The entire presentation was a very interesting move by Sony. By most sense of measure, the right time to release the information on the console would have been in June at E3. Opting for their own show ahead of time plays very strangely, as I am not entirely sure what the benefit was. All of that being said, however, I walked out with some pretty important questions...
First of all, it sounds as though they're really leveraging their system on the network. From background pre-downloads of things you're interested in, social sharing of your gameplay, a heavy emphasis on multiplayer, and streaming content of games to any device, as well as backwards capability... Wow, you'd better hope your ISP hasn't put usage limits on your home account. Heavy usage still isn't in wide acceptance, and unless you're on Google Fiber, my guess is that things won't move too smoothly, either. If the demands of the average consumer are pushed with something like the PS4, perhaps, maybe the greedy folks at Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Verizon, AT&T, and so on will get on the ball and give us the speeds we pay for...
Very little was said about two other major components of the hardware, in particular the hard drive and disc format. This would lead me to believe that Sony is really looking to move toward digital content, exclusively. Be it downloading movies, games, music or whatever else, physical media is going to eventually fall by the wayside. That would definitely mean that we'd need some pretty heavy-duty drives to handle that much content. Anything less than 250 GB would be unacceptable today. Less than 500 GB might not be enough if things go the way they're talking. I'd have to expect at least a 1TB drive. Whether or not it'll be hybrid SDD-HDD, that'll remain to be seen.
As for optical drives, they made a good point on TWiT today. Sony hedged a lot of bets with the PS3 in terms of HD content. Between pushing for the 1080p standard, Blu-Ray technology, and 3D formats, the PS3 helped push demands of consumers, and it helped sell some of their own TV sets. With Sony diving so deep into 4K, would it be entirely outrageous to assume that the PS4 wouldn't do the same thing? For that matter, what about RED Ray? Or, are they trying to avoid yet another format war with Microsoft and everyone else?
As they learned in this generation, if you don't have the games or the perceived exclusivity with some titles, you're not going to sell the consoles like Microsoft did. What they showed off, at the very least, looks like the kind of content that can move stuff quickly. Obviously, E3 will shove a lot more out of the door. Their partnership with Activision in regard to Destiny seemed like a HUGE middle-finger to Microsoft, however. Exclusive content, or at least, content that shows up more quickly, was a big help in the success of the 360. Turning it around on them is pretty ironic.
Any way we want to turn it, the ball is back in Microsoft's court. With so many rumors pushing toward the idea of an "entertainment console," it's hard telling what exactly that would mean in terms of gaming. Pushing Kinect 2 seems like a smart move now that we have seen that Move remains a part of Sony's strategy. Staying the course with XBL seems to be directing Sony's strategy, so, full-steam-ahead on that. It'll likely boil down to hardware, and assuming they stick with mostly PC-based design like they did shouldn't put them too far behind the PS4.
My only assumption is that this next generation will be less about hardware specs and more about the ecosystem that they create. Microsoft, give or take, has a very strong presence online in regard to multimedia partnerships and exclusive content. Sony appears to diving deep into the social aspects of the games. Exclusive titles will likely be the key for success, the jury is still out on that.
Still, it's increased my interest in what they have. That's a win in their book. I look forward to what's coming.
EDIT:
Valve still has the most to gain here. A Steam Box for less than $300 that does what these do, and more, and let's you game on multiple platforms works well long-term. If they can include multimedia options, it's game-over for Sony, and possibly Microsoft.
