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silveradept[Welcome to December Days, where I natter on about things organized around a theme (sometimes very loosely), one a day, for 31 days. This year, we're taking a look back at some touchpoints along the way of my journey with computing and computing devices.]
Okay, there's not necessarily a lot here that's unique about this system. It ditched the Cell processor for more standard PC-type hardware, using the APU idea that combines CPU, GPU, Sound, and other systems into a single die, much like the System on a Chip. That makes it easier for people to program for the PlayStation 4. And it's a recent enough console to get an update that allows it to drive 4k resolution and very surround sound with audio systems. I don't have any of that kind of setup for any of my gaming (as most of the screens in the house cost us free+transporting it ourselves from the place where there had been a screen upgrade), and I'm pretty much okay with staying in HD, since 4k is almost always an additional surcharge on top of basic subscription fees. Perhaps when 8k becomes standard and 4k becomes the budget option that even discarded televisions and monitors have built in to them, I'll upgrade the services that way. Probably by then, they'll come standard. The DualShock 4 isn't that much different than the DualShock 3, but for the motion detectors, the tiny clickable touchpad, and the speaker.
The real reason I got this system is because it's the first system that had most of the non-mobile, non-PC Kingdom Hearts games available to play on it. Kingdom Hearts is a wildly successful franchise based on an entirely ludicrous premise jamming together the collected universes of Square Enix franchises (the Final Fantasy series primarily, starting with VII, but there's also The World Ends With You) and the Disney Animated Canon. Square mostly provides characters, Disney provides both characters and locations that aren't unique to the series. There have been three Kingdom Hearts games solely titled Kingdom Hearts, and eleven other games in the franchise (as of the end of 2021) that are not numbered sequels, but many of which have crucial events and explanations of the events of those numbered games. Two games on the PlayStation 2, one that started on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and got a remake to the PS2, one on the Nintendo DS, one that was a phone game before it ported to the DS, one on the PlayStation Portable (the only portable system I've seen that used discs as the medium for storing games on), one on the Nintendo 3DS, and then one of the new small bits that happened in the extremely long wait between Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III, which finally came out for the PS4 in 2019. So now, finally, I can play the games that were on systems that I didn't own. And these ones came with achievements, which is the incentive to go back and play them all again, too, on the principle that I'm supposed to have enough time to actually do that, which, yeah. I don't have all the time I had in college to be able to play and replay the games that I used to be able to tackle on the regular. Adulthood keeps interfering in this, because it keeps making me do chores and take care of animals and all of those other things that get in the way. Even when I'm on vacation, there's all this other stuff that I keep doing instead of catching up on my long form gaming.
The PS4 also continues in a tradition of gaming that I'm not really all that fond of, though. A lot of console and handheld manufacturers don't want their systems to be general purpose, they want it to only run their code, no exceptions or other ways in to do anything else with it, which also means that unless they make it possible, there won't be ways of transferring save data or software associated with an account to new machines. I get the reasons why this happens, but it also means that people who are using systems later on in life or whose associated servers have shut down often don't get to experience the fullness of what it was like to use all of the system's capabilities. Or, they get to find out that the software that was bought for them as a gift some years ago won't work in any online capacity at all, since the servers for that were shut down and nobody has the code archived somewhere to restart them, and even if they did, they would probably be sued into oblivion for using someone else's intellectual property without permission, even though there's no commercial or business reason that the company would have to restart using those kinds of services.
I get needing to patch security vulnerabilities, but I get annoyed that after a system has been replaced by its successor, and especially when the online stores are shut down, so there really is no more value to be wrangled from the people who bought things, there's no decisions to make the server code available or otherwise give people who bought software the opportunity to keep playing it online. Why not release some code so that the hobbyists can set up their own multiplayer servers so that the console can gracefully age and eventually die a proper death from having been played until the very last of its abilities, instead of being consigned to the electronic waste bin while it still has the possibility of being used? Especially for people who would eventually like to collect their achievements and have them officially associated with the accounts they have (or had) for those systems.
The tendencies of consoles and services to be little more than endpoints for an online delivery service that will only last as long as the servers do is also one I don't condone, and I especially dislike the lack of releasing how to DIY it when the time comes. If you've collected several thousand games on one particular service, when that service goes down or shutters, all of those games become unplayable. And while the long-standing tradition of licensing rather than buying basically gives the consumer zero recourse to get back all the dollars they spent on those licenses when the service dies, it would be nice if there were some way of requiring those services, before they shut down, to provide their players a way of continuing to keep and play all the games (or software applications) they paid money for. Or the books they bought, or, or. We definitely need a better way of preserving our digital goods after the services we bought them from disband, but rights management of a dead service is apparently more important than the consumers of that service in most cases, and if someone should figure out how to remove the digital locks, then they can be prosecuted under DMCA 1201 for doing something that helps consumers retain control of something they paid for. Because, of course, the same things that help consumers get control over their technology and digital goods can also be used to facilitate piracy of digital goods. (There's got to be someone who's done an analysis of this from a capitalist lens that concludes people who pirate and people who borrow from a library are both declaring that the worth of this piece at the moment is zero, but there's the possibility the worth will rise once the work has been experienced. And can do that capitalist thing where they explain that this is a logical choice to want to see the goods before spending their hard-earned capital on them.)
The PS4 also continues with the same interface the PS3 had, the Xross Media Bar. The decision to style it that way also asked me to showcase a tie to Kingdom Hearts, as the ultimate weapon being right by the Seekers of Darkness is a χ-blade, which is conveniently pronounced the same way as the special weapons the protagonists use to fight the darkness, Keyblades. Similarly, Xross Media Bar (XMB) is presumably pronounced the same way as Cross Media Bar. The way the interface operates is supposed to revoke the idea of a cross, with categories arranged in a horizontal line, options for each category arranged in a column underneath, so that the intersection of category and option is the cross point (even if some of the options wouldn't actually form a four-pointed cross when they are selected). And since the PS4 itself can play a wide variety of media types (as the PS3 could before it), and it has a fairly large amount of apps that it can install to access various paid and free media services (although not to the extent that Kodi can), then it also becomes "cross-media", providing another layer to the wordplay.
Not that I've had much call for my game systems to also be my primary media devices, as the multimedia computer is perfectly capable of both playing things on discs and extracting a digital file from the disc to be played without having to worry about disc access time or whether or not the disc will allow itself to be played on the computer. There were a couple notable movies that caused problems when trying to be played on a PS3, and I'm fairly certain there are some that will have the same problems involved if I tried to play them on the PS4. Not to mention that sometimes a machine doesn't like your monitor and thinks it can't do HDCP (a later of copy protection that's so paper thin it really exists as a way to prosecute someone over DMCA 1201 and to try and prevent people from capturing a video stream going from a computer to a monitor) so it decides to blank the screen any time something that needs HDCP starts up. As we have noted, trying to stop piracy often means doing things that make legitimate subscribers and users unable to use the service while not deterring pirates in any way at all. Because how dare someone think that their streaming subscription might abruptly decide to drop a show and they won't be able to access it any more, because the show has no discs and no releases in some other store where the episodes or movies can be bought, and so they might want to keep a local version of the show so they can watch it at their own pace.
The difficulties of preventing (or dealing with) piracy doesn't mean "take your ball and go home," it means "provide us with a service and/or content that's worth paying for." (And that also should mean "produce stuff on media to sell to libraries," because libraries buy stuff. Lots of it. And with the Express purpose of keeping people decide whether it's something they want to buy for themselves or that they want to subscribe to do they don't have to deal with the months-long delay between when something comes out and when it's available on the library shelves.) It should also mean, as we said above, "find a way to allow people who have taken part in this service to either continue using their things offline after the service is finished, or release a way for people to run their own copies of those servers so the functionality isn't lost." Especially because there's always efforts underway to emulate the hardware so that all of those lovely games don't get lost and nobody gets to play them in the later generations.
It didn't take long for a PS5 to come out, so this console is probably already living on borrowed time, so I should probably think about trying to get my achievements done quickly. Or to hope that there's some backward compatibility in the later consoles, as there was with the PS2 and the early versions of the PS3, so that old software so plays on the new hardware. If not, once the company is done with it, I'll have to wait for emulation, if it ever should appear, and perhaps a hope that in emulation, there will be a way of uploading those achievements to count with the account that I have, like how I would love to be able to do it in emulation for the PS3. (And that's without the entire thing that is apparently achievements retroactively attached to various games on PC that didn't have them on their own. I'm not sure that's a good thing for people who already have enough trouble with wanting perfect achievements for their games.)
- CPU: 2x quad-core Advanced Micro Devices Jaguar family 64-bit processors @ 1.6 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Advanced Micro Devices GPGPU-capable Radeon GCN architecture, 18 compute units, HDMI 2.0a, max resolution 3840x2160
- Sound: Advanced Micro Devices TrueAudio or compatible, up to 7.1 surround sound through HDMI, stereo through 3.5mm jack
- Inputs/Peripherals: Game Controller (commonly DualShock 4) with four trigger buttons (L1, L2, R1, R2), seven face buttons (Square, Circle, Triangle, X, Share, Options, PlayStation), two analog sticks, which can be pressed as buttons (L3, R3), a touch pad (which can be pressed as a button), a D-Pad, motion control sensors, and a tiny speaker, Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, 2x USB 3.1 ports for accessories
- Storage: 500 GB SATA internal storage, Blu-ray optical media drive that can read DVDs,
- OS: Xross Media Bar
Okay, there's not necessarily a lot here that's unique about this system. It ditched the Cell processor for more standard PC-type hardware, using the APU idea that combines CPU, GPU, Sound, and other systems into a single die, much like the System on a Chip. That makes it easier for people to program for the PlayStation 4. And it's a recent enough console to get an update that allows it to drive 4k resolution and very surround sound with audio systems. I don't have any of that kind of setup for any of my gaming (as most of the screens in the house cost us free+transporting it ourselves from the place where there had been a screen upgrade), and I'm pretty much okay with staying in HD, since 4k is almost always an additional surcharge on top of basic subscription fees. Perhaps when 8k becomes standard and 4k becomes the budget option that even discarded televisions and monitors have built in to them, I'll upgrade the services that way. Probably by then, they'll come standard. The DualShock 4 isn't that much different than the DualShock 3, but for the motion detectors, the tiny clickable touchpad, and the speaker.
The real reason I got this system is because it's the first system that had most of the non-mobile, non-PC Kingdom Hearts games available to play on it. Kingdom Hearts is a wildly successful franchise based on an entirely ludicrous premise jamming together the collected universes of Square Enix franchises (the Final Fantasy series primarily, starting with VII, but there's also The World Ends With You) and the Disney Animated Canon. Square mostly provides characters, Disney provides both characters and locations that aren't unique to the series. There have been three Kingdom Hearts games solely titled Kingdom Hearts, and eleven other games in the franchise (as of the end of 2021) that are not numbered sequels, but many of which have crucial events and explanations of the events of those numbered games. Two games on the PlayStation 2, one that started on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and got a remake to the PS2, one on the Nintendo DS, one that was a phone game before it ported to the DS, one on the PlayStation Portable (the only portable system I've seen that used discs as the medium for storing games on), one on the Nintendo 3DS, and then one of the new small bits that happened in the extremely long wait between Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III, which finally came out for the PS4 in 2019. So now, finally, I can play the games that were on systems that I didn't own. And these ones came with achievements, which is the incentive to go back and play them all again, too, on the principle that I'm supposed to have enough time to actually do that, which, yeah. I don't have all the time I had in college to be able to play and replay the games that I used to be able to tackle on the regular. Adulthood keeps interfering in this, because it keeps making me do chores and take care of animals and all of those other things that get in the way. Even when I'm on vacation, there's all this other stuff that I keep doing instead of catching up on my long form gaming.
The PS4 also continues in a tradition of gaming that I'm not really all that fond of, though. A lot of console and handheld manufacturers don't want their systems to be general purpose, they want it to only run their code, no exceptions or other ways in to do anything else with it, which also means that unless they make it possible, there won't be ways of transferring save data or software associated with an account to new machines. I get the reasons why this happens, but it also means that people who are using systems later on in life or whose associated servers have shut down often don't get to experience the fullness of what it was like to use all of the system's capabilities. Or, they get to find out that the software that was bought for them as a gift some years ago won't work in any online capacity at all, since the servers for that were shut down and nobody has the code archived somewhere to restart them, and even if they did, they would probably be sued into oblivion for using someone else's intellectual property without permission, even though there's no commercial or business reason that the company would have to restart using those kinds of services.
I get needing to patch security vulnerabilities, but I get annoyed that after a system has been replaced by its successor, and especially when the online stores are shut down, so there really is no more value to be wrangled from the people who bought things, there's no decisions to make the server code available or otherwise give people who bought software the opportunity to keep playing it online. Why not release some code so that the hobbyists can set up their own multiplayer servers so that the console can gracefully age and eventually die a proper death from having been played until the very last of its abilities, instead of being consigned to the electronic waste bin while it still has the possibility of being used? Especially for people who would eventually like to collect their achievements and have them officially associated with the accounts they have (or had) for those systems.
The tendencies of consoles and services to be little more than endpoints for an online delivery service that will only last as long as the servers do is also one I don't condone, and I especially dislike the lack of releasing how to DIY it when the time comes. If you've collected several thousand games on one particular service, when that service goes down or shutters, all of those games become unplayable. And while the long-standing tradition of licensing rather than buying basically gives the consumer zero recourse to get back all the dollars they spent on those licenses when the service dies, it would be nice if there were some way of requiring those services, before they shut down, to provide their players a way of continuing to keep and play all the games (or software applications) they paid money for. Or the books they bought, or, or. We definitely need a better way of preserving our digital goods after the services we bought them from disband, but rights management of a dead service is apparently more important than the consumers of that service in most cases, and if someone should figure out how to remove the digital locks, then they can be prosecuted under DMCA 1201 for doing something that helps consumers retain control of something they paid for. Because, of course, the same things that help consumers get control over their technology and digital goods can also be used to facilitate piracy of digital goods. (There's got to be someone who's done an analysis of this from a capitalist lens that concludes people who pirate and people who borrow from a library are both declaring that the worth of this piece at the moment is zero, but there's the possibility the worth will rise once the work has been experienced. And can do that capitalist thing where they explain that this is a logical choice to want to see the goods before spending their hard-earned capital on them.)
The PS4 also continues with the same interface the PS3 had, the Xross Media Bar. The decision to style it that way also asked me to showcase a tie to Kingdom Hearts, as the ultimate weapon being right by the Seekers of Darkness is a χ-blade, which is conveniently pronounced the same way as the special weapons the protagonists use to fight the darkness, Keyblades. Similarly, Xross Media Bar (XMB) is presumably pronounced the same way as Cross Media Bar. The way the interface operates is supposed to revoke the idea of a cross, with categories arranged in a horizontal line, options for each category arranged in a column underneath, so that the intersection of category and option is the cross point (even if some of the options wouldn't actually form a four-pointed cross when they are selected). And since the PS4 itself can play a wide variety of media types (as the PS3 could before it), and it has a fairly large amount of apps that it can install to access various paid and free media services (although not to the extent that Kodi can), then it also becomes "cross-media", providing another layer to the wordplay.
Not that I've had much call for my game systems to also be my primary media devices, as the multimedia computer is perfectly capable of both playing things on discs and extracting a digital file from the disc to be played without having to worry about disc access time or whether or not the disc will allow itself to be played on the computer. There were a couple notable movies that caused problems when trying to be played on a PS3, and I'm fairly certain there are some that will have the same problems involved if I tried to play them on the PS4. Not to mention that sometimes a machine doesn't like your monitor and thinks it can't do HDCP (a later of copy protection that's so paper thin it really exists as a way to prosecute someone over DMCA 1201 and to try and prevent people from capturing a video stream going from a computer to a monitor) so it decides to blank the screen any time something that needs HDCP starts up. As we have noted, trying to stop piracy often means doing things that make legitimate subscribers and users unable to use the service while not deterring pirates in any way at all. Because how dare someone think that their streaming subscription might abruptly decide to drop a show and they won't be able to access it any more, because the show has no discs and no releases in some other store where the episodes or movies can be bought, and so they might want to keep a local version of the show so they can watch it at their own pace.
The difficulties of preventing (or dealing with) piracy doesn't mean "take your ball and go home," it means "provide us with a service and/or content that's worth paying for." (And that also should mean "produce stuff on media to sell to libraries," because libraries buy stuff. Lots of it. And with the Express purpose of keeping people decide whether it's something they want to buy for themselves or that they want to subscribe to do they don't have to deal with the months-long delay between when something comes out and when it's available on the library shelves.) It should also mean, as we said above, "find a way to allow people who have taken part in this service to either continue using their things offline after the service is finished, or release a way for people to run their own copies of those servers so the functionality isn't lost." Especially because there's always efforts underway to emulate the hardware so that all of those lovely games don't get lost and nobody gets to play them in the later generations.
It didn't take long for a PS5 to come out, so this console is probably already living on borrowed time, so I should probably think about trying to get my achievements done quickly. Or to hope that there's some backward compatibility in the later consoles, as there was with the PS2 and the early versions of the PS3, so that old software so plays on the new hardware. If not, once the company is done with it, I'll have to wait for emulation, if it ever should appear, and perhaps a hope that in emulation, there will be a way of uploading those achievements to count with the account that I have, like how I would love to be able to do it in emulation for the PS3. (And that's without the entire thing that is apparently achievements retroactively attached to various games on PC that didn't have them on their own. I'm not sure that's a good thing for people who already have enough trouble with wanting perfect achievements for their games.)
