PlayStation 4 gets dated, Vita gets games at Gamescon

November 15h, 2013. That’s the date we here in Canada and the United States will be able to get our hands on the PlayStation 4. The news capped off Sony’s Gamescon press conference. The company’s been on a bit of a role lately, especially as Microsoft waffles their way through the Xbox One launch. Surprisingly, most of the conference wasn’t even about the PS4. The biggest announcements came for PS Vita fans. Here’s a rundown of what happened.

We got a look at the PS4’s GUI

We finally got a good look at how the PS4 will drive, so to speak. As we mentioned before, Sony has abandoned the XMB for a new tile based user interface similar to the new PlayStation Store. Well, sort of. Elements of the old Xross Media Bar remain. Now we have more streamlined drop down menus with colourful tiles replacing the old nested design used on the PS3 and PSP. What impressed me is how smooth everything is. Especially when switching between apps and recording gameplay video. It’s definitely a considerable improvement and brings PlayStation more into line with what Microsoft has been doing with the Xbox.

Of course Sony’s awful camera work at their conference prevented us from getting a really good look at what was going on. Note, we don’t want to see the audience.

Gran Turismo 6

If you read my review of the GT6 demo, you know I was less than impressed with this. It’s a PS3 game coming at a time when Microsoft is launching competitor Forza 5 on their next gen system. I really don’t have a lot to say about the trailer we saw. Most of the footage looked pre-rendered to me. What we are getting are concept cars from the world’s top designers featured in the game. Is this enough to win you over from Forza and Driveclub? Nope, me neither. Polyphony needs to get themselves out of the dark ages.

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LittleBigPlanet Hub

LPB is going social on the PS3 with a free-to-play hub. From the sounds of it, it will be similar to PlayStation home. You’ll be able to buy items, try on new outfits for your Sack Person, and challenge friends. All it really does is expand on LittleBigPlanet’s social function to a level it always should have been. However, like all F2P games, it’s really just a virtual store front.

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Vita gets cheaper

Sony is finally cutting the price of the Vita. One of the handheld’s biggest criticisms was the $250 price tag, which was significantly more than competing systems. You’ll be glad to know that starting this week, the Vita will now cost just $199.99 for all packages. This is actually quite the bargain when you think about it. Sony only sells them as bundles now. Each comes with a 4GB memory card and game. Meaning the Vita itself is only $145 now. Sony also introduced a new bundle which comes with TellTale’s phenomenal Walking Dead adventure game.  If you’ve been sitting on the fence, now is as good a time as any to grab one.

Vita’s memory cards get cheaper, sort of

The other big criticism of the Vita is the price of storage. Sony has listened and is now offering “significant” discounts on the proprietary Vita Cards. By significant, we mean between $5 and $20.

The 32GB and 16GB card will drop $20, becoming $79.99 and $39.99 respectively.
The 8GB card will drop $10 to $19.99
The 4GB card will drop $5 to $14.99

I think Sony and myself must be on a different pages here when it comes to the definition of “significant”. While the price drop is welcome, the Vita Cards remain grossly overpriced. In the case of the 32GB card, you can expect to pay the same for professional grade, 60MB/s Compact Flash cards.  Sony’s claims the high prices are due to the high speed of their cards. However, this has been repeatedly disproved. They only get about 8MB/s on a good day, which is actually slower than Memory Stick Pro Duo.

The high prices are a short term gain to a long term problem. Most gamers seem to agree that the Vita Cards should be no more than $50 for the 32GB. If Sony were smart, they’d be priced as an impulse buy to encourage digital purchases from the PlayStation Store. Why give a cut to the middle man when you should be getting  gamers to buy from your own store. The storage prices are still the biggest barrier to that.

The Vita gets games

One loss and two big wins for the Vita at Gamescon. The Vita is finally getting better developer support including one big, third party triple-A title.

Borderlands 2 is coming to the Vita next year. Other than that, very little is know about what this will entail. Gearbox hasn’t even mentioned it on their website yet. It’s a little disheartening that this is a port of a console title. However, I think it will fit in well with the Vita. The game can be enjoyed in small chunks and the cell shaded graphics fit well with the Vita’s hardware capability. A Gearbox representative said on the PlayStation blog that they would have details soon.

The Vita is also getting two other big games next year. Two tycoon type games in fact. Football Manager Classic 2014 is pretty self explanatory. The other is BigFest, where you play as a concert promoter trying to put on the best music venue the world has ever seen. Both look pretty solid from their debut trailers.

Lastly, a ton of indie games will also be appearing on the system. Sony is really trying to woo indie developers too their platform by offering easy development and self publishing. Notable games coming to the Vita in the near future include Fez, Rouge Legacy, Hotline Miami 2, Starbound, and Velocity 2X.

These are good moves considering third parties have been shying away from the system. You can’t scapegoat piracy this time either, as the Vita has yet to be cracked. It’s Sony’s fault for not encouraging developers, and they’re finally trying to rectify that.

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Remote Play

Sony clarified how the Vita will work as a controller for the PS4. The original plan was for it to work as a second screen. However, the company found that too confusing for gamers. So instead they’re going to blow the doors wide open on remote play.

The feature has been around since the PSP days. To say it’s been underutilized is an understatement. However, Sony says virtually every PS4 game will be playable on the PS Vita through streaming. Assassin’s Creed IV was shown off on the handheld and seems to play quite well with minimal lag. How much bandwidth it needs remains to be decided.

The big advantage here is being able to play your PS4 games away from the TV. A feature touted in the Wii U. What wasn’t mentioned is whether remote play will be restricted to local area networks or whether it can stream games online. Of course this is where lag becomes the biggest issue.

PS4 gets dated

As we mentioned at the start, the PlayStation 4 will launch in North America on November 15th of this year. European and Australian gamers will have to wait until November 29th. So far, no launch date has been announced for Japan. However, Sony promises the system will be available in 31 countries this holiday season. This is a big leap ahead of the Xbox One, which will only launch in 13.

The PS4 also seems to be showing strong pre-order sales. The company announced that 1 million have already been ordered. This doesn’t automatically translate to sales since customers can cancel at any time. However, it does indicate that Sony is prepping for quite a few units to be moved, and has added manufacturing capacity to deal with the demand. If you remember when the PS3 launched, shortages were a big issue.

 Source: PlayStation Blog, Gamescon