest in what they were doing beyond the mere scope of just winning some futile traffic war.

Maybe that was true of some editors more than others, but generally, 1UP was a site I had a great deal of affection and respect for. Even as it went through transition after transition, people held that site close to their heart, because of the sense of community, the uniqueness of the content for its time, and the personalities that kept the place running.

Most importantly, places like 1UP, Gamespy and UGO were breeding grounds for great writing talent that has continued to flourish in recent years. I won't even try to name off the many, many writers and personalities I've met who either got their start, or had some of their best career years at those sites, because I know I'd forget a few, and I'd feel bad about that. Suffice it to say, they were numerous, and their contributions to our silly little line of work deserve all the warm feelings and sad lamentations that have come as a result of this news.

It's a strange thing to see these sites, once so intractably embedded in my field of vision on a day-to-day basis, go out this way. Especially when you consider that the consoles and platforms these sites covered for so many years are about to go away as well, giving way to a new generation of hardware. Does this mean we're giving way to a new generation of sites? A new generation of video games coverage the likes of which we scarcely know or understand? Hell, I don't know. I suspect not, but that's only because I feel like these changes have been coming for a while. Many of the sites that existed on the periphery at the outset of this past generation have skyrocketed in recent years. Blogs, mainstream media corporations, online video channels, it's all kind of blended together into this strange, unrecognizable beast, at least insofar as it compares to the industry I entered into ten years ago.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. While I share this writer's pessimism in terms of the profitability of our profession at large, I do feel that in the last few years, the content, both in volume and quality, has improved exponentially. Say what you want about the blogification of media, but I've read more interesting thoughts about video games in the last couple of years than I probably did in the previous ten. And I think we owe more than a little bit of that to sites like 1UP and Gamespy, who helped inspire many of these new writers and their perspectives we've now come to enjoy.

To those impacted by the layoffs at these sites, know that your work over the years has been appreciated by myself and countless others, and that we're all looking forward to seeing what's next for you.

--A

Thanks for all that text Alex =)

Nice arcticle Alex, Enjoyable read

I'm an optimist. As a gamer, I want to see the next-best thing and support it if the cost is ok for my budget. If it's not right away, I know it will be eventually. I didn't get a PS3 until four years after launch.

Sony genuinely seemed aimed at giving us that "next-best thing".

If enough gamers are critical of these companies, then I suppose we just won't have consoles anymore, because these divisions won't be profitable.

The last thing I want to do is play all my games from a tablet.

Great column as always. Thanks!

Anybody else read the header and immediately think of this?

That was awesome.

Another good article Alex. The Guns of Navarro is such a great feature. You might not appear very often on video or the podcast Alex but at least you're giving us great writing.

Kudos Alex, really loving these articles.

I also fail to comprehend why people would care what the PS4 looks like. Are they going to not purchase it solely on the grounds that it does not fit with their decor? That's called missing the god damn point.

Curse you Alex. I don't like you talking, but i can't help but find myself enjoying your writing...!

Great Article!

Great read Alex! Thanks for another Guns of Navarro!

@vigorousjammer: No, because I read classic literature. :P

As sad as it is that 1Up, UGO, and Gamespy are all closing, and that a lot of people are now forced to look for new work, I can't say that I'm particularly surprised by this turn of events. Games journalism is largely broken, as I wrote about at the end of last year, and I'd say that the bloat of the old guard was a contributing factor to that. If anything, I hope that the dismantling of these three sites is a sign that things are actually improving.

My best wishes to all those that were laid off, because I have been there and it is intensely painful to go through. But as for the sites themselves, I will not miss them. Game journalism needs to improve, and it won't so long as the status quo that began over a decade ago is allowed to be maintained.

Man, that Gamespy/1UP business is a major bummer.

But I feel like Alex is right when he says there have been more interesting stories and news coming out of the games media in the last couple of years: I think the games press has only just started to try and differentiate itself from all those bloggers out there, by doing more than just review coverage and off-my-mind videos on youtube.

It´s a very slow process though and if anything the games press is doing itself a huge disservice by basically throwing their professionality away and entering into weird twitter wars on a bi-weekly basis. Yeah, I can´t say if they´re really going to mature when I see stuff like that. But at least they´re trying- And some of the articles on Giantbomb (including this one) are a great start.

Yea, not sure why people care so much about the look of the box. This isn't an Apple product. Anyway, the thing looks sweet. I'm interested. That being said--I'm confused as to why people think that just because this is a "suped-up PC" that the "Steam-box" or a PC will really compete-or rather blow it out of the water. The PS3 will likely be around $400 as will the next Xbox. That will likely be the price people will pay for comparable graphic cards for their PC. The great advantage of a console is getting great value for their money because the console manufactures will eat the cost of the system with the idea of recouping the costs from software/accessory sales. I've been out of the PC game fir over 10 years now and really don't miss having to buy components every few years.

Well said, Alex.

This week on a very special Guns of Navarro...

I'll miss 1UP. :(

Great read Alex, thanks for these. Condolences to all those that lost or will lose their jobs at 1up and Gamespy - I've been loving their content for ages now (respect to Retronauts especially!).

I think the PS4 announcement was a big enough deal that everyone wanted to react to it, so they did. People who wanted to dislike it chose to do so. People who wanted to love it did so. People who weren't sure chose to find something to bitch about, like the lack of a shiny box on stage. To me, Sony presented just about what I expected them to, so I'm still neutral on the PS4. So I'll just wait for Microsoft's announcement and decide which of the two I'll get.

These have become my favorite write-ups on the site.

@hailinel: Yeah, after all the trouble 1UP has been through in the past 5 years, it's not all that surprising (I guess the staff weren't all that surprised either, considering their site engineer had been fired over a year ago), but still incredibly sad to see them finally closing down. Their podcasts, like Retronauts, Active Time Babble and that show that kept changing names every 10 episodes were all among the best gaming related podcasts there was, and their writing, which I guess I should've read more often to maybe keep their traffic up, was always excellent as well. I was kinda hoping they'd start a Giant Bomb style premium subscription, as I would've gladly paid for that.

You're wrong Alex, I upgraded (one of) my PlayStation systems a year ago!

I think the reason we see so much bad reaction from the community on stuff like Mass Effect 3 and PS4 is because every retard has an internet connection nowadays so the vocal minority became alot bigger.

But they are still the vocal minority and I bet that most people that watched the PS4 meeting either liked it or were left indiferent. Few were actively hating it, but unfortunately those are the ones that will talk the most.

If you thought last gen console wars were obnoxious just you wait for this one. It's gonna be bad and we will see just how fucked up and desperate some people can get over games or hardware.

@Alex "Speaking from experience, it never bodes well when your site is thrown in as part of a package sale, versus being the target of the sale at the outset. Those sites rarely survive in a recognizable fashion, if at all."


I see what you did there.

Anyway, I sincerely thank you for writing articles about video games/the industry. It's nice to have that now.

@vigorousjammer: Fuck yeah, Lapfox Trax.

I watched the PS4 reveal just long enough to know that they were making another PC-Console and not doing anything stupid and gimmicky. I'm not sure what people were expecting or hoping for really.

It's getting weird out here in video games journalism-land. If the second crash is coming, video game sites will get hit harder than most video game studios. I'm starting to think that the next wave of video game writers won't be those who find a way to "fix what's broken," but rather those prepared to weather an uncomfortable and furious storm.

Cheers to Alex for not being another depressing old fuck who can never be happy about anything. That Sony event was good and what comes next sounds fine. Well said.

"We now know what its horsepower will be" - Really not true. Absolutely not. We know the basic architecture and nothing more...

I'm sorry, but only a person that doesn't know much about hardware would come to such a conclusion.

I'm hopeful for what the PS4 is offering and what games can be made for this new generation of consoles. In regards to the closings, I hope all affected will find work as quickly as possible and be able to rebound from this cause there is nothing worse then to have a rug be pulled right from underneath you for the worst reasons.

Probably the worst commentary on the PS4 that I read was this bait-piece on Tech Crunch by some idiot "journalist" (not that I'm dumb enough to think any journalism occurs on Tech Crunch) who said the PS4 conference was an abysmal failure, because it focused on gamers and games and not casual stuff. Absolutely blew my mind at the stupidity of it.

I also still fail to grasp people who are constantly badmouthing the PS4 "because my PC is already at least as powerful as the PS4". Well, yeah, so is mine. Mine will blow the PS4 and the next XBox out of the water on launch and I built it almost a year ago. But that's not the point. It's the entire ecosystem. The affordable and self-contained little box of magic that brings more to the table (hopefully) than just graphics (but that too, preferably).

I'll never understand why people can't just enjoy games wherever games are. Sometimes the console business is gross and shitty, but c'mon.

I am really excited for all of the Playstation stuff! It seems to me that they are going in the right direction! As for 1up's closure, I am pretty dissapointed. I used to be a member of 1up and it is a sad thing to see them go! Hope the best for all of them!

the original 1up team was great, never forget

The real fear, as least to me, is that if the rumors for the cost of development doubling for these next gen consoles are true, it will lead to the industry further down the path of risk averse sequelization. I think when people see games like the new Killzone or Infamous, it's not that they're not impressed with the improved graphical fidelity, it's that they're seeing the same gameplay experience they've had for last decade and asking, is that all there is.

The fact that they went so in-depth was a nice surprise. I was hoping the PS4 would get back to prominence and they seem to be headed in the right direction. I get most of my multiplatform games on the 360 due to them having less issues, but I'm tired of Microsoft leaning on a handful of exclusives while pushing Kinect and ads on me. Sony's exclusives this gen have been great, and if they can achieve parity in their online and multiplatform games then it's exactly what I hoped the PS4 would be.

Great read Aex, love these columns.

Alex expressed his particular view fine, but others with their "I'm a REAL gamer, so I LOVED every bit of it and the rest of you are jaded dorks" can go shove off.

FFS, only a troll could rage at the hardware itself--it's impressive, to be sure. But almost nothing--save the confusing Media Molecule project and Watch Dogs--looked like it was taking advantage of being "next-gen". It's not about graphics, god damn it, it's the concepts and framework of the games (which are hopefully new IPs). All this whining companies did about being held back creatively by the long gen, and THIS is what they offered. FOH.

Alex continues to be my favorite GB writer. Great read, keep up the great work.

Great write up Alex. Concerning the negative response it seemed to be mostly from tech journalists, maybe they were mad because they couldn't take a picture of the console and slap it on their website.

@francesthemule: I dont think that's true, and I'm pretty sure there are developers that came out and said that aswell. Last gen the development costs spiked because of the move to multicore and the difference between SD and HD. But I see this increase more like the move from 320p to 640p.

Also, if the arhitecture of all 3 systems is similar, the crossplatform development should be cheaper.

I've seen plenty of other "journalist" go in the same direction with their criticisms of the event and i agree with the sentiment that it's incredibly stupid. For them if a company isn't actively and specifically pursuing the biggest and most profitable market they're doing it wrong.

With that ridiculous logic what happens to 95% of the companies that get crushed and go bankrupt while trying to all fit into this same market and what happens to every consumers not interested in this type of gaming? The answer is obvious but they're too busy shitting on these companies to think a bit further.

Anyone who thinks like that should be promptly ignored.

This should be a weekly video not article.

I thought the PS4 unveiling was much better than we could have ever expected from Sony, and I don't even have a major interest in any of the games they put on show (with exception to Watch Dogs, but I'm probably going to end up with that on PC). It was certainly much better than any E3 showing I've seen from them. At the very least they've convinced me that they're actually paying attention and attempting to fix the problems that the PS3 caused. Everything they said about the system itself was golden (with exception to the lack of a hard answer on backwards compatibility).

And while I never frequented those sites, the cold, calculated shutdown of 1UP and Gamespy is a damn shame. I felt like a re-design or "re-boot" of those names could have brought them back into relevance pretty easily. I even had the idea a couple weeks back of e-mailing Gamespy to give some semi-professional advice on how to quickly improve the look of their website (number one on the list, get rid of that god-awful green background). I do hope that those guys, especially Mathew Rorie, can get back on their feet again.

@Alex You continue to be one of the best parts of Giant Bomb, great write up dude.

I was just as confused about the general negativity after the reveal, I was watching the Polygon stream and it was just 'grumble grumble grumble this is what I don't like' until Justin McElroy came on and saved the day with some much needed positivity. I said this in a previous thread but I don't understand how so much press, and not even just tech press who maybe can be excused for it, but the enthusiast press complained about what Sony didn't show, when E3 is still coming. I'm just a shlub consumer but even I know you don't play your whole hand and leave E3 for Microsoft to win. It's glaringly obvious but people still complained. Do not understand it.

As for the layoffs man what a bummer. Specially with Rorie just getting hired. Hopefully a lot of those people land on their feet.

I also don't get the bitching about the PS4. Everything I saw ahead of time was people being snarky and expecting the system to only be mentioned for a few minutes at the end. Instead, like 95% of the 2+ hour event was PS4 related and we got everything we could have realistically asked for other than a look at the machine (who cares, it is going to be a black rectangle) and the price.

I'm not sure what people were expecting. It appears to be an extremely powerful system that plays games and will be coming out in November. This is what consoles are for. Other than a few of the lamer game/developer announcements, I was happily surprised from beginning to end.

Always awesome articles from Alex, I love reading these. Thanks!

The only things that impressed me about the PS4 presentation were the software and UI implementations. I feel that the same software changes could be made on PS3 so I don't really have a reason to look forward to purchasing a PS4 anytime soon. When there are enough games to get on PS4 then I will most likely move on. I delayed my upgrade to the current generation until 2007 and I can see my delay into the next lasting 2-3 years.

I am mostly concerned about developers not being able to handle the costs of development. This may lead to innovation in the middle market, but it could also lead to a mass exodus of creativity.

In regards to the recent layoffs at IGN I would say that I expected it. The internet is a crowded place and there was little reason for IGN to be associated with two other outlets that essentially did the SAME thing. The 1up.com and Gamespy staff should have either joined IGN or been laid off.

I'd like to refer to you the part of this article that talked about the Chinese Finger Trap. Specifically the bit about how trying to push and nudge toward progress winds up stifling it.

Those games will come. Nobody ever dreamed something like Assassin's Creed or Dead Rising could happen on any console from any previous generation. It's just something nobody thought could be done. When those games did happen, though, it was a revelation and opened up many doors to many different possible games. Point is, those "new" games are coming, but we don't know about them yet because we're nine months away from the launch of this console. The console we didn't "know" existed until last week.

TL;DR quit whining because the next gen hasn't even started yet.

@Alex Great article! I remember the 1up crew showing support during the Jeff/Gamespot thing. It made me realize that games and games writing were a bigger world.