Online Infrastructure
At this point, it’s no real secret that Sony has some funky things going on with its online infrastructure, PlayStation Network (PSN). Whether it’s the whole cross-platform play debacle that’s recently been reignited thanks to Fortnite’s arrival on Nintendo Switch or the fact that download speeds are so inconsistent regardless of your connection speed at home. And don’t even get us started on the whole username change thing, too.
PSN has come on leaps and bounds since its initial iteration way back at the PS3’s launch that required you to use a terrible browser to access the PlayStation Store. Connections are seemingly more stable than the PS3 era, too, so it’s clear that improvements are being made to the infrastructure, but currently, the three issues mentioned above are the ones that fans really care about right now. All we can hope for is the inevitable PS5 brings the changes if Sony doesn’t implement them sooner.
PS Now
When Sony first announced its acquisition of the Gaikai streaming service, fans were delighted at the prospect of streaming the biggest and best releases, checking them out for a quick hour, or going back to PS3 titles that they missed out on. Alas, PlayStation Now doesn’t quite deliver the low-latency experience that fans quite wanted, unless you’ve got an incredibly fast internet connection, that is.
Even then, it’s not perfect, and if PSN just happens to go down, you’re not going to be hopping in to finish BioShock Infinite that evening when you’ve got nothing else to do.
Microsoft’s Game Pass is a similar service, but one that gets it right. By enabling players to download the games onto their hard drive, those with slow internet can enjoy the game as it should be played, albeit after a bit of a wait. No latency, no drop-outs if your connection stutters for a second, it just works.
We’re not completely against having the option to stream titles on PlayStation Now if players would rather get straight into the action and have a fast enough connection, but in a world still very far off from universal fiber optic speeds, the service’s dependence on fast internet makes it far less appealing.
Plus, with all first-party titles coming to Microsoft’s Game Pass, it kind of makes PlayStation Now’s library of games look a little weak, and most definitely outdated.
Backwards Compatibility
If there was one announcement that made people lose their shit at Microsoft’s E3 back in 2016, it was the announcement of backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 titles coming to the Xbox One. Ever since, Microsoft has doubled-down on the feature’s popularity, allowing for your Xbox One to even upscale and/ or improve the performance of the title compared to its original version. Then we found out that original Xbox games would be getting the same treatment, and everyone lost their shit once again.
Quick camera pan over to the Sony camp, and… nothing. The PS4 has largely been starved of backwards compatibility, with only a dozen PS2 titles making its way to PlayStation Now, and the entire collection of 355 PlayStation Classics not being compatible with the PS4.
There was an attempt to satiate fans’ desires to soak up all that nostalgia with the release of a handful of PS2 titles including many of the older Grand Theft Auto titles. However, considering the number of games the PS2 had in its library, this is barely scratching the surface. Unfortunately, the PS2 game releases compatible with the PS4 appear to have slowed down to a trickle, too with maybe one going up on the Store every few months.
The PS4 is knocking it out of the park with its current generation titles, but Microsoft is definitely in the driver’s seat when it comes to backwards compatibility and creating a universal ecosystem of hardware.
The Controller Battery and The Light Bar
Sony, Sony, Sony. With one hand, you giveth an inbuilt battery so we don’t need to go and shell out on countless batteries to fuel our habit, or cough up the extra cash for a sold-separately rechargeable battery. As DJ Khaled would say, we appreciate you. But then you go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like not letting us turn the damn light bar off!
Sure, it’s a part of the motion control malarkey required to use the DualShock 4 with PSVR or the PlayStation Camera on its own, but why not just have a setting which turns it on in those instances? Why must we have a permanent luminous glow emanating from our hands like we’re some mage when playing at night? Lowering the brightness from the default Brightest setting helps a little, but a tiny system update could implement the option to disable it. That’s all we’re asking for!
It doesn’t exactly help that the DualShock 4’s battery isn’t the longest-lasting, only making us wonder even more why the massive light on the back of the controller can’t be turned off.
What’s With the Touchpad?
When it comes to a controller, analog sticks, buttons, and triggers are really the only thing players care about. Do we need an always-on light bar? As we’ve already discussed to a painful (for you, probably) extent, no. Does it need a built-in speaker for random sound effects that could just come out of your TV? Absolutely not. Does it need a touchpad so we can do the same things we can with the d-pad or analog stick? Okay, now you’ve set us off.
The touchpad really does feel like a pointless feature to the DualShock 4. Though it does double-up as the new Select button, why not just leave it at just that? Not once have I automatically found myself using the touchpad to navigate around in-game maps or for any reason really except for those rare moments you’re forced to use it in a game, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Sony. DualShock 5. Better battery. No gimmicks. Thanks!
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