Topic: General PlayStation 4 Thread

@JohnnyShoulder I understand that, I've preordered too. But why not wait until release day?

It's a genuine question.

I have no issue pre-ordering a game I know I will enjoy. A game like Borderlands 3 for example that's guaranteed a few hundred hours no point in not pre-ordering it. As soon as the link went up I bought the Super Deluxe edition. Get to preload and play the second it's released so that's a perk. Outside of a few days early access there really aren't any preorder bonuses that I find attractive, a couple skins or weapons don't really move the needle. Really just depends on the game/franchise for me.

@Th3solution soulbornekiro good word

@themcnoisy I think you are missing the point of pre-ordering lol.

Nothing wrong with preordering. Granted it use to serve a bigger purpose, there was a time when you could rock up at the game shop and they literally wouldn’t have a copy, which doesn’t seem to happen anymore. You still need to do it with console releases of course.

But in my opinion it can be fun, if you know you’re gunna be getting it anyway putting your pre-order down can be an exciting addition to an otherwise mundane (or worse) day.

@JohnnyShoulder The point to preorder is to make sure you have a copy of the game on release day. As @kyleforrester87 has mentioned its a none issue these days - you can just download should the worst happen.

The bonuses, extra characters etc are just stuff ripped out of the main game to encourage people to preorder. Fortunately It's usually fluff and doesn't really hamper the experience (up to now bar a few examples).

My issue with preordering is its now used as a sales tactic, with timed prerelease game time and staggered release scheduling. Its just another way to skimp off the gamers and doesn't offer any additional value other than bragging rights. You could put your preorder money into an ISA or savings account and accrue interest rather than bloating the coffers of a company with a product to sell. In my opinion they should have to work harder for our money, rather than letting them pull our pants down after showing a few trailers.

In previous years when I have preordered, the main motivator was because I wasn't as financially secure - so the spare £50 off a month's wages could be put down on Disgaea 5 or The Phantom Pain as an example. I didn't regret doing that at all and enjoyed both games. However with the preordering process being yet another avenue for games publishers to take the mick, which they are now doing, it's time to take a step back and realise that the practice I was participating in can actually negatively effect my and your hobby further down the line.

The staggered release schedules, ripped content, bonus missions etc. Preordering is becoming more normalised as the defacto way to purchase a game (support your favourite developer by giving us free money!) and it's agitating that even if you purchase a game during release week your experience is already compromised.

With all that said both Sekiro and Cyberpunk are examples of preordering done ethically. I don't believe there are any game altering freebies in those editions. So wherever you preorder or not the game will be the same. I still wouldn't preorder though as it just encourages the games publishers to include said bad practice in subsequent games. I would like to think CDPRs philosophy towards gamers would negate my suspicious position - however I felt the same way towards Bethesda 5 years ago and we have all seen how that played out.

@themcnoisy I preorder almost all of my games. But, keep in mind a few things:

• Considering I mostly snub Western AAA titles (HZD is the first one I've played in two years or so), I don't typically have issues with the game not working well at launch or the publishers ripping out content to incentivize preordering. 95% of the time, I'm fully satisfied with my preorders.
• I only preorder if it's an exclusive I'm highly excited for (and thus will eventually get on the platform anyway), or get some sort of deal on. For example, I preordered RE2 on Steam because I managed to get it at launch for $44. I preordered the special edition of FF7R (the $80 one, not the crazy expensive one) on Amazon because they temporarily reduced the price to around $60. I've bought multiple vouchers for digital Switch games that save me $10 on each game, meaning I get to play Nintendo's biggest games at launch for a pretty decent discount (even more if you include the $5 in gold coins you get with each set of vouchers).
• If you digitally preorder a game and preload it on your system, it's often ready to go midnight of launch day, meaning you get even quicker access to a game you're excited for (as opposed to downloading it after-the-fact for a few hours or waiting all day for the mail to arrive with a physical copy).

@themcnoisy When I had less money I could never afford pre-order anything, it was play the waiting game for the priced to drop or buy second hand. It is only the last couple of years that I've had enough disposable income that I can pre-order, I just choose not to mainly.

You make some good points but I think you are arguing with the wrong person, I've pre-ordered 3 games since God of War came out last May.

You commented yourself on the Cyberpunk article that you can't really explain why you are hyped about it, can that not be the same for other people? Is that not one of the main reasons why people pre-order these days? I would happily pre-order every future From Software game in the Soulsborne style, as I've sunk 100+ into every game and just like CDPR I like the way they have supported the games. They may turn out to be evil 5 years down the line, but they may not. I can only go by what they have done in the past and present, not what they may turn out to be years down the line.

I've actually not put any money down yet for Cyberpunk, but I will do if I change the order from Amazon nearer the time. It is my money though, I can spend it how I choose to.

@JohnnyShoulder I'm just playing Devils advocate. I've got a mixed bag of results from prior endeavours in preordering and crowd funding so my view is byast. Of course you can do as you want with your own dough - you earned it bro.

If someone told me not to buy my monthly 24 pack of hula hoops I would tell them where to stick it. That's right. The answers in the statement.

There was a thread on a Pushsquare user who waits out the hype until they purchase a game. Sometimes years. Im actually unimpressed by that stance as in the end if you are in a financial position to support the industry you use as a hobby - then you should. Especially games by your preferred developers. If everyone decided to wait 12 months, single player games would become obsolete and we would be living a free to play nightmare.

Preordering is the polar opposite, its too eager. You could be encouraging more companies to specifically fine tune preorder now videos (already happening) and the game turns out turd. Not that it will happen with Cyberpunk of course.

But that then leads onto another issue. The publisher's will surely be tracking preorders and have internal targets - if said target isn't hit they could pull funding and release an unrefined product knowing its a lame duck. Where as in the past games had one shot to get it right and mostly arrived major bug free.

@themcnoisy I have a handful of trusted sites that I use for my video game purchases. On the rare occasion I have pre-ordered something they have never been late. Most of the time they come early, Dark Souls 3 for instance got delivered on the Saturday when the release day was the following Tuesday.

Logic would say, either pre-order and get it at release, or wait a couple months for the price drop. I saw Days Gone is selling pretty regularly for $40 now. I’m sure many are happy to have paid $60 and enjoyed it while it was topical 3 months ago, but if I miss the release window then I might as well wait on the price drop.
(For some reason Switch is a different animal, so see the Nintendo thread for my thoughts there)
But yeah, in PS4, there seems to be a point at which it makes no sense to pay full price for a game — usually that’s about month 3-6 after release because the price goes down. If you don’t want to wait that long and would rather pay 20% more, then preorder is financially logical so you can get in on it right away, support the developer, and get the added bonuses (although they are superfluous lately).
I would propose that publishers do something like give you a heavy discount on the season passes if you preorder. DLC is the practice that I am mostly opposed to rather than pre-order. That’s the slow boil we have gotten ourselves into where we are allowing developers and publishers to rip content out and then pay for it later.

I only pre-order games when I'm sure I'm getting a better deal than buying it a day or two before launch (which is still pre-ordering technically). When a ''AAA'' game is sub €50, I'll pre-order it. As it usually gets back to €52-54 just before launch. And most of the time I'm getting my games a day or two ahead of its official release as well, so I'm not complaining. But it only happens once or twice a year I buy something that won't be out for a couple of months.

I used to pre-order everything, but now there's no point unless it's something I'm eager to play at launch. They'll just stay on the shelf in their wrappers otherwise, and then down the line I look online and see how much they've gone down in price.

The noise from the fan on my PS4 is starting to annoy me. It's now almost as bad as my original 360 was, which is saying something. I've ordered some canned air and torx screwdrivers to open it up and give it a good clean, but I'm a little wary. Does anyone have any tips? I particularly want to avoid accidentally squirting liquid on anything.

@mookysam is it base ps4 or pro?

@ellsworth004 It's a base model (not slim).

@mookysam I've got the same model (I think, I got mine the Feb after launch) and problem. You could try getting rid of the dust that builds up by taking off one of the front covers. Not sure if it will do any good as I think it is an issue with with early ps4's. My dad's is about 6 months older and is a lot quieter. I think they had refresh by then.

@JohnnyShoulder I got mine in 2015; it still had the glossy HDD cover then so isn't one of the more recent revisions with the matte. It was whisper quiet when I got it, but over the past year it's been insane. God of War and more recently Red Dead Redemption 2 sent the fan into overdrive and now it's anything I play..
I'm hoping it is simply dust build up (annoying considering how well I dust) and not an issue with the thermal paste.

Man, I’m really mad at myself. I left my PS4 in Rest Mode for the last couple days; Kept thinking I’d be back to play some Spider-Man but just didn’t get to it. And last night the power went off at some point with it still in Rest Mode. After I woke and realized it, I immediately ran to my PS4 and turned it on. It double beeped at me and scolded me for cutting the power from the machine without powering it off first. It automatically did a check of the drive for errors and thankfully came back on after turning on and off a couple times, going through some sort of repair protocol. Then the external hard drive had to do a scan and check for errors too. Fortunately all systems appear to be operational and although I haven’t tried all my games and saves, there is no obvious file corruption that I can tell. I usually am sure to turn it completely off if there is a storm coming or something, but there wasn’t any severe weather; just a random power outage for a minute overnight.
So I don’t think I had damage to my system, but I read online that unplugging or cutting power from the PS4 when it’s running or in Rest Mode is “not good for the system.” I realize that if it’s trying to write something on the HDD when the power is cut then it has a chance of corrupting files or messing up your console altogether. Certainly if you’re in the middle of installing an update it could be disastrous. Apparently it wasn’t downloading or uploading data when I lost power (I need to check my cloud saves for any corruption I guess) but how is it “bad for my system”? Does it wear out or damage the power supply or the HDD when that happens to it? Did I just take a few years off my PS4’s life? This has happened at least once before a few years ago and it did mess up my trophy syncing and I had to completely reinitialize my PS4 to get it to work again.

I’m pretty stupid when it comes to technology, so just wondering from the more experienced and wise collective mind here.

@Th3solution Suddenly cutting the power to any computer is never really good for it, ESPECIALLY if it's in the middle of installing something. With that said, in general, it's no big deal. Once it boots into safe mode and confirms that everything is hunky-dory, it should be good to go. I've had probably 15+ power outages happen since owning a PS4 and the thing still works as well as it ever has. I wouldn't go yanking the cord for fun, but it's unlikely that there'll be any irreparable damage.

@Th3solution ive had that kind of thing happen to me a few times. Was never a problem, but like @Ralizah said its never good for a computer to be shut down in the wrong way. IMO i think playstation 4 is a pretty good machine and can take things like that. I guess when designing it they figured for things like u have said or young kids shutting it down improperly.