professorhat

I agree this is for early adopters. Given we paid our £350 (translate to your region's price) a couple of years ago, paying another £250 to £300 wouldn't be out of the question to get an incredible VR experience, as long as we know the long term support is there for it. That's what Sony need to convince us of.

I dunno. It is a 3rd person shooter so calling it something "totally different" is a stretch in my opinion. Clearly Media Molecule is now where all of Sony's real creative risk is invested. I'm very much looking forward to seeing more on their next project.

Reading the blog, this is exactly what I wanted - a modern day Elite. I really hope it works!

I'm really hoping this is as great as I want it to be!

I bought the last Tomb Raider game and played it first time on PS4, even though this was a re-release from a previous version on a different console. If the new one is good, and I have time, I'll pick it up. How long it has been out on other platforms is irrelevant.

I enjoyed this game, but with Project Cars and F1 2015 on my shelf now, it's not likely to see much air time on my TV any more unfortunately

@Matroska Despite your vast survey ( ) , F1 is alive and well here. Even without a top driver, British fans are core supporters, nearly always selling out at Silverstone. With Lewis at the top of his game, and in a top team, it's very popular at the moment. Hence the top spot in the sales.

I pre-ordered this, but not had a decent chance to get into it. Looking forward to some 2 hour races

@eLarkos I'd agree that MS are ahead of the game on this, but they do have a huge advantage over Sony in that respect because of their other portfolios. I think perhaps we're in agreement that a partnership might be the way to go in their long term strategy. But I'd argue that's for the next generation minimum (and quite possibly further in the future than that to minimise the risk), certainly not in the PS4's lifetime. It seemed to me that people were calling for action much sooner than that, and I would consider any radical short term action as that knee jerk.

We've seen recently that Sony are willing to make these sorts of partnerships (look at the replacement of Music Unlimited with Spotify). So perhaps talks on something like this are already taking place

@eLarkos There have been substantial improvements I think in the last year or two. I genuinely think the solution at this stage is for them to carry on the maintenance work they've clearly been doing, and gradual slow investment to improve things.

Knee jerk reactions to a few issues in a row rarely work out well. Committing vast amounts of money to building a new platform, with a partner who may have a lot of experience with online services, but doubtful any experience in online gaming services which I'm sure have its own unique challenges, could end up with even worst performance / reliability (especially in the short term) and could possibly spell ruin for a company in such dire financial circumstances as Sony.

@eLarkos Sounds simple, but if Sony have developed this in-house, what you're effectively saying is they should scrap everything and get someone else to build it up again from scratch, then migrate everyone on to this new platform. Not only would the costs be monumental, so would be the risks of far bigger outages and issues during and after the migration. I really don't think the PSN is in that bad a state!

@eLarkos they may have this knowledge somewhere in their organisation, but that doesn't mean as a customer you have access to that. Unless you're paying for that service, your cloud provider will generally only be guaranteeing the uptime of that underlying infrastructure. Sony is unlikely to be contracting this stuff out to Amazon etc. since they will either have invested heavily in their own in-house development team (more likely) , or will be relying on the their 3rd party developer to sort the issues.

I work in this industry, so speak with a fair degree of confidence on this, though admit I don't know the full details of how Sony run the PSN, and on what kind of infrastructure / application platform. But i can make some educated guesses!

@eLarkos But as noted, their expertise lies in the infrastructure i.e. building and running the underlying cloud platform. And I seriously doubt it's that part which is giving Sony the grief, but the application side, which Sony will have developed in house, or perhaps contracted out to a third party developer. Either way, Amazon, Microsoft, Google or whomever are not the ones who are going to be able to help them with this (well MS maybe if it's developed using MS software, but I doubt that somehow!).

Oh and MS have just invested literally billions in Azure. If they haven't already surpassed Amazon, it's only a matter of time.

@Neolit they've got a big cloud infrastructure, but doubtful this would make a difference. I seriously doubt any of the issues Sony have had recently are a result of infrastructure problems. More than likely it's the applications / services running on that infrastructure, in which case whether you're running a private cloud / Amazon / Microsoft / Google makes no difference.

Got to agree with less intrusive maintenance. Outages are almost unforgivable in this day and age.

@JaxonH i got really bad lag until i changed the settings to turn direct connect off. Now i can happily play any game on it - the lag is not perceptible (admittedly with a wired connection using home plugs).

I played a lot of SOCOM 2, but I have serious doubts on how well a remaster would compare to a modern online shooter. I mean, for console owners, I think it it was as much the novelty of playing online with friends and chatting with them in different places that was so much fun, which is of course the norm nowadays.

However, if there are enough people who want a remake, I of course wouldn't begrudge them of requesting it. But it's always going to be a niche release, not a money maker. I certainly wouldn't buy it, even though I really loved playing the original.

@feral1975 You don't need the internet to stream your PS4 via Remote Play - just a switch or wireless network.

I use mine to Remote Play and it's worth the price for that.

@belmont NTFS is licensed by Microsoft so Sony would have to pay them to support it. Easier just to only support FAT, which I'm pretty sure is the default format for USB sticks on Windows and Mac.

Had a 360 because of the PS3 release delay in the UK, but always been a Playstation fan since the first one blew me away. Ended up having both Xbox 360 and PS3 as pre-ordered the PS3 a long time before the delay and forgot about it, but was glad i got it as I ended up playing it far more often.

When I saw the PS4 and Xbox One reveals at E3, I pre-ordered the PS4 the next day and saw no reason to look at the Xbox One. Despite some tempting offers, I've still not really seen a reason to spend out on the One.

Just won my second Karting championship in Project Cars so need to complete the rest of my invitationals to see what contracts I'll be offered for next season!

@Jaz007 Same. Big Star Wars fan (who isn't?), and Battlefront looked amazing. Can't wait to play it, especially the Endor speeder bikes.

Many other great games I'm looking forward to, but this is the one that really got my attention.

Finally got round to watching the Microsoft conference yesterday. Genuinely baffled by those who thought it was better than Sony's. I mean, unless you love Halo / GoW so much it blinds you to everything else of course. And, having loved all of the first three GoW games, I thought the fourth looked a bit disappointing. Didn't seem to have the same feel as the others - seemed a lot more like the usual 1st person shooters.

@Gr3ggl3s As I remember reading, the Xbox / Oculus Rift tie in doesn't give you VR, but the ability to stream Xbox One games to the Oculus and play them in a virtual living room. Worth knowing in case you're hoping for true VR on your Xbox One (see http://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/explained-how-the-oculus-rift-streams-pc-and-xbox-one-games/)

As we all knew really. Still got a lot of games to play on it though - haven't even really started LittleBigPlanet yet (bought it ages ago!)

Yup, I really liked the look of this one

@PoisonDwarf It won't be PAL only, as PAL is a colour encoding system for analogue television - it's no longer relevant in the days of HDTVs and HDMI since these are digital signals. I suspect they are using the "PAL region" to indicate the countries that it will be released in officially, but there's no technical reason why you couldn't import to another country and use on a Playstation 4 there.

@Davros79 No, WILD wasn't shown at all during the conference.

It's interesting that not much has been made of Dreams - I don't get it yet, but given MM's pedigree, I'm looking forward to the time I do. It's such a breath of fresh air that there are companies trying to do something completely different like that, and it's a shame it's already been written off as "not really a game" by some, since so little is known about it.

Also, I don't get the big hype around backwards compatibility either. But if you do, it's nice that you can access it on both systems now, though I'd imagine it's one of those things that many people say they want, and then never actually use. I don't even have the time to play all the PS4 games I'd like to, let alone older games I missed on PS3 / Xbox 360!

Really hope this lives up to its potential

Enjoyed the free beta, but i won't be paying those prices for 2 / 30 days rental of a game. Waiting to see what the monthly subscription is now - it's obviously something you would only use very occasionally.

I'd be up for this - played the 360 version for many, many hours.

@unionjack3rd Definitely worth trying. I agree that as a gaming device, it leaves a lot to be desired. But for Remote Play, it's worth the current asking price I think (as long as you can get that working!) I also bought mine full price - I suppose when PS Now comes to it as well, this will also help. I'm beta testing this at the moment but haven't looked at getting it running on the PSTV yet.

Still, could really do with the Netflix app! If it had that, I'd be really happy with it.

@unionjack3rd make sure the settings on your PSTV / PS4 are not set to connect directly (forget the exact settings but can look it up when I get home if you need me to). Remote Play performance was awful for me even with wired connection into the same router, until I unticked this option - once done, it was great, even on wireless.

I think it's ticked by default, so worth checking.

Good call, Wesker. Also, Uncharted 4.

Why so late? I remember watching the last 3 or 4 live in the evening. Given sales in Europe are strong and North America is struggling with their love affair with Microsoft, this seems a strange decision.

Well deserved. Great game.

Project Cars, though slightly annoyed to find my old steering wheel doesn't work. Currently contemplating spending another £280 for the T300RS...

@Scollurio thank god there's no story or cut scenes! Last thing this racing game fan wants is some half arsed story mode, with rival racers with evil grins making stupid one line quips - can you imagine it?!

Any news on this - just got a PS Now beta code sent through, but obviously not going to redeem it till this is fixed!

Can't wait for this...

The people involved in this legal action seriously need to take a look at their priorities in life. I mean, there's so many things to get on your high horse and campaign about - slightly under specced graphics in a computer game really should be very low on that list...

Ooo, grab the pop corn folks...

Really enjoyed the first one and genuinely don't understand the complaints about the driving. I thought driving round Chicago was great fun, and the mechanics seemed just about right for an open world non driving game - we're not talking Gran Turismo here...

Don't buy it, folks. Simples.

@thahammerman333 One of the common misconceptions of digital downloads is that there are no distribution costs. Whilst there are no physical distribution costs, actually getting that 20 to 50 GB download to your PS4 requires a lot of IT infrastructure. First you've got to store it somewhere. And that's not going to be a laptop or USB hard drive. You're talking fast, expensive, redundant SAN storage. And you'll need tens if not hundreds of copies around the world to ensure that people get a quick download.

Second, you need the web servers which will allow you to connect and download the software. Again, you're going to need a lot of redundancy built in to ensure these servers are always available, and people can get a connection as soon as they click into it. Again, hundreds of these will be dotted around the world to server everyone who owns a PS4, plus those connecting in through a web browser / their mobile phones.

Finally, you need the internet bandwidth to server the hundreds if not thousands of people who are going to be trying to download the product all at once. Think of how many people tried to download GTA V on release day! That's one hell of a lot of bandwidth required (and why it took so long for so many people that day).

I work as an IT architect, and when you add up the cost of all the above, it's extremely expensive. Cloud computing and utility pricing is driving these costs down, but given the very low price of manufacturing and distributing physical copies to stores (remember, games are very small and stack well, so distribution costs are minimised), I wouldn't be surprised if it still actually costs more to distribute digitally compared to physical copies at the moment.

It's a fun game if you enjoy racing games that involve a little bit of patience and effort required to learn a track and gradually shave seconds off your lap time, get first place etc. as you progress through the game (hint - I do).

If racing games aren't your bag, you probably won't enjoy it. Just as people who aren't big 1st person shooter fans are pretty "meh" on the Call of Dutys / Battlefields of this world (hint - I'm not that into 1st person shooters).

If they introduce it, enough people will start using it that it will gain traction and others will do the same.

We need the Spotify / Netflix of gaming - one subscription gives access to many games, no matter who publishes it.