I’m not a fan of Sony. I used to be. Many moons ago. But Sony’s persistent arrogance and abuse over the better part of three decades had pushed me away long before the whole Naughty Dog kerfuffle.
That being said, one of the things that really pissed me off about the Xbox One and PS4 announcements was Sony’s attempt to smear Xbox’s “Always on” internet services. It grew legs and ran the fuck away. Unfortunately, Microsoft apologized and scaled back the future of gaming (NEVER BEND THE KNEE!). PS4 garnered an early and quite impressive lead in the console wars after that. I do of course mean console wars between Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo are their own beautiful beast and you will rarely hear a bad word from me about Nintendo. But I digress…
“The ‘Future of Gaming’, oh bearded one!? Please elaborate!” You might say…
Well, Xbox announced “Smart Delivery” recently, in which the platform is open to ALL developers. You buy a game once and no matter how many iterations of the console are released or how many upgrades to the system there are, you’re treated to the latest version without having to buy another copy. Similar to what they did with allowing Xbox games to be played on PC and vice versa. I say open to all developers, but they did so with backwards compatibility and a lot of developers abstained form letting their old games get played on new systems. So we’ll see where that goes. Also: EA wants to do it’s own version of Smart Delivery. But EA is full of idiots who got in trouble for being greedy by nickel and diming a Star Wars game. I don’t have a lot of respect, let alone expectations for them.
According to Sony, via a stammered response at best (at least that is how I imagined it…), “Smart Delivery” is currently going to be left to the developers and publishers. So there is reason to believe that you purchase a disc copy of Madden for PS4, you buy a disc-less version of PS5, and you’re stuck with a game you can’t play physically, depending on how EA treats their “Smart Delivery”. I enjoy putting “Smart Delivery” in quotations near EA. It just makes more sense that way.
This brings me back to “The Future of Gaming”.
Smart Delivery was amongst the features of a 24/7 connected Xbox. But because the 24/7 connectivity was overshadowed by claims of big brother abuse, Xbox backed off from it. This is a feature we SHOULD have been using up to seven years ago! SEVEN! YEARS AGO! And they are just now implementing it as a feature, because it was shot down by an aggressive Sony Marketing team and some knuckle dragging, mouth breathing Sony fanboys. And even then, with seven years of history… Sony is STILL not ready to push the envelope on gaming with features like Smart Delivery. Everything they do is ripped off some other console. I’m genuinely surprised they even updated the controller.
You know, the one they pushed with Six-Axis because they couldn’t fit both Six-Axis and Dual Shock into one controller on PS3 release? JUST TO RELEASE A DUAL SHOCK ENABLED SIX-AXIS CONTROLLER SIX WEEKS LATER?
No, seriously, they have a history of being assholes. I seriously cannot fathom why people sweat a PlayStation so much.
“It’s about the games!”
Oh don’t worry, Naughty Dog is single handedly taking care of that argument. ;)
Because it is always warranted: Fuck Naughty Dog.
And for those of you who think being connected to the internet 24/7 is a bad thing…
Your router, your laptop, your desktop, your tablet, your smart phone, your thermostat, your house alarm, your smart lights, your home theater receiver, your car, even your kitchen appliances are now connected 24/7! Seriously, you can pre-warm your oven from work so it’s ready to bake when you get home. Your washer and dryer can send you notifications when they complete their cycle. And iPhone was introduced in 2007. Android ripped off… I mean released in 2008. Yes, you’ve been connected 24/7 since before Xbox One wanted to make 24/7 connectivity a feature.
That is all for now. I must go feed the beard.
-Sent from my Commodore 64.
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