There haven’t been a whole lot of negative reactions to the PlayStation 4 at this point in time, but the manufacturer’s decision to overlook MP3 and CD support in the next generation console did rub some consumers up the wrong way. In an interview with Giant Bomb, however, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed that the platform holder is working hard to include the functionality as part of a post-release patch.
“The biggest surprise for us all internally at Sony was that there are so many people who passionately reacted to our announcement that there's no MP3 support or CD support on day one,” he told the website, rejecting suggestions that the features were excluded in order to bolster subscriptions to its audio streaming service Music Unlimited. “The focus has been more on the game features. Some of the features we wanted but we couldn't get in on day one.”
He continued: “We didn't really think about MP3 or CD. We thought, 'We're going to do that eventually.’ It caught us off-guard. People don't really talk about these features, right? Some people get really mad and [say], 'I'll cancel my pre-order!' So as we speak, people in Japan – the system guys – are discussing when we can put these features in.” Hurrah, you don’t need to throw out your disc-based copy of Kylie Minogue’s Greatest Hits, after all.
Sony’s director of music services Anu Kirk also rejected claims that the absence of MP3 and CD support on the PS4 was designed to drive traffic towards its streaming platform. "I can see how people could see it as some kind of diabolical plot, but that's not how we roll," he told Polygon as part of an in-depth interview. "Our brief here at Music Unlimited was to just make the best music application available for the PS4, and that's the extent of our knowledge of it."
Sadly, the app itself doesn’t seem quite as fleshed out as we’d hoped. While you’ll be able to overlay music in your games, you’ll need to manually mute the software’s soundtrack to prevent Katy Perry’s latest single from getting drowned out by a separate score. There’s also not a visualiser at this point in time, but it's not been ruled out for the future. We don't know about you, but we get the distinct impression that this console’s going to evolve a lot over the coming year.
[source giantbomb.com, via polygon.com, eurogamer.net]
Comments 25
Man Sony is dong great so far this gen. They are actually listening to their customers. So glad I am going with them this gen.
Thank you Sony!
Huh, so I look like kind of a jackass for my comment earlier.
well, hopefully when the time I got ps4 this already implemented.
nice follow, yoshida
Hope this means i'll eventually get to have podcasts streaming on my ps4 during certain games that don't require my full attention to play.
Good stuff. Honestly though, I think the backlash stemmed from a misunderstanding; I think most people thought that the PS4 would NEVER support these features. I know that's what I thought.
Not having them on Day One isn't something I'm gonna lose sleep over. I doubt the 'pre-order cancelled!' brigade were being serious.
Great news, I'll be playing a lot of CDs on my PS4.
@ShogunRok What the heck's a CD?
"you’ll need to manually mute the software’s soundtrack to prevent Katy Perry’s latest single from getting drowned out by a separate score"
ANYTHING that drowns out katy perry is a good thing ANYTHING!
@get2sammyb You know, that outdated format that I keep spending money on but really shouldn't.
By the way, Come Around Sundown is a pretty good album.
@ShogunRok - I feel ya. Just spent £9.99 on the new CHVRCHES album. It came in a cardboard sleeve. Not even a jewel case. A cardboard sleeve.
I don't think 'Music Unlimited' would have most of my rare & strange music i have on my CD's & MP3's anyway Glad it will be coming to the PS4 tho(CD & MP3 playback) The more features the better i say.
Figured this would happen. I'll never use my PS4 as a music player but more options never hurt. I still say it's such a basic and easy feature to include that it would've been better to do that rather than try and draw any ire from consumers by leaving it out initially but clearly the talking heads at these companies would rather piss people off first. Then back track later and try and make it look like they give a damn about the consumer. Clearly this isn't as bad as MS' DRM nonsense but if you really care about the people buying your products why even bother getting some of them riled up when this is something that so easily could've been in the machine to start? To get a few more music unlimited subs? Give me a break, if your service is that good you don't need to resort to cheap little tactics like leaving out MP3 and CD support.
Yes, we finally got the confirmation!!! And in days before launch!!!! Glad to here this as i rip my files from youtube and a good bit of them are mixes of songs (Metal/Techno) that dont even get released on tracks! I never buy CD's as i never enjoy every last song on any artist album! Finally the long awaited play your own tracks while u Play your action adventure games will be a reality on PS4!!!
Especially my gundam games!!! >=)
Seems pretty obvious that they just overlooked the feature. If the Vita and PS4 actually were built together, then wouldn't it make sense for them to remove MP3 and DLNA on the Vita first?
All these conspiracy theories about Sony trying to force people to subscribe to MU are groundless and shouldn't have been started up in the first place, but the gaming community seems to be made up of conspiracy theorists and such.
Swinging through killzone and shooting down 'all' with 'Ride of the Valkyrie's' blasting out will be proper lovely.
@Lelouch
Given the business practices of companies in this industry over the years and especially recently it's always better to be questioning things. The second you start trusting is the second you start getting screwed over big time.
@ShogunRok Still use my ps1 for audio cd's but on a serious note music unlimited sounds like a good service! Am I correct in saying one can just use any music you want for a subscription no matter how many songs? That sounds great! It's not available in my country so I have not used it wonder if I can use the tracks in Serato?
I'm glad they're gonna deliver the feature after launch, but I'm with @Gamer83 on this one and have to mildly call bs on this...no one thought or talked about these features? Really? After the whole rest of the PS4 concept and system is so well thought out and designed? Riiiight...
Sonys attitude has changed a whole lot over the last years and I'm super glad it did, but this is the same company that dissed MS for their lack of backward-compatibility back in the days and removed the feature on PS3 a few month afterwards, so it more looks to me that this was just a little lingering bit of the "old Sony".
I wonder how the Killzone Shadow Fall pre-order soundtrack will be delivered. If it doesn't support MP3 right now, I hope it doesn't just link to Music Unlimited as that's not fair for non-subscribers. I suppose it could give some sort of url or code to use on a PC though.
@nathanuc1988 Wondered that myself...but then, the preorder boni are not even listet yet where I live (Germany), so.
Guerrilla Games stated on the Playstation Blog that the preorder stuff for Killzone will be delivered shortly after the game launches, so I guess we'll get donload codes via email then...
@Reverend_Skeeve I already got my code from Amazon, but either PS4 codes must be used on PS4 or the content isn't live yet.
@nathanuc1988
Didn't even think about that. Will be interesting to see how it works out. All I know for sure when it comes to Shadow Fall though is I can hardly wait to play it.
@nathanuc1988 Ah, cool! Thanks for the info! Will preorder Killzone today...hope I still get the codes.n But even if not...a victory-gesture, an OWL-skin and the soundtrack aren't essential enough for me to grief should it not work. Mainly hyped for Shadowfall the game...more so than hardly any game during the last years!
AND THIS IS WHY SONY IS AT THE TOP THIS GEN BECAUSE THEY LISTEN TO THE GAMERS AND MAKE EVERYTHING #4THEPLAYERS
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