While it remains to be seen how the PlayStation 4 will stack up against Microsoft’s Xbox One.
It’s clear that Sony has ticked all the right boxes for gamers with its new console. But the killer feature of this console isn’t its game library, its entertainment apps or its connected online services. Instead, the PS4 succeeds through a combination of graphical prowess, processing muscle, and a profound new feature: The ability to do more than one thing at a time.
The PS4’s killer feature? Multitasking
It sounds like a little thing. But the immediate nature of everything you do on the PS4 stands in sharp contrast to the single-mindedness of previous generation consoles like the Xbox 360, which I’ve used almost daily for years, and the PS3. That is, previous consoles were designed to run only one app at a time, and while they can toss up notifications without too much trouble, moving back and forth between apps(including games) and the user interface is painfully slow.
User experience
Sony’s new PS4 user interface is simple to the point of being almost too simplistic, a Sony-esque take on Microsoft’s Media Center UI from a decade ago. And while one might logically point out that the ability to navigate both horizontally and vertically through simple menus makes sense given the confines of the controller most people will use to control this interface, I will point to the Xbox 360/Xbox One Dashboards as evidence that such an interface can be both better looking and richer.
Games and entertainment apps
Sony has a decent online store, and you can of course download all PS4 games, including the A-Listers, directly from the console. This may take a while—Ghosts, for example, was several gigabytes big—but I give Sony some credit for supporting both the old and then new when it comes to software distribution. They also have a revolving selection of available free games.
Hardware, bundled and optional
Inside the box, the PS4 is basically a high-end PC: It features an 8-core AMD microprocessor, 8 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive and a Blu-Ray optical drive. Connectivity includes two USB 3.0 ports on the front, HDMI video out, gigabit Ethernet(and 802.11 b/g/n wireless) and Bluetooth 2.1.