With Sony’s press conference behind us, everyone is cheering loudly. Heck, I have personally heard several of my friends stating that they are officially converted over to purchasing a Playstation 4. But it seems in all of the excitement that there was a piece of information that was overlooked, including by me. In the cheeky instructional video, seen here, it clearly states in the fine print at the bottom something that could cause people to think about things.
It would seem that Sony are taking the same route as Microsoft have taken with Xbox Live, in terms of they are now going to require you to have Playstation Plus subscription, in order for users to enjoy playing online. It isn’t clear if this means that you need a Playstation Plus subscription to use such features as Netflix as well. Now personally, if there is one thing that Microsoft truly excels at, it’s the online community. It is rich and very featured base; voice chat transmits better and most importantly, it’s security seems to be top notch. Sony have had issues in the past, with at least two different hackings that saw Playstation Network taken offline for several days. So, it’s a tad worrisome because now, if you are a online mutli-player guy, you will pay $49.99 for Playstation Plus for a year, opposed to $59.99 for Xbox Live for a year, but if the Network goes down again, via a hack, that leaves your $50 being wasted.
However, to play devil’s advocate; at the same time, you are given a great value in the form of instant game collection, with the announcement that upon release of the Playstation 4, Drive Club Playstation Plus edition will be available for free. Also, with the “Welcome Back Package” that Sony introduced, offering several perks after getting back online after a hack, it would seem that Sony seems ready to take responsibility for what may happen.
In other news, according to a Japanese magazine, Playstation 4 will be launching with a 500GB Hard-drive, the same as Xbox One. It is unclear at this time if they have plans to release further models, but taking Playstation 3 into account, it seems highly possible. A dualshock 4 also ships with the console, since you know, those are important for playing the game. It will also include a headset but the most worrisome piece is, for the first time, it will come with an HDMI cable and no composite cables. Depending on what tv you have, if you don’t have a flat screen, then you might be out of luck. So, that means that hopefully you’ve kept your composite cables that were included with your Playstation 3!
The Playstation 4 will also not ship with the Playstation Eye, which contributes to its cheaper price. Instead, you may purchase it for $59; controllers will also be $59, roughly the same price as dualshock 3.
With this new information of multi-player only being made available with a subscription, will this news change your mind and revert you back to choosing a new-gen console?
If you missed all the drama of the conference, you can watch it, at its entirety here.
Related articles
