PlayStation 4 - General Discussion Thread

4thHorseman said:
Nothing really important, but a couple more hardware details announced as the PS4 has been certified by the FCC

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/22/sony-playstation-4-fcc/

-Will weigh about 6.2 lbs

-Max clock freq of 2.75GHz

-Runs cooler than the PS3 - runs 5-35 Celsius
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I assume this means it'll also run quieter than the PS3. It's not loud to begin with, but still. Don't know why, but I've been considering making a new account when I jump to PS4. No particular reason, just feel like starting from scratch. Don't think theres anything I'll lose, is there? Considering that Sony said none of your current PSN purchases will transfer over.

 
Trophies as of right now. As far as anything else, nope. Unless Gaikai is going to turn out to be everyone's wet dream.

Edit: to avoid double posting.

Anyway, so I wonder if the new OS has to sync trophies every time you want to look at them. I kinda hope they make it a little more intuitive where I press the PS button when one pops up and it takes me right to the description (like how you can do that on the 360). I sometimes don't bother reading the trophy list for a game before I play it and see what I can achieve on my own.
 
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory

If I heard right, this article was going to go up yesterday, but Sony had them wait until today so they could have a response ready. Haven't seen their response posted anywhere yet, so not sure if it's out publicly.

According to the article, 3.5GB is reserved for OS, leaving 4.5GB for gaming. But there is also a flexible 1GB of the OS that can also go towards gaming if the OS can spare it.

 
WTF is that memory used for?

edit:
Here's an idea, since 99.99999% of gamers don't give a shit about having the last 15 minutes of gameplay recorded, turn that off and those that want it can suffer the consequences.

 
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I'm saying bullshit until confirmed. 3.5GB of GDDR5 for an OS?! I'm not very technical with my knowledge but I do know that Windows can run easily on 1-2GB of DDR3. So what in the merry fuck a game console would need 3+ gigs of faster memory for is beyond me.

 
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It does seem high, but isn't the X1's usuage high too?

So maybe it's the fact it's always recording and storing the last 15 minutes of gameplay?  I could see the OS's being bloated with that, all the sharing options, background downloading etc. that are built in.

 
dmaul1114 said:
It does seem high, but isn't the X1's usuage high too?

So maybe it's the fact it's always recording and storing the last 15 minutes of gameplay? I could see the OS's being bloated with that, all the sharing options, background downloading etc. that are built in.
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I know the Xbox One has 3 separate OS's and has Kinect so I figured that was the reason for X1 using 3GB of it's DDR3.

I think the only real reason I'm upset is because we didn't know this before now (assuming there's any truth to it). Most people assumed a GB or 2 at most for PS4's OS. I wish Sony had clarified at some point if that's not the case. In reality 4.5GB is still way way more than PS3/360 had and the games will be ok.

 
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ShockandAww said:
I know the Xbox One has 3 separate OS's and has Kinect so I figured that was the reason for X1 using 3GB of it's DDR3.

I think the only real reason I'm upset is because we didn't know this before now (assuming there's any truth to it). Most people assumed a GB or 2 at most for PS4's OS. I wish Sony had clarified at some point if that's not the case. In reality 4.5GB is still way way more than PS3/360 had and the games will be ok.
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It's a lot more than PS3/360 but it limits the future of the console. It's not going to be necessary right now but what about 4 years from now when the developers are maxing the thing out? Less assets will be on screen.

 
If true, that seems high, but hopefully it's lower by launch, and then over the years it should lower as they did with PS3. Won't really be a factor until a few years from now but I was hoping for 7 gb free. In any case multiplatforms probably would not do much with the extra gb over the X1. So exclusives hurt the most.

 
That's hard to believe just flat out. Not even considering that the original PS4 rumor before Feb was that the system only had 4GB ram and was shot to 8GB at last second. So it was originally going to be just 500mb of RAM for gaming again? I don't think so.

I can start my own rumor. Maybe the reason why they went with GDDR5 instead of DDR3 was because they wanted 15 minutes of gameplay recording. XB1 already said 30 second clips and 5 minutes max. I would think that would be more because they already have too much allocation going towards their 3 OS running at same time (1GB each) for switch between, the game DVR was an afterthought.

 
Evidently this might be the price we have to pay to "instantly" switch between apps because they're always running in the background.  Is it really worth the trade off?  Without having an HDMI input, I just don't see the point. 

 
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2013/07/reaction_why_you_should_stop_bleating_about_the_ps4s_ram

^Article does a good job on explaining why restricting all this memory early on is a good idea to ensure future features can be incorporated into the PS4's OS while maintaining backwards compatibility with current PS4 titles. The eurogamer article also suggest the same reasoning behind the RAM allocation. It is better to restrict the amount of RAM from the beginning. Slowly drip feed it back to developers during the console lifespan, than open the floodgates, and not have anything to work with later on to evolve the OS.

However, a big area of difference between Sony and Microsoft's approaches to OS allocation could come in their future plans for the reserved RAM. A Microsoft insider tells us that the engineers behind the Xbox One specifically chose 3GB in order to allow the background platform to evolve over a ten-year life-cycle - it's very hard to add features if the pool of available RAM is reduced from its initial level. The reserved RAM allocation there is set in stone, and is unlikely to change.

However, sources close to Sony suggest that the PS4 approach is perhaps more flexible - the current allocation in terms of both CPU cores and memory could be reduced once the operating system is complete and then streamlined. In short, while there is no guarantee of change in the future, Sony is at least leaving the door open to the opportunity and the R&D team has experience in reducing the OS footprint - just as it did on PlayStation 3.
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with all the features in the ps4 i would not be shocked if they need like 3-4 gb of ram to just run the system. recording will be memory hog and so will be downloading things in behind while you play. i was shocked 360 and ps3 was able to run all the things they did with the little memory they had.

 
Some pretty reliable people on Neogaf (one of them a mod) are saying that it is 6GB memory for games, 2 reserved for the OS. 2GB resereved for the OS just to be safe and the footprint should get smaller over time as it has with the PS3. Link to the mod post backing up the other 2 posters who say it is/will be 6GB. The other 2 posters are "BruceLeeRoy" and "thuway" on Neogaf. thuway has flat out said there are games being developed on PS4 which have 6GB available link

There's also a blog post from a Retro City Rampage developer refuting the Eurogamer article. 

 
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ShockandAww said:
Some pretty reliable people on Neogaf (one of them a mod) are saying that it is 6GB memory for games, 2 reserved for the OS. 2GB resereved for the OS just to be safe and the footprint should get smaller over time as it has with the PS3. Link to the mod post backing up the other 2 posters who say it is/will be 6GB
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Sadly Eurogamer is quoting an actual statement by Sony indicating 4.5gb ram + .5gb ram system allocated. It's still more than PC games realistically use right now but it could easily be needed in a few years since PC games are being held back by consoles. I hope that Sony can find a way to decrease the footprint of the OS.

 
You know, if people understood PCs better there would be nothing to discuss here about the RAM usage.  I have 8 gigs in my current rig and games rarely utilize 40% of that and typically only after long sessions where assets have been cached.  The only time you would want above and beyond what they're allocating is when you're doing heavy video editing, which PS4 will never do.  The fact the system is constantly recording gameplay makes it instantly understandable why they're reserving RAM to store footage.  You wouldn't want the system in constant write mode because it produces a ton of wear on the HDD from heat and usage, but also becomes a bottleneck when accessing anything from installed games.  I believe it's only 5200 speed as well, so capturing HD quality VODs would be a huge drain on FPS doing it that way as well.

In short, nothing to see here.

 
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Blaster man said:
Sadly Eurogamer is quoting an actual statement by Sony indicating 4.5gb ram + .5gb ram system allocated.
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That part is incorrect. While Sony cleared up the "flexible" memory issue, they did not state how much memory would be used for games/OS. Read the last line of the statement in particular. This is the statement issued by Sony:

We would like to clear up a misunderstanding regarding our "direct" and "flexible" memory systems. The article states that "flexible" memory is borrowed from the OS, and must be returned when requested - that's not actually the case.

The actual true distinction is that:

  • "Direct Memory" is memory allocated under the traditional video game model, so the game controls all aspects of its allocation
  • "Flexible Memory" is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some very nice FreeBSD virtual memory functionality. However this memory is 100 per cent the game's memory, and is never used by the OS, and as it is the game's memory it should be easy for every developer to use it.
We have no comment to make on the amount of memory reserved by the system or what it is used for.

 
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Double post but I messed up the font/color of the last one. So anyway I dont mean to say the neogaf posters are definitely right and the eurogamer article is definitely wrong because I don't know for a fact, since Sony themselves havent said anything.

The evidence though points to the Eurogamer article being wrong though at least somewhat. Just for example of what I mean, it may be that 5GB are right now available normally, 512MB available as flexible memory and 2.5 currently reserved for the OS. Which could well change moving forward depending on if Sony can reduce the OS footprint and/or decides they don't need to reserve that much. Again that's just a guess with numbers pulled out of basically nowhere, but that basically seems to be what's going on. I think Sony would not comment on the memory allocation because they themselves don't know for sure and/or it may vary down the road.

 
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We would like to clear up a misunderstanding regarding our "direct" and "flexible" memory systems. The article states that "flexible" memory is borrowed from the OS, and must be returned when requested - that's not actually the case.

The actual true distinction is that:

  • "Direct Memory" is memory allocated under the traditional video game model, so the game controls all aspects of its allocation
  • "Flexible Memory" is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some very nice FreeBSD virtual memory functionality. However this memory is 100 per cent the game's memory, and is never used by the OS, and as it is the game's memory it should be easy for every developer to use it.
We have no comment to make on the amount of memory reserved by the system or what it is used for.
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Looks like Sony has finally confirmed the PS4 is indeed using FreeBSD as the OS for PS4. So I did some research on memory usage relating to the OS.

So, while playing with my VPS, I found a major difference between Linux and FreeBSD: performance and memory usage. The performance was nearly same as Linux, but slightly better. Memory usage change, was drastic. FreeBSD is just too good at managing memory. My server earlier used to consume over 1 GB of memory for running PHP, MySQL and Nginx. Now, it doesn’t even touch 500 MB! It’s always less than 500 MB. Everything is just same, configuration, etc. Only OS changed.
After the trial VPS, I started moving my stuff from the Gentoo VPS to the new one. Ran it for testing few days, and it continued to amaze me. FreeBSD’s official slogan is “The Power to Serve”. So much true is that! And that ended up as migrating other VPSes to FreeBSD as well.

​
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FreeBSD's multitasking is far smoother than in any other OS I've used (and I've used a lot of them). It takes a remarkably heavy load to cause any noticeable degradation in response times. I routinely run computationally intensive programs in the background without suffering any discomfort with my desktop applications such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. In most other operating systems, including OS X, desktop applications become choppy and sluggish when other CPU and memory intensive jobs are running. Running background jobs under 'nice' (to lower their CPU priority) can make a huge difference on most other platforms, but it's impossible to get every other user to use it consistently. On FreeBSD, the CPU scheduling is so good that the impact of 'nice' isn't very noticeable, but it's still a good habit to use it.

FreeBSD is by far the most stable operating system I've ever worked with. (And I've worked with a lot of them.) Most of my FreeBSD systems run uninterrupted between hardware failures and power outages. It's common to see FreeBSD machines that have been running well over a year without a reboot, and most outages are due to hardware or power failures.
Moreover, FreeBSD tends to dominate the longest uptime category in Netcraft's WEB surveys.
For current stats:
Most reliable sites
Longest uptimes
FreeBSD has also been the OS of choice by many popular WEB servers, such as yahoo.com, cdrom.com, and hotmail.com.

Source: http://blog.ijun.org/2011/02/why-freebsd.html
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FreeBSD appears to be a very good choice of OS for the PS4, it is stable, lightweight, low memory usage, and great at multi-tasking. All this memory allocation issue seems to be more of a restriction set by Sony rather than the OS needing it. Either way I would rather have it be a software restriction which can be changed later in the lifecycle than a hardware restriction.

 
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Mon, Jul 29, 2013 | 13:53 BST

PS4 party chat is free, friends lists capped at 2,000 people
PS4′s party chat feature will not be blocked behind a PS Plus pay-wall, and friends lists can hold 2,000 people. That’s a lot of friends.

Sony’s PlayStation Access show confirmed that PS4 has free party chat that doesn’t require a PS Plus subscription to use, and that friends lists are capped at 2,000 people. The console will not support DualShock 3 but it will work with PS Move. Your current PSN avatar and username will also transfer over to PS4 as well.

What do you make of the above?

Thanks AGB.

 
Erad30 said:
Mon, Jul 29, 2013 | 13:53 BST

PS4 party chat is free, friends lists capped at 2,000 people
PS4′s party chat feature will not be blocked behind a PS Plus pay-wall, and friends lists can hold 2,000 people. That’s a lot of friends.

Sony’s PlayStation Access show confirmed that PS4 has free party chat that doesn’t require a PS Plus subscription to use, and that friends lists are capped at 2,000 people. The console will not support DualShock 3 but it will work with PS Move. Your current PSN avatar and username will also transfer over to PS4 as well.

What do you make of the above?

Thanks AGB.
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Doubt I'll ever use party chat (don't recall using it on the 360), and I know I won't come close to hitting the 2000 friend list. Hell, I never filled up the current friend list. Think I topped off at 15 at one point...

Good news. Just nothing that affects me.

 
Mon, Jul 29, 2013 | 13:53 BST PS4 party chat is free, friends lists capped at 2,000 people
PS4′s party chat feature will not be blocked behind a PS Plus pay-wall, and friends lists can hold 2,000 people. That’s a lot of friends.

Sony’s PlayStation Access show confirmed that PS4 has free party chat that doesn’t require a PS Plus subscription to use, and that friends lists are capped at 2,000 people. The console will not support DualShock 3 but it will work with PS Move. Your current PSN avatar and username will also transfer over to PS4 as well.
What do you make of the above?
Thanks AGB.



Nice! 2000?! That's 20x more Xbox 360 was holy
 
The problem I have with muting in TLoU is that it seems it is tied to a specific 'slot' and not a person. So I mute someone, they quit, new guy is auto muted.
 
Honestly, I wish they'd just make it a hardware setting so that you could just set it for the chat channel to be muted if a headset isn't connected (rather than getting it through your speakers).

As is, if I'm not playing something cooperative, I'll usually just turn my head set on, mute the mic and not wear it.

 
PS4 will have the ability to micro-patch games and user interface.

Evolution plans to use the console's micro-patching service to tweak gameplay elements and send out mini-updates, which owners will then seamlessly download. "We can even update the handling," says game director, Paul Rustchynsky. "If there are any balancing issues – if anyone says 'this car is 0.1 second slower than it should be at 0-60mph' – we can make adjustments like that."

"The interface is part of the game experience," says design director, Simon Barlow. "You can spend a lot of time in there exploring the social feeds, and all the different challenges. We've adopted a web development approach to the front end – instead of hard-coding a UI as we would traditionally, we thought, OK, if we need to start interfacing with the DriveClub app and with external servers, this needs to be more flexible. So we've used a lot of embedded web technology in the interface itself: not only is it live, it's very easily moddable, it's easily updated, we can micro-patch it. That flexibility is key."
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Still should be a big improvement from the huge updates a lot of PS3 games get.  A lot less painful on the 360 with the smaller updates and faster network (which should also be fixed on PS3 if Vita download speed is any indication).

 
Yeah, but the quote made it sound like they were doing something groundbreaking, when all they are doing is catching up on the ground they lost essentially.
 
True.  None of the next gen consoles are doing anything ground breaking.

And that's fine by me as I loved this gen and really just want more of the same with better graphics, AI etc. from the more power tech.

 
Thekrakrabbit said:
My only question at this point is how, when, or if we will be getting our backlog of PS3 games onto the PS4.
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My advice would be to keep your PS3 and games. Sony will most likely charge for the Gaikai service(They didn't buy Gaikai to provide everyone free backwards compatibility on PS4) and they only promised to port "popular" games from the PS3 to PS4.

 
htz said:
My advice would be to keep your PS3 and games. Sony will most likely charge for the Gaikai service(They didn't buy Gaikai to provide everyone free backwards compatibility on PS4) and they only promised to port "popular" games from the PS3 to PS4.
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This is the thing I'm interested in..I don't own a PS3 and don't see the point in buying one right now with the PS4 around the corner and PS3 still going for about $250 or so. Really hope Gaikai works out and has some of the games I want.

 
USA Pre-Order Chart
Week Ending 03rd Aug 2013
Pos - Game - Weeks To Launch - Weekly Change - Total
1. Grand Theft Auto V (X360) - 7 - 25,545 - 474,754
2. Grand Theft Auto V (PS3) - 7 - 16,696 - 402,611
3. Call of Duty: Ghosts (X360) - 14 - 10,971 - 197,690
4. Battlefield 4 (X360) - 13 - 4,208 - 189,691
5. Tales of Xillia (PS3) - 1 - 7,709 - 128,740
6. Call of Duty: Ghosts (PS3) - 14 - 6,271 - 109,800
7. Pokémon X/Y (3DS) - 10 - 5,858 - 106,467
8. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (X360) - 3 - 3,078 - 96,426
9. Battlefield 4 (PS3) - 13 - 2,141 - 95,780
10. Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX (PS3) - 6 - 4,911 - 89,159
11. Beyond: Two Souls (PS3) - 10 - 1,654 - 86,214
12. Watch Dogs (PS4) - 16 - 20,885 - 79,995
13. Madden NFL 25 (X360) - 4 - 10,093 - 70,550
14. Battlefield 4 (PS4) - 13 - 22,724 - 67,486 <-----
15. Call of Duty: Ghosts (PS4) - 22 - 20,843 - 66,548 <-----
16. Pikmin 3 (WiiU) - 1 - 4,241 - 64,880
17. Killzone: Shadow Fall (PS4) - 22 - 18,083 - 61,266
18. Lego Marvel Super Heroes (X360) - 22 - 4,983 - 59,503
19. South Park: The Stick of Truth (X360) - 22 - 481 - 59,371
20. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (X360) - 13 - 3,017 - 56,498
21. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (PS3) - 3 - 1,418 - 56,225
22. Disney Infinity (Wii) - 3 - 16,888 - 54,546
23. The Last Guardian (PS3) - N/A - 30 - 52,485
24. Madden NFL 25 (PS3) - 4 - 8,260 - 52,456
25. Saints Row IV (X360) - 3 - 8,211 - 49,713
26. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (PS3) - 4 - 12,481 - 48,143
27. Disney Infinity (X360) - 3 - 8,184 - 46,171
28. South Park: The Stick of Truth (PS3) - 22 - 386 - 45,984
29. Call of Duty: Ghosts (XOne) - 22 - 3,059 - 45,749 <-----
30. Dragon's Crown (PS3) - 1 - 9,905 - 45,576
31. Lego Marvel Super Heroes (PS3) - 22 - 3,108 - 44,917
32. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (PS3) - 13 - 2,274 - 40,325
33. Batman: Arkham Origins (X360) - 12 - 4,640 - 38,461
34. Batman: Arkham Origins (PS3) - 12 - 3,800 - 37,081
35. Prey 2 (X360) - 22 - 29 - 34,600
36. Destiny (X360) - N/A - 459 - 33,647
37. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (X360) - 3 - 1,018 - 31,674
38. Rayman Legends (WiiU) - 5 - 507 - 31,334
39. Saints Row IV (PS3) - 3 - 4,967 - 30,117
40. Battlefield 4 (XOne) - 13 - 1,932 - 29,390 <-----

Source: VGChartz
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Look at the separation between COD:Ghosts and BF4 on PS4 vs COD:Ghosts and BF4 on Xbox One. O_O

 
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This is the thing I'm interested in..I don't own a PS3 and don't see the point in buying one right now with the PS4 around the corner and PS3 still going for about $250 or so. Really hope Gaikai works out and has some of the games I want.



I'm sure you can get one chapter then that. check out the console Cowboom thread.

Look at the separation between COD:Ghosts and BF4 on PS4 vs COD:Ghosts and BF4 on Xbox One. O_O



That's crazy, but I think everything will pick up around holiday season.
 
Mako1215 said:
That's crazy, but I think everything will pick up around holiday season.
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Yeah I agree, I do most of my pre-orders 2 weeks before release. Just odd looking at the chart and seeing COD pre-orders leading on a Sony platform in the USA.

 
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