The (Mostly) Complete History of the PS4

PlayStation 4’s dominance this past generation could not have been more of a 180 from Sony’s struggle during the PS3 era. From minute one, Sony not only announced what the PS4’s impressive seven-year run would be about - games, first and foremost - but also found ways to leapfrog ahead of the Xbox One, which stumbled out of the gate and lost the momentum it Microsoft enjoyed during the reign of the Xbox 360.

But that doesn’t mean the PS4’s lifecycle was a boring one of constant success. Yes, we saw PlayStation cement its first-party stable as consistently excellent this generation, but it had to grapple with the consequences of its own over-confidence, and ultimately, an identity crisis in the face of that success. Here’s the (mostly) complete history of the PlayStation 4. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-ps4-games-summer-2020-update&captions=true"]

PS4: It Was Over Before the Console Was Even Out

Sony officially unveiled the DualShock 4, the PS4 name, and a host of upcoming games back in February 2013, but it was its approach to E3 that year that set the tone for the entire generation. It’s a story that’s been repeated endlessly ever since, but Microsoft bungled the Xbox One reveal with a focus on media apps and entertainment features rather than games and a confusing and prohibitive game-sharing policy. Enter Sony: in 30 seconds, it demonstrated just how easy it was to share PS4 games, and then undercut Microsoft’s console price by $100. IGN called it a knockout blow at the time, and for good reason. There’s a scrappiness to that first E3 - yes, Sony was still a major player, but the grounded, human charm with which it knocked out Microsoft was foundational in connecting the brand to new, lapsed, and dedicated PlayStation players. The PS4 would go on to sell a million units in under 24 hours in North America alone on November 15, 2013, and continually impressive console sales followed that booming start. These numbers were bolstered by the mid-generation refresh of the PS4 Pro, and the PS4 as of now has sold over 113 million units. That makes it the second best-selling home console ever, behind only the PS2. But for all that success, it’s surprising to see just how bullish Sony was about experimentation in the early days of this generation. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=best-ps4-xbox-one-games-to-play-on-ps5-and-xbox-series-x&captions=true"]

Clouds and Goggles

Sony kicked off the PS4’s first calendar year in 2014 by announcing a service that would prove to be ahead of the curve: PlayStation Now. The service, which lets subscribers stream dozens of PS4, PS3, and PS2 games over the cloud and recently added the ability to download a rotating selection of games to play locally, has yet to gain as much popularity as PS Plus or the continually impressive Xbox Game Pass. As of earlier in 2020, Sony reported only 2.2 million PlayStation Now subscribers. Previously only allowing streaming from the cloud, Sony only introduced offline downloads for certain games in September 2018, and reached a more consumer-friendly price with more recent, popular games in a rotation like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Marvel’s Spider-Man starting in October 2019. PS Now has enjoyed a dedicated audience, but it has by no means ushered in a subscription service revolution in the way Game Pass has or as Google Stadia hoped it would. In keeping with the theme of experimentation, 2014 was the same year we heard about PlayStation VR, nee Project Orpheus (remember awesome codenames?). While the headset itself wouldn’t be released until 2016, it was another example of Sony’s ambitious endeavors during this last generation. The PSVR itself would go on to have a roller coaster of a life cycle and has seen modest success, compared to the rest of the VR market in particular. But, we've yet to see VR be universally embraced. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/31/the-best-games-of-the-ps4xbox-one-generation"]

Walls Come Down

Where Sony showed less willingness to experiment was when it came to playing nice with the rest of the industry. As the clear sales winner for its console generation, Sony could be occasionally stubborn, particularly when it came to cross-play. In 2017, Rocket League and Minecraft ushered in a wave of cross-console play that has since become widely embraced. . But there was one problem - PlayStation didn’t want to play nice with  Xbox and Nintendo. At the time, then-marketing head and now CEO Jim Ryan said "We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it's something we have to think about very carefully." [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Where%20Sony%20showed%20less%20willingness%20to%20experiment%20was%20when%20it%20came%20to%20playing%20nice%20with%20the%20rest%20of%20the%20industry."] This stance that the lack of cross-play was out of concern for the player base would hold for over a year, until one of the biggest games of the generation, Fortnite, seemingly forced Sony’s hand. As cross-play infiltrated the battle royale game, players discovered that due to Sony’s walled-off approach, Nintendo Switch players could not even connect their Epic account to both a PS4 and Switch at the same time, preventing cross-progression from working, too. Three months later, Sony relinquished, taking a step into a cross-play beta when everyone else had gone gold. September 2018 saw the selective start of cross-platform play for PS4 and other consoles, starting with Fortnite. But that didn’t mark the end of Sony’s fumbling with messaging around cross-play. In early 2019, devs began to cry out about how Sony’s approach to the functionality was limiting the number of developers and games that could participate. And an interview with then-SIE president and CEO Shawn Layden only fanned the flames. Layden said Sony was waiting for devs and publishers to request cross-play support. The CEO of Chucklefish, publisher of Wargroove, which lacked PS4 cross-play, directly refuted Layden’s claims following his statement, saying “We made many requests for crossplay (both through our account manager and directly with higher-ups) all the way up until release month. We were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen.” Concerns from devs around the industry wouldn’t be alleviated until 2019 when Sony made cross-play available as a full feature. In the eyes of many players, slow change that came years after it should have was common for Sony during the PS4 lifecycle. Shortly after the beta program for cross-play began, Sony finally - and I cannot emphasize that word enough, FINALLY - introduced the ability to change PSN names. Of course, like cross-play, this new functionality came with some caveats, but for users like bongripper69, it was nonetheless a godsend.

Considering these years of stubbornness, Sony made a surprising decision later in the PS4’s lifetime.  After spending years telling consumers that the PS4 was the only place to play PlayStation games, Sony announced that  Horizon Zero Dawn, one of its best-selling exclusives of the generation, would be arriving on PC in 2020. The move drew ire from some fans who had spent years defending Sony’s decision to keep its barriers up.