2016 FOR
ROBIN WILDE
S
10
o far, Sony have
been able to take the
console race at a bit of
a stroll. After the first two
year they’ve sold more
PS4s than Xbox Ones
and Wii Us combined.
Microsoft’s black brick
which spies on you is
jogging slowly along,
following the PS4’s trail
but three miles behind,
while Nintendo’s machine is lovingly arranging its Mario-themed
Lego at the starting line,
all notion of competition
forgotten.
They have the advantage largely because
they have the power to
carry off all the big third
party titles which have
been hitting the PC, while
not veering off into selling a multimedia system
like Microsoft have. They
also have some identifying franchises and
exclusives - Uncharted,
LittleBigPlanet, The Last
of Us. These keep their
fans loyal and give them
a personality, while not
relying so heavily on
them they become a
thinly veiled vehicle for
nostalgia, like the Wii U.
But there isn’t much
room for complacency.
Relying on your opponent’s incompetence is
all well and good, but it
only lasts as long as they
keep screwing up. It also
allows for mediocrity to
look like comparative
greatness, and there
should be no assumption that Sony have per-
formed any miracles with
the PS4.
The bolted-on gimmicky touchpad on the
controller has been essentially a total flop,
and it signifies Sony’s
approach of taking the
latest innovations from
elsewhere in the industry
and adapting them in a
proprietary way.
Their new
PlayStation VR
system is somewhere
they need to be careful.
When the other virtual
reality headsets are PC
compatible, developers will need certain
incentives to
encourage
them to
develop
solely for
the PS4 - and
customers a reason to buy a peripheral
which won’t play all their
games.
Unlike
Nintendo,
Sony also contend with
an unfavourable handheld market. Rumours
abound of a lack of PS
Vita development, and
even of the cancellation
of the PlayStation handheld line. If Nintendo
use the profitable 3DS
as a safety harness for
the Wii U, the Vita acts
as an anchor to the PS4.
The poor sales economically prevent some
of the potential crossplatform functionality between
the
systems - a
shame as the Vita
is a formidable
piece of kit. But
not before or since the
Game Boy Advance
and GameCube have
a handheld and home
console been paired so
successfully, and it appears that despite noble
attempts, we may never
see their like again.
Software wise, things
continue to look up for
Sony. They’ve nabbed
the only console ports of
both Street Fighter V and
No Man’s Sky, two very
different games which
have the shared characteristic of a dedicated
and engaged fan base,
meaning some guaranteed sales.
Topping the list of
heavy artillery in Sony’s
arsenal has for two decades been the Final Fantasy series, and in 2016
it’s no different. Although
Final Fantasy XV
is multip ] B