You're probably all aware that Sony announced the PlayStation 4 last week. (I kind of wish I wasn't aware, but it's actually part of my job....) Having seen most of the big announcement ceremony, I wasn't too happy with seeing the people in charge of the mainstream game industry charge down the same blind alley they've been going down for the last decade or two.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I'm mostly here to share a very perceptive blog article about the event: Here's a good section from the article:<\/p>\n It was an evening of cognitive dissonance. For the first half hour, Sony\u2019s people exhausted their buzzword thesaurus telling us how the PlayStation 4\u2019s technology will make \u201cnew experiences\u201d possible. \u201cIn the past, creators\u2019 visions have been constrained by the limitations of technology,\u201d said executive David Perry, but not anymore.<\/p>\n This proclamation of a new era was followed by a trailer for Killzone: Shadow Fall<\/i> that was indistinguishable from countless other trailers we\u2019ve seen for first-person shooters in the past. It hit all the standard plot points. The fresh-faced recruit hops off the troop transport. A building blows up. Much loud shooting ensues. (Here\u2019s a rule of thumb. If the title of your game contains a colon, odds are it\u2019s not a \u201cnew experience.\u201d) Later, representatives of the Japanese studios Capcom and Square Enix stopped by to show the audience that they planned to make PlayStation 4 games with dragons in them. Sony\u2019s tired thesis, the notion that more technology necessarily produces innovative artistry, was convincingly refuted by the content of its own event. It was like watching the Flat Earth Society unveil the year\u2019s hottest new globes.<\/p>\n ...<\/p>\n What gamers deserve, according to Sony, is more of the same, made marginally shinier. The man from the Evolution studio breathlessly told the crowd that some of the DriveClub<\/i> cars featured virtual carbon-fiber exteriors in which the physical response of every thread in the fiber is calculated separately. More than one producer marveled at the increased number of \u201cpolygons\u201d he was now able to cram into his latest predictable genre sequel\u2014\u201cpolygons\u201d being industry lingo for \u201csize of penis.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I'll point out that among weak announcements, Square Enix's was particularly poor: First, one fellow came up and showed a very nice real-time rendered short called \"Agni's Philosophy<\/a>\" (if you haven't seen\u00a0 it, I recommend giving it a watch)... which was first shown at E3 last year. Then the head of the Final Fantasy line came up and announced 'there will be a new Final Fantasy game on the PS4!' (Let's see, three games on the NES, three on the SNES, three on the PS, two on the PS2, one on the PS3 & Xbox 360\u2014discounting MMOs and direct sequels. Thanks for telling me there'll be a new game on the new platform. Couldn't have figured it out on my own.) At least everyone else was showing new<\/em> content.<\/p>\n Explosions flew thick and fast in the presentations, and marketing buzzwords flew thicker and faster. There's some interesting stuff mentioned\u2014play the game while it downloads, a mass application of technology like Bizzard's download manager for WoW<\/em>. Pre-fetch of games that your history shows you'll probably like, so you can try them out instantly. Neat, and about as creepy as Minority Report<\/em>. Never mind the fact that it's geared towards generating more impulse purchases than a Steam sale.<\/p>\n
\n\"More, More, More\u2014How Do You Like It?<\/a>\" by John Teti<\/p>\n