With the US launch of the PlayStation 4 on Friday and the arrival of the Xbox One in major markets the following week, interesting new details about the next-gen era are emerging. It started last week with US retailer Target accidentally sending out a batch of Xbox Ones to pre-order customers. One recipient, Twitter user @Moonlightswami was straight on social networks, claiming that boot up time for the console was 17 seconds and that a day one 500MB patch was required to get the system started.
The Xbox One Marketplace seems to be partially stocked, as well – Moonlight Swami tweeted supposed screenshots of the marketplace detailing the download size for various games. The photos suggest the largest game available is NBA2K14 at 43 GB, with Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag trailing at 20 GB, Dead Rising 3 at 19 GB and LocoCycle at 13 GB. Moonlight Swami also installed Call of Duty: Ghosts from a retail disc, which he claims requires 39 GB of hard drive space.
Moonlightswami also noted that, although these are large downloads (even for a 500GB hard drive), he was able to start playing each game once they were 50% installed. How does all this compare to PS4? Well, we know that Ps4 will require it's on day-one update of around 300MB to get many of the key features working. As for boot-up, GameInformer claims to have timed a PS4 cold-booting in relatively tardy 30 seconds. On the plus side, while PS4 titles are likely to require similarly hefty installs to work (Knack is a 37GB mandatory install, for example), according to several reports collated by VG247, owners will be able to start playing within a couple of minutes of the process beginning. This has always been a key Sony goal with the machine – the banishment of download times – and it seems this is actually playing out.
But limitations are also emerging. In October, we discovered that PlayStation 4 will not recognise audio CDs and (currently) cannot play MP3s or stream content from a PC via DLNA wireless networking – the latter two may be handled in a later firmware update, but there's no guarantee. Some sources have uncharitably suggested a link between these audio deficiencies and the availability of Sony's own subscription-based music service, Music Unlimited, but we couldn't possibly comment. In comparison, on Monday we were informed that Xbox One would not be able to play 3D Blu-rays at launch. This will perhaps be less important to a majority of consumers – until they see Gravity of course, after which 3D suddenly becomes kind of a big deal again.
Moving on to Monday, and PS4 found itself in a (so far) rather unfamiliar position: at the centre of a potential PR failure. Changes in the PlayStation software usage terms suggested that Sony was doing a bit of a U-turn on its declaration that used-game sales would be supported on the machine. You know, the declaration that effectively "won" E3? From the document:
"You must not resell either disc-based software or software downloads, unless expressly authorised by us and, if the publisher is another company, additionally by the publisher."
What the?! But Sony, that sort of seems like the actual opposite of what we were told. Since news stories have appeared questioning the new clause, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has been on Twitter assuring games they will be able to buy and sell second-hand PS4 games. I also asked Sony for a comment and they told me, "Our official response to the story is: 'As SCE announced at E3, consumers will be able to sell or share their PS4 disc products.'" So that's okay. But what of this mysteriously draconian software usage warning? I have contacted an entertainment lawyer and will update ASAP.
But that's not all that came out of that online document. Among many other sites, Polygon picked up on this section, which states:
"Your use of PSN and our community features may be recorded and collected by us or sent to us by other users as described in 13.1. Any information collected in this way, for example, your UGM, the content of your voice and text communications, video of your gameplay, the time and location of your activities, and your name, your PSN Online ID and IP address, may be used by us or our affiliated companies to enforce these terms and the SEN terms of service, to comply with the law, to protect our rights and those of our licensors and users, and to protect the personal safety of our employees and users."
Of course, this is the sort of sinister Orwellian legalese that gets added to most digital product user agreements these days, it's just that we don't usually bother to scroll through and check everything before we click "I accept". However, Microsoft has been hit pretty hard with Big Brother accusations, with lots of users concerned about the monitoring power of Kinect. Now it's Sony's turn to feel the heat of contemporary (and often not misplaced) paranoia.
Finally, with the PS4 now in the hands of many lucky US journalists, and after a New York demo event showing the finalised user-interface, some positives and negatives are becoming clear. First, it seems PS4 is not as advanced as Xbox One when it comes to voice commands – Engadet has reported that you can't power up the machine for its sleep mode by shouting at it like you can with Micrsoft's machine. Also none of the launch third-party apps seem to make any significant use of voice or gesture commands delivered via the PlayStation Eye peripheral, which is sold separately (although audio-only commands can be given via the mono headset that comes with the console). Those hoping to converse with their console on a regular and despotic basis, this might be a disappointment.
However, lots of good stuff was revealed at the New York demo do. IGN has an enormous feature detailing the PS4 user interface, with cool stuff like cross-platform chat with Vita and smartphone owners, and a revised Trophy system with rarer more desirable trinkets hidden away for even more obsessive hunters.
This is an interesting time in any console war – the calm dripfeed of system information before the storm of launch. Both machines are having their little controversies, but they're also yielding some fascinating nuggets about how we'll live with and control these powerful beasts. I'm hoping the time for furious factionalism based purely on hype, specifications and prejudices is over. This is where the excitement really begins, right? A new console generation. I started in games journalism early in the war between PlayStation and Saturn, when it still looked like it could go either way. Every day bought some new Japanese import, some fresh Famitsu magazine feature that swayed our imaginations and allegiances. Times have changed but that metronome of platform loyalty still ticks.
This is it. Hold on. Here we go.
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