Playstation 4 - The Review | Hacker News Reader

Playstation 4 - The Review

polygon.com

24 pointsknocknock9 comments

Quite aside from the content - I thought the review itself was a very nice piece of design (The animations that I thought would annoy me ended up being a nice touch).

One thing I take issue with is the completely arbitrary nature of the rating at the end. Why bother giving the platform a rating at all at this stage - it exists in a vacuum. Only time will tell how Sony's latest offering, along with its attempts at a platform, will stack up against Steam and Microsoft. Besides that - there seemed no clear criteria for the points system whatsoever.

It is at times like these that I am reminded of the "IGN: Fair. 10/10" meme.

They cover that at the end of the review. It's basically the score of the system as it is today. It's a fair way to judge something that people will consider purchasing and wanting to have fun with right away. I wouldn't want to buy a console only to hope I have fun with it in 2 years (buy it in 2 years instead). [1]

"But the PlayStation 4's focus on gaming — and only gaming — is undermined by a distinct lack of compelling software. That failing is sure to improve — better games and more of them will appear on the PlayStation 4 — but right now, this is a game console without a game to recommend it. Early adopters of the PS4 this fall are buying potential energy. We're just waiting for a place to spend it."

[1] http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/conclusion

I understand the concept of scoring the system as it is today. On the other hand I disagree emphatically with the premise for doing so.

A "general impressions" wrap-up paragraph would be fine. A rating system with a very low granularity (Thumbs up/even/down for example) would even be acceptable.

A score of 7.5 implies, at the very least, a granularity of 20. This is only useful in a case where you have either 20 binary criteria, or ~5 criteria with some kind of sub-scoring system. Where, or what, are these criteria? Are they implicitly, yet obviously, defined through the content or structure of the article? No.

I'm not defending the PS4 - I am ranting at the profligacy of meaningless scoring systems throughout the entire video games industry.

I haven't read the whole review because I'm not planning on purchasing a next-gen console but I was quite impressed by the page design. Usually, animated UI tweaks are frowned upon because they hinder the readability and hurt the usability. But here the execution is well balanced and actually supports the content. Plus, the animated wireframes are simply beautiful.

yeah, I kept scrolling without reading the texts(not a big console gamer) but just to see the animated wireframe going.

A pretty poor review without specs. What version of bluetooth is supported? Does it include a blu-ray drive? (I know its Sony and probably does, but if they are competing on price, it would make sense to drop it and go with online downloads instead). They show it accepting discs, so I am assuming it does indeed have a blu-ray drive, however is it a mini? does it support BDXL or IH-BD? Will Linux be installable? These omissions from the review makes is seem haphazard at best.

This has been the overall impressions of the system on all the review sites: Good hardware but no software. It is a beefed up PS3, no next-gen leap worthy step, and the games are not there. Seems like an iPad3 to iPad 4 type transition, not like iPad 2 to iPad Air type.

One of the PS3's selling point was Bluray drive, which is not a selling point anymore. It is an affordable system, and I want to see it improve its UI, XMB is hideously ugly. Let's wait for Naughty Dog magic on games side. Sony has high quality first party studios.

That webpage is beautiful. Minor nuisance was the jarring transition while scrolling onto next section it kept me taking to top of the page, but it's still fine. Well done by the designer.

> It is a beefed up PS3, no next-gen leap worthy step, and the games are not there.

I feel you could almost substitute "PS3" for "PS2" and target it at original PS3 at launch as well.

I'm guessing that Sony simply wants to get the hardware out of the door, and do software features as they go. Considering how much updates the PS3 has seen over the years, I believe this holds for the PS4 as well, but as they say in this review, for now, it's a tad underwhelming.

The launch games are getting 5/10 (Killzone) and 1.5/10 (Knack) it feels totally underwhelming. Compare with Xbox. One is a distinct leap over 360, bluray drive and massively improved Kinect. Although, I am worried for games on Xbox One too.

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