Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd know that Sony's PlayStation 4 is now officially available in North America, and it won't be much longer before the rest of the world gets a crack at it. However, while early reviews of the console are encouraging, there's been some complaints that the PS4 isn't the great leap forward most were hoping for - full of potential, that as of yet is unrealized. But more troubling are the reviews for some of the console's exclusive launch titles, like Killzone: Shadow Fall, and Knack. Obviously, Sony is a bit disappointed by this, as Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida illustrated, sharing his opinions with GI.biz.
"Yeah, it's disappointing to see some of the low scores," said Yoshida. I haven't spent enough time reading reviews, but I would characterize them as mixed. And with this launch there are lots of games coming out, so the media must be very busy going through the games quickly, and especially since the online functionality wasn't ready until in the last couple days. So we have to look at how much time they spend on what aspect of the games and how that may be contributing to some of the lower scores.
"It's disappointing but I don't think it's worrisome for the launch of the system. I've played through all of our games, Killzone, Knack and Resogun, and I totally enjoyed playing through these games. I'm now on my second run of Knack and Resogun at a higher difficulty - these games really grow on you when you play more. I'm very confident that once you purchase these games and play, you'll be happy that you've done so."
Yoshida continued: "The PS4 generation is going to be the transitional generation. In a sense, it's the completion of the evolution of the strong 3D capable consoles, but at the same time it's at the maturing phase of our network platform and the beginning of our new service phase, like our cloud gaming that we are preparing to launch next year. And the use of mobile devices is part of our ecosystem."
"So all that considered, and the difficulty we had at the launch of the PS3, and very strong competition especially in North America, that made us really revisit everything we've been doing and redefine the company, almost like we're re-entering this industry. Even across our teams, I think you now get more consistent messages [about PlayStation] compared to past generations, because we talk a lot more and get a lot of input [from all the teams] on different decisions."
On the flip side, President and CEO of Sony of America, Jack Tretton, seemed particularly un-phased by the reviews. In all honesty, I can't say if he's just going with pre-written talking points in some kind of an attempt at mis-direction, or maybe he's just plain unaware of the negative reviews, Speaking IGN in a video interview, Tretton said, "It's my fourth platform launch, I've never felt better. We knew we had the machine, we knew we had the development community behind us, we knew we had the gamer behind us. 23 unbelievable games getting great reviews for the platform and for the games, very, very exciting."
Yoshida remains optimistic, and perhaps the fans should too, as Sony has promised a steady flow of games will follow the console's launch titles, giving gamers something to look forward to.
Sony's PlayStation 4 released today in North America. It will launch in Europe and the U.K. next week, November 29.