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I'm considering buying a PS4, and my gf keeps asking me why don't we just get a PS3 instead, as they're so much cheaper and the games look just as good?

Now after reading this article I'm really wondering. We don't have any consoles except a Wii so I was looking forward to having a "media centre" finally, but it looks like I'm SOL there on the PS4. :S

The games don't look as good on the PS3. PS4 games are in their first generation and judging by history will get significantly better looking over time, but even now they have a crisp high-res look that makes them look better than PS3 games.

Having said that, "The Last of Us" on PS3 is a far better game than anything available on the PS4 currently -- crisp graphics aren't everything. And you can pick up a PS3 with that game bundled for like $200 now compared to $400 for the PS4 with no games.

The PS4 is lacking in the local video streaming department currently, as the article says, but it does have the usual assortment of media apps like netflix, hulu, amazon, vudu, etc. Personally the lack of local video streaming isn't a big deal for me because I have a dedicated htpc hooked up for that, xbmc on a cheap htpc (or even a raspberry pi) is always going to be a better, more codec-inclusive solution than whatever local videostreaming solution the consoles offer.

It's not really true that "the games [will] look just as good" if you actually care about such things, and this will become increasingly true as games start to be optimized for and targeted at the PS4 (and the roughly equivalent Xbox One) instead of being quick ports using previous generation engines and data.

The particular thing I'm really jazzed about on the PS4 is not GPU power, but that it has sixteen times the RAM (and much faster RAM to boot) of the PS3. The relatively small memory of the PS3 forced game makers to limit the size of levels, or go to great lengths to structure them to allow streaming of level data, and the amount of detail in each level. The PS4's (and Xbox One's) much larger memory should give much more freedom to game makers and help get rid of one of the most annoying attributes of many PS3 games: "Loading...." screens every five seconds...

There is something to be said for no serious gamers taking the previous generation of consoles.

They are cheaper, build quality it better, more titles, more features.

I was asked if I wanted a PS4 this Christmas to which I had to honestly reply, no. Getting the first production batch with so few games just didn't appeal to me over other things I could have.

I have a PS3 and don't know if I'll upgrade to a PS4. Maybe when there are lots of more games. (Dark Souls 3?)

(I might even have gone the M-soft way, since they seem to have better support for hobby developers, but I don't have time for work/hobbies already and ... well, Windows.)

Edit: I might look into Steam and an ok graphics card for one of my Linux computers. (Anyway, my 2 cent.)

> Backward compatibility for consoles is rightly a thing of the past.

It wasn't a thing of the past in the first place really, save for a very small sliver of time where it was useful to (mainly) Sony: the PS2 was compatible with the PS to (successfully) ensure it wouldn't relinquish first place. The SNES couldn't play NES games, the Dreamcast couldn't play Saturn games, the Xbox 360 wasn't actually BC with the Xbox (it could use emulation profiles to run a select number of games, and not necessarily every variant thereof), and early PS3 were reluctantly compatible with the PS2.

> and early PS3 were reluctantly compatible with the PS2.

And they did that by effectively putting a PS2 inside the case alongside everything else, ironically making backwards compatibility one of the things contributing to the high price and hence slow early adoption of the PS3.

>Backward compatibility for consoles is rightly a thing of the past.

Say what now? The previous console generation was the longest console generation to date. And now we're just supposed to throw all of that away?

What makes the whole situation even more appalling is the lack of support for external media. By buying a new console, basically all of your existing games and external media will be useless. Not exactly a great situation for a device with very, very little actual content available right now. But at least you can always re-buy your old media on your new device, eh? Gotta love forced double-dipping.

Meanwhile, a PC will continue to play all the games from the previous gen AND will play all the games from the new gen too, while also playing your media and doing a billion other things. Combine with the fact that PC gaming is easier than ever these days and frankly comes with the least amount of bullshit, I really don't understand why anyone would want to buy what is essentially a tightly locked-down PC from a company that basically treats you as a gullible idiot with a credit card attached (goes for both Sony and Microsoft).

I was largely apathetic about the previous console generation, but this new gen manages to actually disgust me from the get-go.

>And now we're just supposed to throw all of that away?

Or just dont throw your old console in the garbage

While I agree with PS+ being good value, what about the casual gamers like me who enjoy playing through one or two good games a year and might want to play some of these games online from time to time?

I currently have a PS3 and the last game I bought before GTA5 was Final Fantasy XIII, so I am not exactly a regular gamer (although I play a couple other games on PC). I was happy to be able to play GTA5 online while not having to pay for a monthly subscription that gives me countless extras I have no need for.

If I went and bought a PS4 this would change, I would either have to spend extra money for something I was getting for free previously or enjoy the next game offline; something that has been increasingly difficult throughout the years (when is the last time you found a proper two-player game, for use with two controllers? Even need for speed is online-only these days if you want multiplayer).

It felt a bit harsh realising that the PS4 won't work as a media streamer, so I got myself a Raspberry PI and set up Xbian. I'm so impressed with it! It's much more reliable than my PS3 was, I can control it from my Android phone, and I'm sure it's going to have masses of tinker value.

On the paying for online/PS+ thing - this is a drop in the ocean for us HN readers no doubt, but the people I think it will affect most are younger people who don't have the disposable income. Eg, my nephew's 13, and he games online with his mates all the time on games which they play forever. £40/year for him and his mates will probably be a bit of a block. Maybe Sony could have come up with a light option which didn't give you all the free games and stuff?

Unless they move away from the x86 arc again in the next generation, we might actually see a very high percentage of backwards compatibility in that switch.

If developers stick to high-level APIs for both CPU and GPU.

The changes of that are pretty low.

I guess a next-gen console can just emulate the low-level APIs for older games.

The 360 attempted to do that[0]. It wasn't exactly successful, and computing power improvements from one generation to the next shrink over time. There's no way you'll be able to emulate a PS3 on a PS5, let alone a PS4, save finally achieving quantum computing and managing to put that in a console.

[0] the PS3 did not even bother, early revisions just bundled PS2 hardware wholesale.