PlayStation 4 Message Board older than one year ago

At E3, we got our first glimpse of the PS4 hardware, but we never got to see it next to the original launch PS3. Finally, Access PlayStation answers our burning questions: Which system is taller? Which system is fatter? Which one sounds like a jet engine?

The fourth PlayStation is out this fall. PlayStation #4. Pl4St4tion. PlayStation: The Fourth of Its Name.Read more...

EA has been ordered to pay $11 Million to Robin Antonick, the Original Madden's programmer.

Watch 7 minutes of action packed Strider gameplay. The game hits in 2014, but it looks glorious!

See the new Strider game from Double Helix coming to current and next-genplatforms.

Hohokum is strange, and serene, and kind of fascinating. It'll be out for PS3, PS4, and Vita at some point in 2014. Watch me play it right here.Read more...

Why Ubisoft's next big thing cements itself as one of our most anticipated games of 2013.

Here's a speedy look at Driveclub, the PS4 launch game that lets you go all vroom vroom into the next generation of consoles. Enjoy watching me fail to steer around curves.Read more...

Killzone: Shadow Fall sure is pretty. Out for the PlayStation 4 this fall, whenever the system launches, the latest Killzone game lets you shoot people in all sorts of ways, as you can see in this video we shot yesterday. Enjoy.Read more...

Climb on board the Jackdaw and get a first look at the evolved naval combat of Black Flag,

Want to know why 1715 is so important? Allow Greg and Bob to tell you.

If you've been good about keeping up with all the latest information about the PS4, the stuff in this video by PlayStationAccess might not be a surprise to you. I found a couple of things that were new to me, though—like did you know that the touchpad on the DualShock is also a pressable button? Or that there are more than 140 games currently in development for the PS4? Eh, eh? For the rest of you, this is simply a good refresher on some of the things the PS4 has to offer. It's a lot to keep up with! PS4: 20 Things You Didn't Know [PlayStation Access]

The game director of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has explained the title won't be coming to Microsoft consoles.

Square Enix has announced pre-order incentives for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, including DLC that'll dress Lightning up as Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife. And, registration is still open for the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn beta.

Ever wonder how the PlayStation 4 came to be? Watch Mark Cerny, lead architect behind the console and director of upcoming PS4 exclusive Knack, give an in-depth lecture at Gamelab 2013 where he discusses the two decades' worth of history in console-making that influenced the path they'd take to creating Sony's next-generation machine. It gets a little technical near the end, but it's certainly an interesting inside look.

When Sony announced that PlayStation 4 would be priced at $399 to an uproar of applause from the audience at its E3 press conference, it secured a critical edge over the Xbox One. But the advantage came at a cost: the PlayStation 4 camera (formerly known as the PlayStation 4 Eye).

Shuhei Yoshida has admitted that the negative reaction to the Xbox One's DRM and always-online policies was "a very useful source" for Sony.

Until Wednesday there seemed to be very little selling the Xbox One to a sports video gamer. The questionable ability to rent, share or re-sell its games—fundamental to a culture built on annual releases and punching friends on the couch—was only the beginning. It's a console that cost $100 more than its competitor, with no future in any baseball product. Microsoft may have rolled back requirements that had no articulated consumer benefit—checking in once every 24 hours? Reselling games through ... what again? How? But its reversal didn't guarantee sports gamers' current lifestyle would continue into the future as much as it reminded them that their experience is tied to the past—a past of physical media, no different from consoles' cartridge days, because others can't part with their old games as easily as we do from ours. A lot of contrarian opinion on the Xbox One has since been offered, to hoots of derision. But as sports gamers already effectively pay an annual subscription for their favorite title, with none of the benefits accorded by fully digital, subscribed games, they should be aware how mainstream gaming's vehement indignation may have set back, by years or more, a system that could benefit sports fans more than any other constituency. Rare is the day that I don't post some workaday update on an annual sports video game release and see underneath it a comment—from someone who probably doesn't even play the game—wondering why these titles aren't offered every two or three years, with roster updates and other adjustments delivered as patches. The short answer is because these are licensed games, and their licensors, the leagues and the players' unions (and the BCS and the NCAA) expect a new release every year, because they earn more royalties from a new product than an old one sitting on shelves 18 months after release. You can argue until you're blue in the face against that—many developers I know would agree with you. Every year they face the unreasonable expectation of making a transformative work based on a sport more than a century old. But as long as games are primarily stamped on physical media, that is the model. It disregards the consumer and it puts developers on a treadmill to a fast burnout. Only publishers and their licensors benefit. Digitally delivered games—games which can't be shared, which can't be resold and, if they don't exist physically, need some sort of control to limit widespread copying—potentially change all of that. Right now, physical releases have to sucker you back to a GameStop every summer with promises of a quarterback vision cone—or mid-game ratings progression whose effects are rarely ever seen, or ballhandling that is, we swear this time it's really real, until next year, when we say, nah, it really wasn't so great. A game that exists as a single, continually updated edition, sold through an annual subscription, puts an end to that cynical courtship. The NFL and the NFLPA's license with EA Sports and Madden runs out at the end of the year, so maybe that's the last domino to fall before we start seeing the transformation to subscription-based sports gaming models. I have heard plenty of rumblings in those I talk to that Electronic Arts, not just EA Sports, wants to sell whole classes of titles on a subscription basis. For more than the price of one game, but less than the cost of two, you could theoretically get access to a huge catalog of offerings. Sports. Action. Shooters. The man in charge of EA Sports was recently made the head of Electronic Arts' Origin service. "Software as a service" has been a company goal for years. The tradeoff, of course, is the consumer doesn't completely own what he subscribes to. People still have a huge and understandable problem with this. But that concern is much less relevant to sports video games, which greatly depend on their leagues' current year, than it is to other game types. Past editions of Assassin's Creed, even if they don't include their successors' gameplay advancements, remain compelling for the same reason rereading a book from The Leatherstocking Tales is still fulfilling. Compared to the currently available product, a past edition of a sports video game is about as interesting as rereading a Clemson football media guide from three years ago. Sure, I still own it; I can still use it without restriction. I can sell it to someone willing to buy it. But it is fundamentally outdated and inferior. As idiotic as its messaging has been since May 21, the Xbox One, and not the PlayStation 4, was the console pushing more toward a future of digital delivery, rather than having its product catalog driven by physical media, or facsimiles of it. They lost control of the message by failing to describe any benefit to consumers. Maybe they should have gone after the sports crowd to sell this concept. Instead, sports video gamers—an almost exclusively console-based constituency—must wait until other gamers also accept the idea that there's a difference between nostalgia and value, and that most games of a certain age possess a lot more of the former than the latter. Then maybe we, and those who develop the games we enjoy, can get off this treadmill. Until that day, we'll continue shoveling cash into the furnace of disc-based offline gaming, and we will be the last to feel any warmth from it. STICK JOCKEY Stick Jockey is Kotaku's column on sports video games. It appears Sundays.

If Sony had said exactly what Microsoft did at E3, would fans still be behind them? We discuss.

This morning Sony put up this video showing off the PlayStation 4's interface, and if you can tune out the fake gamers and their overreactions, it offers a few interesting tidbits of what life will be like with it. The big deal would seem to be the option to download a game's multiplayer or its singleplayer component first. The example shown is for Killzone: Shadow Fall, so we could assume Sony titles will take advantage of this feature, and it'll be left up to other publishers if they want to split things out. There's a whole bunch of social networking stuff that hardcore gamers may not care for, but whatever, it's there. The share button is featured as well. It also looks like you can purchase games from a mobile web page or app and have them download to your console, in case your impulse buying habits really need that. Perhaps the most unrealistic part of this video is that an attractive woman used her own picture for her PSN avatar. Or that she didn't turn out to be a man. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

Following its debut at PlayStation’s February 20th event in New York City, DualShock 4 has emerged at E3 in near-final form. Though DualShock 3 has proven to be a capable and dependable wireless controller for years with PlayStation 3, the PS4’s new weapon of choice is a clear improvement across the board. Here are some quick E3 2013 impressions.

For me, DualShock 4’s most impactful new feature is a subtle but shockingly satisfying detail: A glossy cross-hatched texture that wraps around the larger handles. This texture is a delight because it provides a snug, more comfortable grip on the device compared to DualShock 3’s slipperier feel. This is one of those things you’ll need to try for yourself to truly understand, but once you experience it there’s no going back. It’s a delight.

Then there are the redesigned and retuned analog sticks, which now boast a concave surface and slightly stiffer deadzone that makes it easier to maneuver the camera using small, precise movements. The surface is also more tactile, but not so much that it impedes your thumb’s ability to glide around the inner rim as your make subtle adjustments to your aiming reticule in shooters like Blacklight: Retribution. Much like DualShock 4’s new textured grips, the revamped analog sticks are a clear improvement to the classic design sported by DualShock 2 and DualShock 3. It’s no contest.

The directional pad — always a strength on PlayStation controllers — also impressed. It boasts a unified design that reminded me of PS Vita’s well-liked pad, only oversized and sporting a more tactile matte finish. The depth and response of the pad felt just right: Not too clicky, not too mushy; not too deep, not too shallow. Meanwhile, the new Share and Options buttons that have replaced Start and Select were unobtrusively placed and felt satisfyingly click — appropriate for buttons you’ll use less frequently.

Finally, the new R1 and R2 triggers are exactly what you would hope for and expect. Featuring a slightly “hooked” design and less pressure resistance, these puppies are a perfect fit for your itchy trigger finger. I was also pleased to find that DualShock 4’s L1 and L2 buttons feel almost identical to those on PS3. Why fix what ain’t broken, right? It will be interesting to see if developers of PlayStation 4 shooters enable the player to swap the firing buttons between R2 and L2 like they often do on PS3, or if R2 becomes the universal standard going forward.

I didn’t get a chance to try out any titles that made use of DualShock 4’s new lightbar, touch pad, integrated speaker, or the mono earbud that enables online voice chat out of the box. But those will surely come in time. For now, I’m pleased to report that DualShock 4 is hands-down the best, most comfortable console controller I’ve used.

Sony Online Entertainment doesn't have any new games at this year's E3 conference. But the developers behind DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2 are hard at work anyway, and not just because they're running two live MMOs. Both games, which currently run on the PC (for both) or the PS3 (for DCUO) are coming to the PlayStation 4, which presents both positives and negatives for the developers involved.

Adam Clegg, game designer on PlanetSide 2, says he's excited to develop for the PS4 rather than the PC, because it'll make optimization for the game's graphics "1000 times better." Currently, the PC team has countless builds of hardware to optimize the game for, but everyone playing on a PS4 will use the same hardware, which makes things much easier. Additionally, Clegg says improvements should go the other way, too, as optimizing for the PS4 should make the game better for PC users.

Well, don’t take that entirely literally. I’m just writing that to get your attention and/or I can’t think of a more accurate way to do it within the character limit. Obviously you can’t build your own Xbox One or PlayStation 4 – they use some custom hardware to do their next-generation thing, they’re running bespoke operating systems (and all the horror-DRM that goes with it) and contain it all with in a comparatively small black monolith that sits underneath your TV. What you can do, though, is build yourself a PC that has a little more grunt under the hood than these apparent future-machines, for pretty much the same amount of money.

To be honest, while hitting the £420 price of an Xbone is eminently possible, I’d recommend you spend just a little more on a games PC than that – it’ll last you longer, there’s more scope for upgrading later, games will look fancier and you won’t have to spend a week rawling price comparison sites. Either way, the idea that a beefy games PC costs thousands of dollars/pounds is an outdated and wildly inaccurate one.(more…)

Behind The Witness—Jonathan Blow's next puzzle-esque game after Braid—is a mission. To solve all those awful adventure game tropes. Adventure games can be tricky. Most either love or hate them. Personally? Flaws and all, I love them. But Blow, an independent designer whose games are published on Sony's platforms, thinks he can solve some of those flaws. During a demo today on the E3 showfloor the creative lead behind The Witness had this to say on adventure games: What I'm trying to do as a designer is take everything about adventure games I don't like—cause I loved adventure games when I was a kid but, man, as a game designer now who has ideas about design I just look at them and I think they're all really bad and I just kind of solve them in a way that uses our modern understanding of game design as best as I can. Though generalized in its statement, there's certainly truth to what Blow says. Again, you love it or you hate it. In Blow's case, he hopes to create a hybrid adventure/puzzle game that people will love, free from the typical adventure game snags. So, what is The Witness anyway? We've seen some gameplay of the PS4 game, but perhaps not enough to fully grasp it. The Witness takes place on an island, of which you can learn more depending on how thoroughly you decide to complete the game. Audio recordings you'll stumble on give you an understanding of what the island is and what you're doing there. The island is composed of ten grouped areas, though the game is completely non-linear. Once you gain access to the open area of the island, you can decide to start at the tower or the self-contained buildings or wherever your feet take you. Either way, unlocking at least seven of these will grant you access to the end game, which takes place on the mountain you see in the distance when you first step into the world. Each of these ten areas employs a specific puzzle type that requires you to learn their nature in order to solve them. Think of the puzzles as composed into coherent themes. But all of these puzzles ultimately involve tracing patterns with your cursor on panels set up across the island. There are various pathways to the end point on each maze-like pattern, but the direction in which you decide to trace it will make all the difference. Early on in the demonstration, Blow approaches a set of purple panels. After teaching you the basic concept—which, in this puzzle's case, is to create a divide between the black and white spotted corners of the panel—each panel becomes progressively more complicated. While the first one looks like a simple domino piece with only one black spot and one white spot, the fifth is far more complicated, with the black and white designated squares spotted seemingly randomly across the panel, and even a few blank ones thrown into the mix, too. Once he completes them all it seems like...nothing has happened? No reward? Every panel you solve serves a purpose, Blow says. So while that purple set didn't unlock anything tangible, it did teach you a basic lesson in this game's puzzle-solving needs. Armed with new information and this training, you can set off back to where you first came in, to that one mysterious door you spotted but couldn't solve before. The difference now being that you know what you're doing and what's being asked of you. Blow explains that this is part of the game's long-term progression concept. The more panels you solve and learn from, the more information about the world you're in reveals itself to you. There are no blatant tips or tutorials to help you solve the puzzles in The Witness. The best you get is a flash of light around the final point to where you have to draw the lined pattern. The flash tells you "this is where you want to end up," but the game tells you nothing else. Eventually, once you've taken your baby steps, solving these vague puzzles involves observing your environment. So in the midst of a lush, green landscape and purple hyacinths you'll notice a tree that seems to match the branching pattern of the panel you're staring at. You notice that on said tree is a solitary apple perched mysteriously on a single branch. Now you know which branch you have to trace to unlock this panel. In a building level, Blow unlocks one end of the building by choosing between two end points in a particular panel. The end point unlocks the door that the matches the blueprint of the panel. The panels in this newly-opened area are a set, featuring complex mazes. Spend enough time observing the area around you and you'll notice a wood carving that serves as a window pane on the building you'd just stepped out of. Step behind the carvings and match it up to the panel and...voila. You have your pattern laid out for you. You can trace the lines onto the panel even from afar. The Witness is a game for the perceptive player, it seems, a designation Blow mentions a few times during the demonstration. Puzzles are integrated into objects. Panels represent the architecture of the world. Some puzzles feature the added complication of symmetry, so while you're tracing a line on the left side, an automated line on the right mimics your pattern. That means you can potentially bump into yourself. Again, direction matters. There are penalties, too. In one set of puzzles, Blow has to restart the set if he traces an incorrect line pattern on one of these panels. You can't brute force these, Blow says. Once you solve enough of the puzzles in the area you're in, a gold box will sprout open and a turret will pop out on its top. A beam of light shoots directly in the direction of the mountain. Fast forward to the mountain and you'll see a blocked panel. The more areas you unlock, and therefore the more beams pointing toward this panel on this mountain, and you'll open up the panel and therefore the end game level. Complete seven of ten worlds, and you're in. Complete ten of ten, says Blow, and something cool happens. (No spoilers.) Some areas have six or seven panels to solve. Some have twelve. Some have...forty. The theme of the puzzle and their flexibility in their design dictated how many panels Blow designed for them. (For reference, in a team of about 15 or 16 developers, Blow designed about 95% of the puzzles.) Ultimately Blow wants to ensure that The Witness is challenging. But it's not just about challenge, he says. Even the easy puzzles in The Witness try to be interesting, he hopes. The Witness, then, is Blow's attempt to balance player freedom with clever puzzles. He doesn't want players to feel suffocated if they're stuck on one puzzle. You can solve others to progress instead. You're not screwed just because you got stumped once. So where in typical adventure games you'd have to locate an inventory item—like a key—in order to open a bonus door with hidden secrets, in Blow's game the key is everything you've learned about his puzzles in your time spent with the game. The key is in your head, he explains. I feel I have to end on a note, more about what it's like to attend E3 than The Witness, per se: Jonathan Blow's demonstration of The Witness was my favorite behind-closed-doors demo I've seen at E3. While most other companies opt for tightly produced, E3-specific demos typically composed of five minutes of gameplay and a fancy trailer, Blow threw his game up on the screen, incomplete areas and bugs and all. He moved thoroughly through a decent chunk of the game, taking the time to explain and answer questions without a single "no comment" drop. And while I'm used to, these days, not actually playing many games at E3, repeat demos of what we've seen at press conferences and the like are a little silly. The Witness will debut on the PlayStation 4.

Mad Catz's extensive line of PlayStation 3 Tournament Edition FightSticks will not function with Sony's new PlayStation 4, Joystiq confirmed today with Mad Catz senior product development manager Richard Neville. "Playstation 4 will require a whole new set of peripherals," Neville said.

Currently, Mad Catz has announced that it is launching a new and improved Tournament Edition 2 FightStick for the Xbox One when that console is released sometime this year, but the peripheral manufacturer was unable to comment on the availability of future PlayStation 4 sticks.

After sitting through nearly all of E3′s press conferences (and catching up on Microsoft’s, which I skipped to marvel at my super cutting-edge next-gen loft sink), I came away with two raucously growling gut reactions: 1) new Mirror’s Edge yes yes yes yay yes mmm-hmm yes good indeed and 2) did I just step into an alternate dimension where PC never emerged from the primordial gaming ooze? I don’t mean that in the sense that PC’s not the focus at E3 either, because frankly it never really has been. But come on: our platform of choice has spent years in the deepest waters of areas where Microsoft and Sony are only just beginning to dip their piggy toes. Free-to-play, DRM, cloud, servers, indies, problematic communities, etc, etc, etc. So why does it seem like nobody’s even tried to learn from PC gaming’s mistakes?

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At Sony's E3 booth, they've got You can't get to the console itself, but the controller is just hanging out, waiting for people to play around with it. So that's just what we did. In the video above, I'll take you on a quick tour of the controller. I'm not the hugest fan of the PlayStation 3's DualShock 3 controller, but I really like the DualShock 4. The triggers feel great, and the controller fits into my hands well. Way to forge a piece of plastic, Sony. And now, because it seemed just weird enough when I watched this video, here is a gif of my thumbs being kind of overly familiar with the PS4 touchpad. Oh yeah.

Join Keza & Marty as they hit the rainy streets of Chicago in this action-packed gameplay demo.

We infiltrate the Ubisoft booth and speak with Watch Dogs' lead writer to tell us more about the highly anticipated game. To get your question answered on air, tweet @IGN with #E3Unlimited.

We get in the Nazi killin' business at our E3 show floor booth!