PlayStation 4: Hands-On Verdict

The Design

Even eight days on, we catch ourselves just staring at the console from time to time. It may be roughly shaped like the form factor of its predecessors, but it's the PlayStation design made into a sharp-angled art piece. One you'd be happy to display rather than hide away.

You can flip it vertically and let it stand as is; the flatness of its sides lets it tower upwards comfortably. But you, as with us, will want to purchase a stand anyway, as a solid tap would tip it as it is now.

The single high-gloss corner of the console may shine at trade shows, but there it's behind glass. A week of normal use and it's marred in dust and fingerprints. It's a crime scene of dirt, so be prepared to keep a cloth on standby.

The single beam of light that ebbs from the middle crack of the machine is subtle rather than blinding, switching to different colours to denote either being powered on fully or left on standby, though you should really be able to remember that yourself. Switch off the machine at the mains without powering down first at your peril - we did it once and, similar to the PS3, get told off on the opening screen that data may corrupt if we continue to do so.

The machine gets warm. Really warm. You may want to think twice when squirrelling it away in a cabinet or covering it in cables - give it room to breathe (and no, we haven't tested what happens if you keep it covered). Upon inserting a disc into the console, we were surprised at how noisy it became as the disc tray started spinning - we'd believed the thing to be ultra silent always. We had to turn the TV volume a few notches, but once it installs and starts the game it's fine. You'll notice a low-level whirr when running Blu-rays though.

The Controller

This thing's a work of art. Commendable is the slightly swollen controller prongs, which make the holding so comfortable now. The smaller DualShocks of the past had us grasping the entire form into our mitts, and positioning our thumbs horizontally over the sticks, pointed directly at each other.

Now with the prong ends resting comfortably in the palms of our hands, we're gripping them rather than the top corners of the pad. The adjusted angle means our thumbs rest at a more upwards angle, and it makes all the difference after a long game session. This ties in nicely with the new wings on the end of the rear triggers, which effectively 'hook' your index digits in place and let them rest against the curves.

The DualShock's excellent D-Pad remains the same - if slightly enlarged as well - and is still clicky as ever. So far it's only been used for navigating the home screen and making menu choices in games, so we're still raring to try out a fighter on it.

The Share/Options buttons that bookend the Touch Pad are perhaps the weakest addition to the pad. They're barely raised out of the controller's body, and their slim design makes things fiddly when flicking a thumb to hit one. We're prone to looking down at the controller to hit the Share button when we want to capture our best gaming moments.

The Touch Pad we've only used on Killzone and Playroom. It still feels like a novelty, and switching between different OWL command options in Shadow Fall by sliding thumb up, down left or right isn't as easy as we'd like - we have to lift our hand off the controller to reach across it. It could potentially be the controller's greatest asset, but we're still to see someone make good use out of it.

The PS Button does the job - one tap to return to the last App you were at, and a hold to switch to the stand-by/power-off console options screen. The speaker just above it is powerful given its size. So far it's been used to make us aware of a Keeper in Resogun or - in a simple but genius idea - having collected audio logs play through the controller in Killzone, this could effectively be used to great effect - we're already thinking about its potential for horror games.

The rear light... again, this feels like a novelty currently, and even if the colours can switch to represent, say, low health or the like, you're not going to be aware of it unless you're playing your PS4 in dark. But we do like how the PS4 Camera syncs face with controller light to keep track of player profiles when first turning on your system.

The analog sticks. Personally, we've had no problems with them, and the concave circle of their middle feels more secure for our thumbs. We've heard however from other branches that the stick's rim has torn off on their controller through continued use. We've noticed a couple of cases crop up online as well - This may be isolated to a certain batch of controllers, but it's worth considering (and holding onto your receipt as precaution).

That potental issue aside, the DS4 is easily one of the best controllers we've had the fortune to hold. Better than the Xbox One's? We'd say there's no clear victor between them; just know that whatever console controller you're handling, you've got some of the best the industry's ever created.

The Home Screen

PS4's Home Screen is simple and to the point. After digging around the Xbox One's last week, the PS4's may seem bereft of options. But it's also not as convoluted.

It looks like what it is - the middle-man for getting you onward to where you want to go, much like the PS3's Home Screen, though more streamlined and better looking. We wish we could customise the background colour (currently PS Blue) and while the continual music is ambient and relaxing, we could do with an option to switch it to something else.

The interface is simple, smart. You've two tiers of horizontal bars, multiple icons on each, which bring you to sub-menus. Switching between is a matter of pressing up or down.

The top is your backend profile stuff - icons symbolising messages, party chat, settings, Trophies and the like. Notifications are here as well, and with the PS4 automatically downloading any updates to games, this is the best place to check what's going on in the backend of your machine. Pulling up the Trophies list takes a few seconds as it syncs with PSN, and likewise comparing Trophies with friends can take a few seconds to load up. Top left on the bar is the link to the PS Store, which is copied wholesale from the PS3's version - no surprises here (though its still being tinkered with as we countdown to the system's UK release tomorrow - we'll take another look post-launch).

The lower bar is larger, consisting of a row of squares, and it's here you access all your games and Apps. The first box is locked in place, and is entitled "What's New?". When selected you drop into a sub-menu built to ape the design of a social network site. New releases, Trophies unlocked, Friends streaming - all intermingle in a timeline. You can select any and be redirected for more details.

All other boxes in the row are ordered by last opened, and any game you've played - be it disc-based (even if the disc is no longer in the tray) or digital gets a square tile.

This raises the immediate concern as to the future and having to scroll along an ever-growing bar to content you want (an issue we have now with our Xbox 360 Xbox Live Arcade games list). We're assuming this is a short term design given the small number of titles available - a Library tile remains at the very right of the list, with your digital titles within. Hopefully Sony will update and grant us the ability to customise this list (arrange tiles or delete them), or create folders to stack content into. With the game tiles, there's a nice touch in the form of sub-menus when they're selected that give you various details and social features.

Live from PlayStation is another default tile you'll spot as soon as you fire your console up. Entering it you're given the option of watching any one of a number of active live-streams - which can be subdivided into Twitch and UStream accounts if you so wish - with another click bringing up your chosen stream, and a text box to chime in with your thoughts. You can avoid the chat and go full screen if you wish.

The speed of the streams loading and ease of use go a long way to making this addictive viewing, be it just checking in to see what the game world's doing, or a prolonged watch. The first night, we spent fifteen minutes watching someone rock-climbing the highest mountain in Skyrim. (Though if there's nothing entertaining, a separate TV App provides you with Netflix and all the usual range of subscription services).

The PS4 Camera

Currently, the peripheral feels cosmetic more than anything, a counter to Xbox One's Kinect so Sony can claim they have one too.
In the week we've had it, we've mainly just used it to sign into the console - the camera matching our face to profile, and using the controller light bar to assign that pad to our profile. It's fast (and cute) enough that we don't mind it taking an extra second or two longer than it would tapping X to select our profile.

There's a few voice commands used through the PS4 Camera. Saying "PlayStation" followed by the likes of "Return to Home Screen", "Return to Game" or even naming a specific game on the Home Screen will switch you to it. Best, is a "Take Screenshot" option, which rather than jumping you to the Share screen (if you'd hit the button), just flags its snapped a picture through a icon on the top right of the screen for later perusal. (For our money "Record That" on Xbox One is more impressive).

The problem, same with Kinect, is that the system's not flawless. We found ourselves trying different modulations on the title screen of Resogun to return to the Home Screen but were unheard. It may do with the TV audio levels drowning out our voice, but soon, we were ignoring the option completely.

The camera's main use so far is by projecting your living room into the interactive Playroom, but that proves the barest of tech demos that'll last you five minutes. For the briefest time, people discovered that streaming your PS4 screen online included the Playroom as well, and a flurry of low-budget chat shows cropped up on the Live streams as opposed to straight gameplay. However, now the Playroom's been disabled from that (due to some using it to stream unsavoury practices) the camera's one potential sell has been made redundant.

Trust us, for now, use the money you'd spend on it on another game for your launch line-up.

The Verdict

We liked: Beautifully designed machine, fantastic controller. Simple, straight to the point home screen, Live functionality.

We disliked: The stacked game bar on the home screen, console can be noisy when booting up a game, gets very hot, camera a novelty, not convinced by Touch Pad yet.