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    PlayStation 4 is Sony's fourth home video game console, released on November 15, 2013 in North America, and November 29, 2013 in Europe. On November 10 2016, Sony released the Playstation 4 Pro, an updated version of the console targeting 4K gaming.

    I barely play my PS4 (but I'm hopeful for Playstation VR)

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    bigsocrates

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    Edited By bigsocrates

    First of all, this is not going to be some "console wars" type silliness about brand loyalty to faceless corporations that don't care about any of us. I want to say that up front. This is more of a 'rumination' about my over two years of owning this console. I have owned every Sony console (except the PSP) and bought the PS4 at launch, hooking it up immediately and spending the next day in anticipation as Resogun, the launch day "killer app" slowwllllly downloaded.

    I liked Resogun, it's a very good game, but it's telling that the best game available at the launch of the PS4 was based on Defender, a great but ancient title from the early heyday of the arcade. In the 2+ years of the PS4's lifespan that's been the pattern. There have been a lot of good games, but all of them have been shinier versions of things we have seen before. It's very telling that the best AAA gaming experience I've had on my PS4 was playing The Last of Us Remastered, which is literally a better looking version of one of the 7th generation's late stand-out titles. There's no question as to whether The Last of Us could be done on PS3 because it WAS.

    Meanwhile, in addition to the fact that games haven't really taken much of a move forward since the 7th Generation, there's the fact that the loss of the B-tier games that happened during 7th gen is pretty much complete now. Everything that comes out is either a huge AAA tent pole or a small-team (if not necessarily indie) game. There are minor exceptions; I think that Far Cry Primal is arguably a B-tier production, but not many. This means fewer risks and less interesting games (outside the indie space). The PS4 has had a lot of games but it severely lacking in your Katamari Damacys or even Darksiders experiences. The mid-range where creativity and risk thrives, paired with enough of a budget to take advantage of the hardware's power.

    Comparing this to previous generations, it's clear, to me at least, that game design is stagnating. The Playstation 1, with its 3D capabilities, did things the SNES and Genesis could never dream of. The Playstation 2 took those early, somewhat rudimentary, capabilities and fulfilled that promise, with polygon worlds that no longer felt like they were falling part at the seams or swimming before your eyes. The PS3 added high-definition, true integrated online, with streaming media capabilities, and open worlds that, even if they were still janky, truly felt alive.

    The PS4 has...well there's a version of Defender that uses Voxels!

    Now the Xbox One, a machine I use far more than my PS4, is not different on the video game side. In fact the PS4 is a more capable machine, with better graphical fidelity and a larger software lineup, especially on the Indie end of things where the Xbox is barely putting up a fight. But the Xbox One has made progress in another way, a sort of lateral movement. It was designed as an integrated all-in-one set top box and, at least for me, it does that very well. It has completely replaced my cable box as the thing I turn on when I'm bored. Looking to "flip channels" so to speak? Say "Xbox On" and it will switch on along with the TV, ready for me to flick back and forth between Netflix and Youtube and Hulu, along with my library of Xbox One and 360 games, the same way I used to flip between channels looking for something to watch back in the 90s. I can watch half a TV show, "suspend it" to play a quick round of Ziggurat, and then flip back to the show to finish it before hitting up a friend for a level or two of Iron Brigade before bed. The PS4 can do most of this, but the UI isn't really designed for it, and (this is just a personal quirk) I have fewer friends on the system.

    Because of this ease of use I find myself gravitating more to my Xbox, to the point where even when a game has a higher frame rate or resolution on the PS4 I tend to grab it on Xbox just because it integrates into that ecosystem. And on the console exclusive side there just hasn't been much to make me turn on my PS4 in the last year or so. When I got my PS3 Infamous and Uncharted offered me exciting, polished experiences that were a real step up from what had come before (Compare either game to a PS2 stand out like God of War if you need to see the difference.) Now we're close to the 2 and a half year point, half way through the average console cycle, and the big game this Spring is....Uncharted 4, which doesn't even try to promise to be anything more than an Uncharted game with slightly nicer graphics.

    2 years in to the 7th generation we were seeing the generation defining games start to drop. Modern Warfare redefined the online console shooter again. Mass Effect finally fulfilled the promise of an action RPG that actually felt like a shooter (kind of.) This time around I don't see anything like that on the horizon.

    Except Playstation VR. Playstation VR could be a real game changer. I realize it won't be perfect or even comparable to the big time PC-based VR devices like the Vive or Rift. They've got to keep it affordable. We don't know when it will arrive or how much it will cost, but my hope is that Playstation VR will turn this generation around, and at least let us taste the promise of a future that may not be fulfilled until the 9th generation. I'm hoping that the Playstation VR will open up new horizons and opportunities to game designers to show me worlds that only existed in my imagination before.

    We're nearly two and a half years into this generation and the only game I've played on my PS4 in the last couple months is Super Star Wars, a port of an ancient and bad Super Nintendo game I used to own as a kid. For this console generation to be anything other than a half step, and for me to remember the PS4 as anything other than a system I bought at launch and watched gather dust even as it sold like crazy something has to change. Maybe that change will come just via bigger and better games like Horizon Zero Dawn, but I'm hoping it will come in the form of an overpriced head set that will let me glimpse new worlds I haven't seen, and a half step into the future.

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