Video games need to stop making me feel old. It turns out that Sony’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation 4 has now celebrated its tenth birthday. Housing beloved classics like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloodborne, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted 4, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gravity Rush 2, and so many other exclusive banger𒅌s, the PS4 was the definitiv🍬e modern console.
Sony came out swinging at E3 2013 with hardware that defied the always-online future all of us were afraid of embracing, burying its competition so brutally that over a decade later the folks at Xbox are still trying to gain that ground back. It revitalised a video game industry that was teetering on the precipice of the unknown, unsure whether the future sat with traditional consoles, the⭕ cl෴oud, or subscription services yet to break cover at all. It was the console we wanted and needed at the time, but also the last true gaming platform we might ever see.
Some♉ of the PS4 launch line-up included Knack, Resogun, Sound Shapes, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, and Need for Speed Rivals. It got better from there.
It’s hard to believe how exactly things played out when you look at how Sony was operating during the PS3/Xbox 360 generation. The PS2 was so universally successful that the brand thought it could do no wrong, including engineering an overcomplicated platform developers would come to despise before charging consumers $599 for a fancy Blu-ray player with no games. It crawled out of the starting gate and struggled for several years, persevering until a console redesign and drastic marketing push finally allowed it to fight back. Sony’s first-party talent was also far superior to Xbox, as we saw classics like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sly Cooper and Killzone spoiled with attention, while new properties such as Uncharted and Infamous become names every gamer would come to respect. By the time 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us rolled around and defined wh🥃at it meant to be a cinematic narrative blockbuster, ꦿthe PS3 had managed to edge out in front.
The roles were reversed. Sony had learned so many hard lessons over the past eight years it knew couldn’t be repeated if it wanted to stay alive, while Xbox has grown complacent with the success of Xbox 360 and Kinect that it believed ☂video games were heading iꦜn a direction none of us were going to accept. They soon played second fiddle to cable television and our growing library of streaming services, while constant whispers of outlawing used games and requiring their console to always be online meant millions had made up their minds before we even knew when the Xbox One was coming out. Throwing Kinect in the box and charging us $100 for the privilege was the final nail in its coffin, and Sony had brought along the hammer.
Ironically, the majority of fears we had about the Xbox One have become normalised in the decade since. Pre-owned physical copies are less and less discussed as we move into our digital future, while a number of live-service games require an onl𝄹ine connection for us to log in and see all the things we’ve bought, let alone play the damn thing. Only when a single-player game requires such an ask do we see any significant protest, while services li𒐪ke Xbox Game Pass and GeForce Now continually blur the lines of what it means to be a games console.
We’re three years into the lifecycle of the PS5 and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series X/S already with almost no memoౠrable exclusives to show🀅 for it. The PS4 felt like the last time that big games were coming in at a regular clip as vibrant conversation topics around a console that forever remained in the public consciousness. We now persist in a landscape where the blockbusters we love take five or more years to make and companies would rather we commit to ecosystems over a platform. I’m not convinced anyone knows what the future holds.
Things aren’t how they used to be, and it’s nostalgic to look back on a console generation that was holding onto beloved staples while hesitantly stepping towards the unknown. One that, in all the years since, we’ve come to accept whether we like it or not. Video games are an unsustainable medi꧟um where the entire world will inevitably implode, or take on a new form that𓄧 is so distant from what we grew up with that plastic boxes under televisions will be a fleeting echo of the past.
On the flipside, it’s hard to imagine what video games would look like right now if the PS4 didn’t counter the Xbox One’s proposed online ideas before ushering in the age of the prestige narrative blockbuster. Several of the blueprints cement🎃ed by the console continue to shape the games and systems we engage with today. Another ten years of PlayStation will have passed us by before we know it, and there’s no guessing what changes that time will bring.
