What Sony Did Wrong With The Playstation 4 In 2014

Despite record sales of their Playstation 4 system, 2015 was not all roses for Sony as they experienced some setbacks in the first year of their system.

The year started with the company having issues meeting demand for the system. While this is a good thing, it did lead to some frustrations amongst fans, some of whom likely picked up the readily available Xbox One or the aggressively priced Wii U.

The system took some heat for the quality of the launch exclusives as games such as Knack and the latest Killzone did not light up fans they way that the company had hoped which forced Sony to rely on third party games to provide content for their system.

The arrival of Infamous: Second Son helped by bringing a quality exclusive to the system but aside from MLB14 and Little Big Planet 3, many fans were concerned that titles such as The Order:1886 were bumped to 2015 leaving no mega-exclusives for the Holiday Season and once again requiring system owners to go to third-party titles due to what was perceived as a lack of quality exclusives for the system after launch.

Playstation TV seemed like a good idea, the ability to stream movies, shows, and games, to another television without the need for a second console. Although smart in concept, the device has not caught on as the company had hoped and it remains to be seen what the long term plans for it will be.

 

The Playstation Network has had security issues and the company recently had a severe hack where several of its films reportedly were leaked online ahead of their planned release dates.

Combine this with some update issues that caused performance issues with the system players naturally had their concerns despite the increased measures Sony has taken to ensure data security and privacy.

The Playstation Camera is a nice piece of hardware but aside from Twitch, it does not seem to be getting much support. Hopefully with the launch of the share service this hardware will get more and more use as streaming is a very popular and with the share feature of the system, it would be nice to see more games take advantage of this feature in the future.

It may seem like a minor thing to list but the fact that the free version of Driveclub is still not available for PS+ members at this time. This is supposed to be a big exclusive to showcase the power of the system in a driving game format, and yet it has not made an appearance weeks after it was supposed to debut.

The Playstation Experience mainly focused on games we knew about.

Yes what was shown looked great but aside from Street Fighter V and a new Final Fantasy, most of the games announced were already known and the others were more of the remastered or indie variety.

I know E3 is the place for announcements, but how about a new Resistance, Ratchet and Clank, Crash Bandicoot, Twisted Metal, or some other announcement of a new IP to build expectations for beyond 2015 as we have seen many of the big releases for next year already?

Sony is off to a great start with the PS4, but they need to focus on keeping the customers happy with content and not relying on third parties to provide for the system. The lineup in 2015 looks impressive and should help, but until then, we need a bit more to keep the excitement level up as we need games to play during the winter months, not trailers.

 

 

3 Comments

  1. miyamoto said:

    I really dig critiques like these. It keeps PlayStation and PlayStation Nation up on its toes.
    I am all for PS4 exclusives like you or the next gamer but having played with PlayStation since the original one many gamers have really underestimated PlayStation’s time tested and secret success weapon- third party games. The reason PlayStation won against Nintendo, Sega and Microsoft since day one is 3rd party games first and 1st party games second.
    PlayStation’s 3rd party relations since day one is second to none. PS3 is the comeback king of consoles because of 3rd party support from Valve, EA, Epic etc etc. back in 2010 due to PS3’s tight anti piracy policies.
    The reason Xbox One price cuts was not enough to deter PS4 dominance is because gamers know 3rd party games look and play better on PS4. Sony made sure they learn from their mistakes with PS3 and its now paying off.

    Don’t get me wrong 1st party games show of hardware power also move hardware units like Uncharted and God of War or GT5 but the likes of GTA, CoD, or Battlefield move way more PlayStation consoles if we look at statistics.

    PS4 has all these bases covered against the competition.

    December 11, 2014
  2. gareth said:

    Thank you, all very good points. The strides they have made with the PS 4 towards third party have been huge. We have talked with developers who told us before the launch of the PS4 how much easier it was to design games for the system. The PS3 was known to be a difficult system to program on and it took companies time to get in synch with Sony. The PS4 has allowed them to keep power with a sense of design ease which in turn has helped them. Also the sales are a big factor as with 16 million units moved, Relic for example is not in a big hurry to let Titanfall 2 be excluded from the PS4 this time around.

    December 11, 2014
  3. Ricardo said:

    Sony = lies and overhype that underdelivers. That’s what they do wrong.

    December 12, 2014

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