Sony: PlayStation 4 'sold out at all retailers,' online community very high

Sony says that the PlayStation 4 continues to be hard to find at retailers, and the online community is very strong thanks to a high attachment rate of consoles to the internet.


IGN gave the details during a meeting with Sony:

“PS4’s are generally sold out at all retailers although regular supply is refreshing the channel,” one slide read during the presentation. Call of Duty: Ghosts, FIFA 14, and Battlefield 4 are the three best-selling games on the platform so far. Sony claims that it “has increased its market share” among what the company calls “heavy gamers,” or players that play a ton of games.

Sony also gave out statistics for the online community, which are nothing short of impressive.

Additionally, 90 percent of PlayStation 4 consoles are connected to the Internet. It took PlayStation 3 three years on the market to reach a 70 percent connection rate.
PlayStation 4 gamers have shared their gameplay and screenshots 48 million times so far, 1.7 million hours have been spent livestreaming gameplay on Twitch and Ustream, and 172 million hours have been played online with PS4 so far.

PlayStation 4's incredibly high attachment rate on internet access is a dream come true for Sony. As consoles are just about required to have it, it makes sense compared to over six years ago when the PlayStation 3 was released.

The internet is available in more rural areas and with the ongoing sales of smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets, there's more wireless routers creating easy-to-connect Wi-Fi areas. It's pretty simple to select a router and enter in a password to connect the PS4 online.

PlayStation Network has also seen a huge spark, with digital sales soaring and "PlayStation Plus subscriptions are up 90 percent since the [PS4's] launch."

Still looking for a PS4? Amazon has them in stock now at the time of this post.

Image credit: Flickr

CES 2014: First-hand impressions on the PlayStation Now

Here's a cumulative look at the first-hand impressions of Sony's PlayStation Now, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas, from a variety of respected tech outlets.


[Also see: What is PlayStation Now?]

Overall, these testers were able to play three games on Sony BRAVIA TVs and the Vita: The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, and God of War: Ascension.

Dale North from Destructoid found some issues in the technical quality of the Bravia set-up, but nothing out of the ordinary for something that's streamed. Overall, he came away very impressed.

...[E]verything I tried played wonderfully. Both the Vita and Bravia setups played well enough that there's really nothing to talk about here. It is actually easy to not be impressed because it works exactly as you'd expect. Responsive, lag free, and totally without incident -- flawless. It remains to be seen if we'll see as respectable performance over wireless and Internet connections. And we have yet to try mobile and tablet play.

Scott Lowe from IGN praised the Vita's streaming capability and was even more impressed with how Sony making their streaming service available on multiple platforms that aren't Sony-branded.

What surprised me...is Sony's embrace of non-Sony products for PlayStation Now. Although specific partnerships have not been confirmed, Sony has said that it will extend PlayStation 3 games to smartphones, tablets, or even TVs outside of its own family of products. It's a distinctly out of character for Sony, which has historically tied software and experiences to its own proprietary hardware.

Michael McWhertor of Polygon was impressed that the thing actually worked. Like others, he noted "lag input" and "compression artifacts," but everything was "more than playable."

Performance in games like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension was impressive. Lag input was noticeable, seemingly more so on Vita when moving The Last of Us' Joel and waiting a beat for him to respond, but more than playable. Even the higher frame rate, faster paced action of Ascensionwas playable, though compression artifacts and more muted colors were present.

Image credit: Flickr 

New, Traditional 'Ratchet and Clank' Announced for PlayStation 3

It turns out that picture Sony and Insomniac Games were teasing is for the announcement of the newest edition of the Ratchet & Clank series.

Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus will be the epilogue of the "Future" series, and it's coming out for the PlayStation 3 this fall at the same $29.99 price point the latest game was released at. Colin Moriarty dives more into why Insomniac Games went back to a traditional form in his full preview of the game at IGN.

Long-time Insomniac employee and the visionary behind the Ratchet & Clank series, Brian Allgeier, noted that “the time was right to come back to the core series” with Into the Nexus after he'd spent time on Fuse. All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault were enjoyed by some and criticized by others, but it can’t be disputed that neither was a traditional, true-to-form Ratchet & Clank game. Allgeier said that doing a “family” and “competitive” game, respectively, allowed his team to finally “do something different,” but Into the Nexus allows them to go back in an old-school direction.

While the title doesn't have the "Future" imprint (as of now), it will be the fourth and last installment of the series.

The story will be more on the spookier side, according to the preview. But expect the same amount of wacky characters, combat with insane weapons and gadgets, and story that can be enjoyed by both children and adults.

Some tidbits from the review that I found interesting was that there was an alternate title to keep up with the innuendo in all the other titles, and there is a possibility of not having a Vita version of the game due to R&C: Full Frontal Assault's technical issues.

[A]s for the complete lack of innuendo in Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus’ name? One of Insomniac’s working titles for the game was Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nether Regions. But the developer eventually settled on Into the Nexus as its final title (it will be called just Ratchet & Clank: Nexus in Europe).

And as for a Vita iteration? It’s entirely possible, but it’s still up in the air. The Vita version of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault met a whole lot of trouble during development and came to the market much later than it was supposed to. As such, Insomniac is cautious this time around. “Everyone would love for it to come to Vita,” Insomniac’s James Stevenson told me, “but it has to be up to the series’ standards” before the company makes any definitive statement.

[Source: IGN]
[Image credit: Flickr/pop culture geek]

Critics Praise Latest PS3 Exclusive, The Last of Us

Universal praise of the game developed by the same company that created the Uncharted series has another hit on their hands and perhaps another reason to pull the trigger for late PlayStation adopters.

The Last of Us, developed by Naughty Dog, has received very high critical acclaim from all over the internet, receiving perfect scores from a variety of trusted gaming websites like IGN, Destructoid, Joystiq, Games Radar, and a recommendation from Kotaku.

Metacritic currently has a 96 rating for the game; all 57 reviews factored into the score are positive. The lowest scores for the game are a couple of 80s from GameSpot and Toronto Sun, and 75 is the lowest over at Polygon.

Bottom line from all the reviews: the quality is top notch. It's arguably the best survival horror game ever made, and is right there in best game of the year conversation. Those expecting an Uncharted-like adventure will be in for a surprise.

Considering TLOU's genre, it won't reach the same number of sales that the later Uncharted games reached, and it won't even touch the Xbox exclusives, but it's a game that every PlayStation owner should pick up soon unless survival horror just doesn't fit their style.

All of the collector's editions have been scooped up and already being resold for nearly double their value on eBay, but since it's a new IP not many were available to begin with unlike the Uncharted 3 collector's editions (which still can be found for about $50 brand new -- I should just open mine up and enjoy it by now).

I purchased a $48 preorder on Newegg last year and cancelled it a few months ago with all the backlog that's added up on both the PS3 and Vita (and Wii...yeah, right, I'll get around to those...). Now, while slightly disappointed in the decision after reading fews, I expect to find a deal around $40 or less especially around Black Friday.

[Source: Metacritic]
[Photo credit: Flickr/naughty_dog]