I just came back from liveblogging the PlayStation 4 event, and boy, my fingers are tired. We saw some pretty spectacular clips of upcoming titles and learned a bit about the new console. But for all we learned about the next generation of Sony’s game console, we still have a few unanswered questions.
What happened to the PlayStation Vita? Although we know you can play a game on your home theater, then continue to play the same game from the PS Vita. President and CEO of Sony, Andrew House, went on to say, “It’s safe to say that we’ll continue to unlock PS Vita’s potential.” But how? The subject was dropped, never to be mentioned again.
Will Sony continue to develop Vita-only games? Or will the Vita be delegated to the role as the PlayStation 4’s boy wonder?
How will the DualShock 4 touchpad work? That the DualShock 4 had a touch pad comes as no surprise to those who’ve seen the leaked photos of the demo model. But how does it work, exactly? Which games will use it? Will they be a necessary component of gameplay, or is it a configurable button?
I can’t tell you, and I was sitting in the audience for the whole event. If the touchpad enhances gameplay in any way—and I’m sure it does—it would be nice to see it work. As it was, we didn’t see so much as a hint of a finger swipe.
It’s almost as if Sony doesn’t actually have a finished model….
What will happen to the recordings on the recording feature? Currently, if you want to record video from a PS3, you need to purchase and hook up an external capture box. But the PS4 will capture your greatest kills (and even more spectacular deaths) with a touch of a button and will even give you minimal editing capabilities. As I learned later in the evening, players can capture up to fifteen minutes of footage in one go.
But what do you do with the footage then? Although Sony partnered with Ustream, the one-stop shop for personal videos is YouTube. And YouTube failed to earn a mention.
Will Sony partner with YouTube at all? Will Ustream become the repository of all things PlayStation? Or will Sony and add a video streaming service to the PlayStation network? Your guess is as good as mine. Really.
How much will it cost? There wasn’t a mention of the price, nor a whiff of a mention, nor a hint of a whiff. The PS3, UPDATED: with a split pool of differing memory, 256 for system memory and 256 for graphics memory, was originally priced at $499 for the 20-gigabyte hard drive model and $599 for the 60 gig. The PS4 will have 8 gigabytes of unified memory (more than the previously rumored 4 gigs). So how do you price that?
I couldn’t begin to tell you (although Erik Kain speculates that it should be $400.) Perhaps Sony doesn’t know either–and are waiting to see Microsoft’s response before committing to a price in public.
How will we play our older games, exactly? The fact that we can play our PS1, PS2, and PS3 games on the PS4 has been confirmed by Sony. But can we play the games we already own off of a DVD drive, or do we have to purchase them again from the PlayStation store?
If the former, then awesome. If the latter, well, it could be a deal-breaker for people who just don’t want to spend money twice.