Might get the PS4

Speedster911

Speedster911

4,332
Alright, so I was browsing around some gaming stores yesterday, and almost none of them had the X1: they say it isn't selling well in SE-A generally.

The PS4, they call it the US region 1, 2 and 3 - region 1 being able to play games of all US regions - is being sold for $500 here, with a 500 GB drive. Games are between $60 and $70, but usually hovering around $60.

Is this a good deal? The vendor also said to me I'll need a subscription card to go online, even if I want to download just updates, demos or DLC. He said it was close to $60 a year, which does not seem worth it, to me at least. Updates are free, and some DLC content is free as well, so why do I need a subscription fee just to go online? What am I missing?

Thanks for the input!
 
The vendor's certainly not an expert.

PlayStation Plus is needed for playing most games online. That's it. Buying DLC, downloading demos or updates don't need an active PS+ account. In addition to this, you get two games a month per platform to play on, and you get to keep those games as long as you're a subscriber.

This means that if you have a Vita, a PS3 and a PS4 you get six games a month that you can play. You get six more the month afterwards.

Also, PS4 games are region free.
 
If your keeping your PS3 or have a Vita then PS+ is definately worth it? it's ~£40 a year for games that total more than that each month for free
 
I can echo these two comments above.

To play online you will need Playstation Plus and as has been said included in the price are monthly downloads that you can have for free. It seems a steep price at first but the more you play online and keep active with your PS3/4 the more it becomes worth it. Also I believe you get discounts off movie rentals on PSN. I'm not 100% sure on this as I don't do that.

As for the system itself then you should probably know a lot about it by now and it's a great one. Game prices seem roughly correct when converted.
 
Don't forget that none of the F2P games require PS+ though as has been pointed out, you are best getting PS+ for the benefits already mentioned.
 
Yeah it's great value for money clearly, but my internet connection's just not good enough for gaming: 4 MB/sec, shared.

So MP is out, I don't think I want a subscription just to enjoy free games - I'm selective about gaming, and there are a lot of crap games coming out on every console of every generation. I'm sure a game like The Last of Us, Unchartered or GT7, PCARS will most certainly NOT be free!

Thanks for the input though.

Would love to hear more on PS Plus.

And yeah the vendor's a retard for saying there are US regions 1, 2 and 3. I did find that bizarre.

And no, I don't own any previous Sony consoles; had a PS2 and 3, sold em both long time back.
 
Speedster911
Yeah it's great value for money clearly, but my internet connection's just not good enough for gaming: 4 MB/sec, shared.

So MP is out, I don't think I want a subscription just to enjoy free games - I'm selective about gaming, and there are a lot of crap games coming out on every console of every generation. I'm sure a game like The Last of Us, Unchartered or GT7, PCARS will most certainly NOT be free!

Thanks for the input though.

Would love to hear more on PS Plus.

And yeah the vendor's a retard for saying there are US regions 1, 2 and 3. I did find that bizarre.

And no, I don't own any previous Sony consoles; had a PS2 and 3, sold em both long time back.
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Your internet seems quicker than mine and I manage ok with online play.

I'm selective about certain games too but so far theres been a decent selection, but up to you at the end of the day.

If you've sold your PS3 then you won't get the PS+ benefit on that either which would help contribute the value of the subscription fee.
 
I agree with the comments above.

PS+ is necessary if you play on-line. If you only play off-line, then of course it is not worth the money.
However, as the others said, a minimum of 2 games are offered for each console every month, i.e. 2 games for PS3, 2 games for PS4 and 2 games for PS Vita...
Note that PS+ is NOT necessary to download firmware or game updates.

The games are not region coded. Therefore you are free to purchase your games anywhere. But be careful, DLC is region coded: a DLC purchased on the European store will not work on a USA-based account for example.
Also, Blu-Ray playing is region coded...

And to finish, your internet connection is not fast, but it should be enough to play on-line. Anyway, your connection will be a problem if you purchase all your games and download them from the store, as they are several dozens of GBs each.
(I perfectly know this problem with my 6.5 MB/s connection, hence the fact that I prefer to buy my games on disk).
 
I'm on a 1mb/s and I was playing Destiny just fine (lagged a bit but not much) so you'll be fine.

PS plus for me I don't like it since my internet it too slow to download anything but hey it's 60$ a year so not that bad.

you can purchase a PS4 and hold off PS plus for a bit if you like but anyway the console is fantastic so far, just pick the right games.
 
Very valuable info guys, greatly appreciated. 👍

What I've gathered:

PS+ is useless since I've sold my PS3.

I do not need it just to download firmware/updates or free DLC.

However, it seems my internet connection is good enough for gaming. What I didn't mention that even though it's a 4MB/sec connection, files do not download any faster than 450 to 470 Kb/sec. Yes.. that's kilobytes. Upload speed sticks to around 250 Kb/sec. Not sure if this is good enough for MP, but decent enough for downloads. Funny thing is though when I do the connection speed test, it shows download speed as 3.5 mb/sec and upload as 0.8 kb/sec. Could be biased that way since I'm using a link provided by my ISP.

Oh well, PS plus doesn't sound like a bad deal, but I'm in no hurry to do MP. If I do manage to get my hands on a PS4, I'm purely interested in what kind of games the console can shoulder and how the SP experience is going to change going from a PS3/X360 to current gen.
 
Speedster911
Very valuable info guys, greatly appreciated. 👍

What I've gathered:

PS+ is useless since I've sold my PS3.

I do not need it just to download firmware/updates or free DLC.

However, it seems my internet connection is good enough for gaming. What I didn't mention that even though it's a 4MB/sec connection, files do not download any faster than 450 to 470 Kb/sec. Yes.. that's kilobytes. Upload speed sticks to around 250 Kb/sec. Not sure if this is good enough for MP, but decent enough for downloads. Funny thing is though when I do the connection speed test, it shows download speed as 3.5 mb/sec and upload as 0.8 kb/sec. Could be biased that way since I'm using a link provided by my ISP.

Oh well, PS plus doesn't sound like a bad deal, but I'm in no hurry to do MP. If I do manage to get my hands on a PS4, I'm purely interested in what kind of games the console can shoulder and how the SP experience is going to change going from a PS3/X360 to current gen.
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Mine is 112kb/sec :lol: , I wouldn't say useless but yes gamers with slow internet like us won't get the best from it.
 
LJP64
I agree with the comments above.

PS+ is necessary if you play on-line. If you only play off-line, then of course it is not worth the money.
However, as the others said, a minimum of 2 games are offered for each console every month, i.e. 2 games for PS3, 2 games for PS4 and 2 games for PS Vita...
Note that PS+ is NOT necessary to download firmware or game updates.

The games are not region coded. Therefore you are free to purchase your games anywhere. But be careful, DLC is region coded: a DLC purchased on the European store will not work on a USA-based account for example.
Also, Blu-Ray playing is region coded...

And to finish, your internet connection is not fast, but it should be enough to play on-line. Anyway, your connection will be a problem if you purchase all your games and download them from the store, as they are several dozens of GBs each.
(I perfectly know this problem with my 6.5 MB/s connection, hence the fact that I prefer to buy my games on disk).
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(emphasis added)
Actually that's not really true. Blu-ray movies that are region locked is a decision usually by the studio, not by the standard. That is why importing of foreign movies is so rampant within the last five or ten years, the studios just flat out don't care about region lock the blu-ray releases.
 
Speedster911
What I didn't mention that even though it's a 4MB/sec connection, files do not download any faster than 450 to 470 Kb/sec. Yes.. that's kilobytes. Upload speed sticks to around 250 Kb/sec. Not sure if this is good enough for MP, but decent enough for downloads. Funny thing is though when I do the connection speed test, it shows download speed as 3.5 mb/sec and upload as 0.8 kb/sec. Could be biased that way since I'm using a link provided by my ISP.
Click to expand...

That sounds about right, but you've got your units confused - not helped by the non-standard nomenclature ISPs use to make their service seem better than it is. You're most likely on a 4Mb connection and the download rates you mentioned are KB/s, these are not the same thing; Mb being megabit, KB being kilobyte. One byte is eight bits, so 4Mb is roughly equal to 500KB so your actual download speed sounds correct.

The other thing is that your bit rate isn't the only thing that matters; you have your bit rate of 4Mb, but you also need to consider the latency (aka lag), that's the delay between a package being sent by a server and it being received by your console. If the server is sending a 4KB file it would be downloaded nearly instantly by your console, but if the latency is high, you'll have lag. Latency is variable and never actually quoted by any ISP - it's kind of impossible to measure because it depends on a lot of criteria - but in general, if you have a fibre optic connection and the server you're connected to is, say, 50 miles away, you'll have lower latency (which is good) than someone on dial-up or ADSL who is 150 miles away from the same server.

My suggestion is wait until there's a game you must have, unless you don't have any consoles at all right now, then when you've got it, try out some of the free to play games like Blacklight: Retribution or War Thunder (and definitely try Planetside 2 when it releases), see how the online performance is and then decide whether you want PS+.

Also to give you an idea of the standard of games released on PS+, here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Instant_Game_Collection_games_(PAL_region). The PS4 ones haven't been all that great so far, but then there just aren't too many games around right now so they're working with a limited selection. Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate and Mercenary Kings were pretty good, though.
 
One more thing to take into consideration.
In France, the PS4 is sold with a free three-month subscription to PSN+ (I guess it's the same everywhere). Renewal is not automatic (unless you give your credit card number, which I do not advise personnally*). I think 3 months is a good time period to test your connection and see whether you want to renew or not.

Anyway, don't you think that I encourage you to buy a PS4. :lol:
 
neema_t
That sounds about right, but you've got your units confused - not helped by the non-standard nomenclature ISPs use to make their service seem better than it is. You're most likely on a 4Mb connection and the download rates you mentioned are KB/s, these are not the same thing; Mb being megabit, KB being kilobyte. One byte is eight bits, so 4Mb is roughly equal to 500KB so your actual download speed sounds correct.

The other thing is that your bit rate isn't the only thing that matters; you have your bit rate of 4Mb, but you also need to consider the latency (aka lag), that's the delay between a package being sent by a server and it being received by your console. If the server is sending a 4KB file it would be downloaded nearly instantly by your console, but if the latency is high, you'll have lag. Latency is variable and never actually quoted by any ISP - it's kind of impossible to measure because it depends on a lot of criteria - but in general, if you have a fibre optic connection and the server you're connected to is, say, 50 miles away, you'll have lower latency (which is good) than someone on dial-up or ADSL who is 150 miles away from the same server.

My suggestion is wait until there's a game you must have, unless you don't have any consoles at all right now, then when you've got it, try out some of the free to play games like Blacklight: Retribution or War Thunder (and definitely try Planetside 2 when it releases), see how the online performance is and then decide whether you want PS+.

Also to give you an idea of the standard of games released on PS+, here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Instant_Game_Collection_games_(PAL_region). The PS4 ones haven't been all that great so far, but then there just aren't too many games around right now so they're working with a limited selection. Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate and Mercenary Kings were pretty good, though.
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Hey, thanks for the info! :)

Okay, I guess my connection IS good enough for MP then. Hope the servers are fast enough in my region.

I'm not sure how high lag is going to be like connecting with servers halfway across the globe, but the speed test reveals a ping response time of under 100 ms always.

LJP64
One more thing to take into consideration.
In France, the PS4 is sold with a free three-month subscription to PSN+ (I guess it's the same everywhere). Renewal is not automatic (unless you give your credit card number, which I do not advise personnally*). I think 3 months is a good time period to test your connection and see whether you want to renew or not.

Anyway, don't you think that I encourage you to buy a PS4. :lol:
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3 months free really? I don't think that's everywhere. No such deal here. It was just $500 for the 500 GB model, no free subscription or game, no nothing! Just the console and one controller I suppose. Games are between $60 and $70 which sounds about right.
 
In the UK it's just 14 days of plus with the system!

I'm waiting for the white version to come out myself.
 
Speedster911
3 months free really? I don't think that's everywhere. No such deal here. It was just $500 for the 500 GB model, no free subscription or game, no nothing! Just the console and one controller I suppose. Games are between $60 and $70 which sounds about right.
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Here, the free 3 months are "in the box"... That's why I guess it's the same everywhere. You should check it out.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw an offer with 3 extra free months in Micromania shops (Note: Micromania is the French branch of Gamestop). But this was a specific time-limited offer in these shops only.
If you're not in a hurry, it may be a good idea to wait for a specific offer.

I'll check this tonight or this week-end, to see if this is still going on here.

Tired Tyres
In the UK it's just 14 days of plus with the system!

I'm waiting for the white version to come out myself.
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I have pre-ordered the "Glacier White PS4 + Destiny" bundle... I'm a weak man. :D
 
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I had a check today.
Actually, the free 3 months was a time-limited offer, expired now.
The normal offer is 14 days free. But you have to enter your credit card number. Not interesting at all. Since the PSN hack, I have used only pre-paid PSN cards, it's much safer.

The White PS4 + Destiny bundle I pre-ordered will come with a PSN code for 1 free month of PSN subscription.
 
Speedster911
3 months free really? I don't think that's everywhere. No such deal here. It was just $500 for the 500 GB model, no free subscription or game, no nothing! Just the console and one controller I suppose. Games are between $60 and $70 which sounds about right.
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$500 for the console only? I got a lot better deal when I bought mine at Best Buy. I got a year of Plus, a second controller, and two games (Madden 14 and Ground Zeroes), and that ran me at $519 or there abouts after taxes because I bought a bundle.

My next PS4 purchase will be WWE 2K15, but I am having a hard time deciding if I want it on disk or on PSN. Going PSN is a lot easier on me because I can pre-load it on my console a few days ahead of time, but on the other hand, if I get a disk pre-order, I can also pre-order the strategy guide with it, giving me a total cost of $92 after taxes.
 
I typically have rented my wrestling games in the past, bugs and all. This will be my first full on purchase of a WWE game since Smackdown! 2 years ago. I won't be selling this game. for sure. Besides, I just checked PSN, and there isn't a pre-load or a pre-buy option for download purchasers, but another game that does have the same release date, Assassin's Creed Unity, will offer a pre-load option. May just pre-order it at a store after all.
 
Sanji Himura
$500 for the console only? I got a lot better deal when I bought mine at Best Buy. I got a year of Plus, a second controller, and two games (Madden 14 and Ground Zeroes), and that ran me at $519 or there abouts after taxes because I bought a bundle.

My next PS4 purchase will be WWE 2K15, but I am having a hard time deciding if I want it on disk or on PSN. Going PSN is a lot easier on me because I can pre-load it on my console a few days ahead of time, but on the other hand, if I get a disk pre-order, I can also pre-order the strategy guide with it, giving me a total cost of $92 after taxes.
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Third-world Southeast Asian economics my friend.. vendors gots to make their profit ya know!

Sanji Himura
I typically have rented my wrestling games in the past, bugs and all. This will be my first full on purchase of a WWE game since Smackdown! 2 years ago. I won't be selling this game. for sure. Besides, I just checked PSN, and there isn't a pre-load or a pre-buy option for download purchasers, but another game that does have the same release date, Assassin's Creed Unity, will offer a pre-load option. May just pre-order it at a store after all.
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Experienced good wrestling games back in the arcades of the 90s. That's about it. They haven't been particularly exciting since.
 

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