Later this week, Sony’s PlayStation 4 will arrive to great fanfare with midnight release parties at retailers, breathless shoppers jostling for their systems, and thousands of online pre-orders being fulfilled. And they’re all making a mistake.
OK, so it’s not a huge mistake, but if you’re any kind of self-respecting gamer or gadget hound who likes to get the most for your dollar, you should not be picking up a PS4 on November 15 or even any time soon. Here’s why:
1. 793 Games: Odds Are You Missed A Couple
There are currently 793 games available on disc for the PlayStation 3. That’s simply on disc. Add in downloadable titles and you’re around 1,000. 1,000 games that are out there for your entertainment! A staggering number. Are dozens of them subpar? Sure. Are there plenty of genres and themes that might not interest you? Of course. But if you show me a gamer who’s played every great, worthwhile, memory-making title for the PS3 in the last seven years, I’ll show produce a live and very cute unicorn.
2. Adopting Early Can Lead To Hardware Headaches
Video game consoles are no different than other technology in that the first edition of a product usually arrives with a much higher risk of failure. Even if you’ve forgotten about the ‘rings of death’ issues and fan noise fixes from this current gaming cycle, there’s still the inevitable refinement that will occur with the system. If you wait two years on a PS4, that 500GB hard drive might very well be a full terabyte when you do plunk down your dough for it.
3. Ports Can Be Poor
The couple of dozen games that are launching with the PS4? Many of them were designed and created before the system was even officially announced. Games like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts, FIFA 14, and Madden NFL 25 will be bought and played many more people on the PS3, and as history has shown, often times the new console’s version of a game suffers because the emerging hardware wasn’t really at the developer’s disposal.
4. Baby Steps Forward
Have you seen any of the PS4 games in action? Some of them look good, sure, but even the sharpest of the bunch could probably fool a hardcore gamer into thinking he was seeing PS3 footage. Point is, the increase in graphical capabilities from PS3 to PS4 will not be a huge leap forward; it’ll be a modest nudge. Especially in the first year or two.
Is the graphics nudge, along with Sony’s introduction of the ‘Share’ button worth missing out on dozens of great (and now much cheaper) games, dealing with potential hardware issues, getting possibly subpar ports of current gen games, and having millions of fewer gamers to play with online? Well, that’s your $400 question now, isn’t it?
And just in case you think this is meant as some kind of a plug for the Xbox One, don’t worry; that article is coming.
No thanks. I want to play battlefield 4 with 64 players ASAP. I’m not waiting
1 always buy the optional warranty with ANY system. 2 upgrade the HDD to 1T if you need (very easy). there are so many more features being introduced with the new consoles other than just new games. You keep saying subpar ports? well the next gen are getting a more full game experience than current gen gamers are getting so if anything the current gen gets a “sub par port”.