Don’t just fanboy right now, we know you like the PS4 price, but I have a bone to pick. Since we reported on the unfair pricing of Xbox One yesterday, it seems only fair to do the same for Sony, even if they had a successful conference as well. Price points for the Playstation 4 are out and they’re much cheaper and less restricted than Xbox One. For a PS4, you’ll pay $399 or €399. We’ll reiterate: you’ll pay 400 Dollars if you’re in North America. You’ll pay 400 Euros if you’re not. Again, those things aren’t the same. Here comes the “math” part.
Since currency doesn’t magically change, the difference in price is again one full third of the price between regions. For clarity: Buying a PS4 outside of American territory costs roughly $130 more. Also, once more: Lowering that gauge to €349 would still cost $60 more for Europe than an original American price point, though that would be a debatable point for the “market differences” excuse and whatnot. It’s not as steep as the Xbox One, should it be adjusted. Still, the price isn’t €349 for Europe; it’s €399 or $530. This has got to stop. We’ll accept paying 20 bucks more for games, because our idea of an economy isn’t that solid. We’ll accept purchasing any peripheral around the $50 mark at a sizable upsell, because production costs and added taxes are out of our grasp. However, when that bump goes upwards of $100; that’s when we should ring the alarm, because there’s no way that the same hardware differs that much in a different package.
There is hope however: PS4 is not region locked. With some luck, you’ll be able to snag a console from overseas if you’re in Europe, to ultimately still save enough money to buy an extra game. We highly advise you start looking into this and stop giving European traffic the courtesy of business for our convenience. It’s not convenient to put up a hundred more to not order something online. Thus concludes the little emo moment of the Sony conference. Now, let’s get raving at how absolutely awesome it was!
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The conference started a little slow, but already revealed a little sizzle with a third party reel opening. Then, Jack Tretton took the stage first time to push the PS Vita. Figures are thrown, such as Vita players owning 10 games by average and 60% of purchases being done online. There will be more than 85 new Vita game by the end of this year, including Tearaway, Destiny of Spirits, Batman Arkham Origins and Killzone Mercenary.
In turn, Playstation 3 still got a nod on stage with trailers for Puppeteer, Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, which shows some actual gameplay. Gran Turismo 6 showed off its visual splendor with “adoptive tessellation” elements, after which the Batman fought Black Mask and encountered The Joker once more. Fans of Grand Theft Auto V will also be able to purchase a special PS3 bundle equipped with a specially built headset.
From there on, the conference shifted to high gear and started busting out the Playstation 4 powerhouse that everyone will remember for quite some time. Aside from the PS4 console looking like a slanted version of the Xbox One and it also doing TV integration, there are also tons of games incoming. Currently, there are 30 PS4 games in development; 20 of those will release in the first year and 12 are new properties. It started this claim with The Order 1886, a steampunk title with werewolves from Santa Monica Studio and Ready at Dawn. It looks amazing to say the least and is one of our favorites for the show.
Previous mentions of Killzone Shadowfall , Driveclub and inFamous: Second Son returned to stage with some new footage. It looks like inFamous is preparing a story with family issues.
Quantic Dream once more was put on screen with a new game called The Dark Sorcerer, which featured the old man’s face from their PS4 tech demo. It takes place on a film stage, because David Cage. Indie studio Supergiant Games then received a few minutes on stage to present their game with painted silhouettes called Transistor. It looks a little like a much more extensive version of their previous game Bastion, which we already thought was fantastic.
At this point, it starts getting juicy: Sony explicitly mentioned indies are able to self-publish, which is something Microsoft won’t allow. This is presented with a series of indie developers on stage for games like Don’t Starve, Mercenary Kings doing a Metal Slug tribute, Octodad, Secret Ponchos, some game with zombies where I flaked for a second, scary game Outlast and an Oddworld remake.
We were teased with Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which then turned around and showed action heavy gameplay, for what is now called Final Fantasy XV. We might actually see it release now. Not content with just one game, Square Enix followed that up with a fluid gameplay snippet from Kingdom Hearts 3. Yes, it exists.
Strangely enough, Sony also picked up the slack from the Ubisoft conference and showed more gameplay for Assassin’s Creed IV and Watch_Dogs than the publisher did. Let’s just say that both look like amazing worlds to run through.
Bethesda took the stage for a moment to show The Elder Scrolls Online on PS4. Not only that, but they mentioned that the Beta for the MMO will launch first on Sony’s console.
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One of the largest announcement in the conference was teased by a washed out and intensely gritty clip in the desert, where a man stops a car to look at an injured soul on the desert floor. This fallen warrior begs the man to kill him. After checking his bullets, the man decides it’s not his trouble and backs up the car. Then, he comes back with the car. This is Mad Max, literally, the game with that name. We are stoked.
Sony had one more huge surprise in store for everyone: While talking about the 140 PS4 games in development and the 100 released on year one, Jack Tretton mentioned that used games are welcome to the platform; a direct hit towards Microsoft. Not content with that, they continued to state that they have no DRM for games, no online checks for their console and PS Plus carries over to PS4, with new games as the prize. However, a big underhanded stinker is that online services are now obligatory with PS Plus. No subscription, no multiplayer; we hope you weren’t planning on skipping the service, because you basically can’t.
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A final middle finger toward Microsoft was handled in the way of Destiny taking the stage. This open world shooter is being made by the former Microsoft stable that made Halo. Gameplay was shown that showed destructible environment, Warlock classes with spell powers, huge boss fights and even larger events with drop ships and dozens of enemies.