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The PlayStation 4 has some serious guts. Sony has been bragging about its 8GB of GDDR5 RAM since it was announced, and frankly, the system needs it.
While 8GB is a lot of memory right now, how much will it be a few years down the road? The PlayStation 3, with its with its 256MB of XDR Main RAM and 256MB of GDDR3 VRAM made it seven years, and managed to support visual feasts like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension during its final days.
The PlayStation 4 has gone the distance this last decade, but how is it performing now?
PS4: interface
The PlayStation 3's interface was dense, and plagued by pop in. While it got you to the homescreen quick enough, all the icons needed a little more time to appear.
The PlayStation 4's interface has been streamlined considerably. Now known as the Dynamic Menu, it's composed of two horizontal feeds. The primary menu serves up games and apps, while the one above it hosts your trophies, friends list, your PSN profile and system settings. All of this lays on top of a customizable theme.
Coming out of a cold boot, you're on the homescreen in less than thirty seconds. The same goes for coming out of standby. There's still some icon pop in, meaning the menu needs a few extra second to populate.
As far as responding to player inputs goes, it's very fast. You can drill through menus almost immediately, and everything moves in the blink of an eye. This homescreen is never far away, just pressing the PlayStation button summons it and pauses your current game. Also, if you get lost in an avalanche of menus, the PS button will bring back to the primary feed, a simple alternative to spamming the back button.
Switching from one game to another will end your current session; the PlayStation warns you of this and asks you to confirm the shutdown of whatever title you have paused in the background. Better make sure you've reached a checkpoint, as the title will boot fresh the next time you play it; it does not pick up right where you left off.
We said the interface is streamlined and it is, practically to a fault. That primary feed constantly reorders itself, putting the recently accessed applications first. That's fine if you're only playing a game or two, but getting at something on your back burner means scrolling to the end of an ever growing list. Icons towards the back also need a second or two to appear.
The Dynamic Menu also lumps all your streaming apps into one icon. Everything from Netflix to Amazon to whatever else is found under TV & Video. Only Sony's Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited are allowed to hang out on the homescreen. The only icon that never moves is What's New, PSN's news feed. It's always at the front of the line and clicking into is to enter a jumbled nightmare.
PS4: games
Alright, the stuff that truly matters. The PlayStation 4 is indeed a graphical step up from the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. The games look very good, and everything loads quite quickly. Beyond the speedy, one time install when you first pop in a new game, it's hard to even notice the loading times. There's nothing that even comes close to the disconcertingly long load up of the PS3's The Last of Us.
The graphics are good, but not mind blowing. If you've played on a PC built within the past few years, you've likely seen as good, if not slightly better. It's the fact that you're getting it for so much cheaper, and on your HDTV, that's worth something. Just don't expect your head to explode and your eyes to melt like it's the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
There's an impressive level of detail on display in Knack's character models. Killzone shows off some vistas with a draw distance that would have melted a last-gen system. The most muscle being flexed on the PS4 comes in subtle ways from the performance side. The fact that Battlefield 4 can manage 64 players with just a brief load before a match is the kind of stuff worth noting.
The third-party titles on the PlayStation 4 are varied and while at the start they had one foot in the last generation, the console and developers have really come into their own. Overall, the PlayStation 4 has a good range of third party releases and generation-defining first-party titles.
We've seen so many more games since that time, and you can find the best PS4 games in our linked guide, and there’s plenty more upcoming games left. Just don't expect new PS4 games after 2025, though.
PS4: video streaming apps
The PlayStation 3 was beloved among AV enthusiasts and home theater techies as a simple, relatively inexpensive DLNA media server. Without breaking too much of a sweat you could have it streaming music and videos from your PC, playing them back over your stereo and HDTV.
And thanks to the addition of Plex in early 2015, the functionality is finally on par with its predecessor. The Sony's media box supports MP3, MP4, M4A, and 3GP file types and plays host to a plethora of media streaming functionality, third-party movie apps as well Sony's own music and movie storefronts.
Like a good little console, the PS4 is playing host to a plethora of third-party apps for streaming movies and television. Right now, the PS4 has apps for most of the major players in the streaming video market. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Disney Plus, and more are all present and accounted for.
The PlayStation 3 was beloved among AV enthusiasts and home theater techies as a simple, relatively inexpensive DLNA media server. Without breaking too much of a sweat you could have it streaming music and videos from your PC, playing them back over your stereo and HDTV.
And thanks to the addition of Plex in early 2015, the functionality is finally on par with its predecessor. The Sony's media box supports MP3, MP4, M4A, and 3GP file types and plays host to a plethora of media streaming functionality, third-party movie apps as well Sony's own music and movie storefronts.
Video Unlimited
If Music Unlimited is Sony's Spotify, then Video Unlimited is its iTunes or Amazon Instant for movies and TV. It works much the same way as those services, offering streaming playback of movies and TV in standard or high definition.
It's a bit of a change from the PS3, which allowed you to download movies for local playback. If you have an unreliable connection for streaming, this probably isn't the best option for you, but to be fair, Netflix and others won't fare much better. Those services are streaming only as well.
Price-wise, it's on par with the competition. An HD rental of Man of Steel goes for $4.99, the same price as on Amazon and iTunes. Episodes of Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones are present and priced competitively.
The selection is pretty close to its rivals as well. We did our best to stump it, but found a wide library of new and classic movies and television. The only gap we could find was Portlandia, and other shows from the cable channel IFC. Other cable comedies like Chappelle's Show and Childrens Hospital were available.
The roadblock here is that your playback devices are severely limited, namely to Sony devices. Only Xperia Android devices will be able stream your purchases, with no support for any other flavor of Android, iOS or even Mac computers. There is an app for playback on Windows PCs, and it did not appear to be limited to Sony Vaio machines.
Amazon uses a similar tactic with its Prime Instant Video, only providing streaming video service for its Kindle Fire devices. It does offer playback on iOS over WiFi though, while Video Unlimited does not.
Basically, while Video Unlimited has competitive selection and pricing, we can't recommend buying anything more than a rental from it, something that you'll watch in one sitting on your PS4 or PS Vita. Unless you own a few more Sony devices, you won't have a lot places to enjoy your library.
Original programming
Sony ventured into unknown territory in 2015 with the introduction of its own original programming. That put it in direct competition with other anti-cable competitors Netflix and Amazon. The first show on the docket for Sony is called Powers and is based on a comic book written by legendary Spider-Man writer Brian Michael Bendis.
Check out the seven-minute preview below:
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