{"id":382,"date":"2013-12-24T13:29:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T18:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billhiggins.us\/blog\/?p=382"},"modified":"2013-12-24T18:49:38","modified_gmt":"2013-12-24T23:49:38","slug":"ps4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billhiggins.us\/blog\/2013\/12\/24\/ps4\/","title":{"rendered":"PS4"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last two years have zoomed by, mostly because of being extremely busy at work. I might come back to work stuff in a later entry, but this post is focused on my recent experience buying and using the new PlayStation 4 – or PS4 – video game console.<\/p>\n

New game consoles seem to arrive every eight years or so. In the previous generation I bought both a Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360. I don’t remember playing either very much, though like many families with young kids, I’m fairly certain we played a good amount of Wii Sports in the early days. I played the 360 again for a spell after I built a nice home theater, but mostly they both just collected dust.<\/p>\n

In the same timeframe, Apple released the iPhone and the iPad and I did the majority of my game playing on them – still a small amount, probably a few hours a month – but greater than on the Wii and Xbox, where each time we’d play, we’d have to replace dead batteries.<\/p>\n

Because of this general disinterest in consoles, I was only vaguely aware that nextgen consoles were arriving. For instance, I didn’t even realize the Wii U was a nextgen console until maybe six months after its release – I thought it was just some Wii add-on. I heard about the new Xbox One and PS4 via offhand comments in tech podcasts focused on other topics.<\/p>\n

As 2013 wore on, the only real awareness I had of either console was that they were in short supply, which is pretty standard for new consoles, especially around holiday time. So I was surprised one Saturday morning in mid-Decemember when I walked into the local Target at 8:10 AM, planning to get something else and asked the guy in the video game area “So when will it be easy to get an Xbox One or PS4?” He said in a very serious voice “The time is now!” and told me that they had received about a dozen Xbox Ones and half a dozen PS4s that morning. I asked him which one he recommended and he said the Xbox One if you want a general purpose home media device and the PS4 if you were focused on great games.<\/p>\n

I already use the Apple TV for home media and have bought far too many movies to ever consider switching, so I said “I’ll take a PS4!”. I got the second to last one, 90 seconds later, another 30-something guy showed up and picked up the last one. I bought an extra controller and a game called “Knack”, and I brought the PS4 home and hid it in the garage so I could surprise everyone for Christmas.<\/p>\n

A week later my wife told me that Target had suffered a major security breach and that she needed to review transactions. Disappointed, I told her the secret about the PS4 which I had hoped would be a surprise. She was kind of indifferent since she’s not into video games but she was also supportive because she knows I enjoy them.<\/p>\n

After that I read some PS4 game reviews. Most of the reviews for Knack were extremely negative, so I decided to return it. I brought it back to Target and asked the video game guys about other games. During this conversation I learned that on the PS4, you don’t actually need to buy discs – you can download the same games, AppStore style. So I returned Knack and didn’t buy any other games.<\/p>\n

My last day of work in 2013 was Friday December 20th, so the next day I woke up at 5am and disconnected the Xbox 360 for good. It took me approximately 2 1\/2 hours to disconnect the Xbox 360, find the original box, and put all of the original parts back into the box in a somewhat reasonable way. It then took me about 15 minutes to unbox and connect the PS4 to my home theater.<\/p>\n

This unboxing and connection process was my first clue that the PS4 was way better than the Xbox 360:<\/p>\n