As we did with the Xbox One, let's start with the things that make people think that Sony "won" E3 (I wasn't aware it was a contest): it doesn't need to connect to the internet and Sony won't require DRM. These both are pretty much what the PS3 already does, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. While Sony won't require the DRM, they did say that the publisher has the final say on if that is imposed or not. Much like the online passes that people hated, I can see this making people mad later on down the line. I'm not saying that third party companies will have a one use key code like the Xbox One, but you can't rule it out. Also, since the next gen will undoubtedly push digital sales even more, there's a chance that the Xbox One's ability to transfer the ownership of a digital sale might give it an advantage. Of course, third parties might just have the same transfer system for both systems and it will be a moot point in the end. Time will tell on those fronts.
The price, however, is a lot more attractive than the Xbox One. It will be $400, a whole hundred less than its competitor. This price doesn't include the camera though. Again, I doubt I will be buying one at launch, as I learned my lesson doing that with the Wii and 3DS. It comes with a 500GB hard drive, but no word yet if it is upgradeable. Given how happy I am with upgrading the PS3 HD, I'm hoping it is. Ideally, I think a 1 terabyte would be the best for me, given the push to digital releases will fill up 500 even faster than last gen. As for the look of the console itself...well, I'm not a fan. It looks too asymmetrical to me. It's a parallelogram and just does't look right to me, since it will take up a bit more space looking like that. Granted it doesn't need to look good to preform, but it couldn't hurt it to look better.
Let's move on to the games. As with most presentations, we got a lot of cinematics and not much gameplay. Mad Max, The Order: 1886 and Infamous: Second Son look nice, but I'd like to see gameplay before deciding. The Order has a nice setting, and I'm digging the steam-punk looking weapons, but I'd like to see if it's third or first person and if there's any multiplayer before getting too interested. My friend remarked that he will buy Second Son since it is set in Seattle, which we live very close to. Later there was a video showing the gameplay of Second Son, and it looked pretty fun. I wish they would have shown some of that during their conference. Another extremely pretty game they showed was Dark Sorcerer. It had a funny trailer, but again, I want to see what kind of game it is before caring too much.
They did show some in-game footage from Final Fantasy Versus 13, now renamed Final Fantasy 15. Yes, I'm too lazy to use roman numerals. Anyway, it looked too action oriented. Yeah, I might end up checking it out, but I'm not holding out too much hope. After Final Fantasy 10, the series really fell again for me. I kind of enjoyed 13-2 so far, but the rest were not that fun to me (even though I completed 13). Also their second MMORPG, Final Fantasy 14, is coming to consoles at some point. Yay? I might try it if it were a free to play game, but I don't think it is. The races of that game and FF 11 were not appealing at all to me, quickly turning me off.
Playstation Plus will continue being a great value by adding PS4 to its family. There will still be the current benefits (yay free games!), but now will be required to play games online, similar to Xbox Live. I'm fine with this, since Plus was a great purchase for me, even just for the free games. I don't play online games very often, but I understand that it will be a deterrent to some. Let's hope their network improves since it will no longer be free.
Just like the Xbox One, I'm hoping some of these will be playable at PAX Prime. At the very least, I'd like to use the controller to see how it feels compared to the PS3 one.
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