A Customer Inquiry... PS3 vs PS4

Someone wrote this to our Customer Service Team, and I hijacked the reply. Maybe this can help people decide what to do if they are in the same situation :)


QUESTION:

Regarding the upcoming PS4, will it worth to buy it or a PS3 for current stage? 2 years before I had made a wrong choice in buying a Wii and ended up regreting as it does not has much games I wanted to play and rarely game companies are willing to invest games for it. So in the upcoming year 2014, I would really like to know which console (PS3 or PS4) is much more worth to buy in terms of game variations and which platform will future games focus on (still on PS3 or partially/fully focus into PS4)? In other case if PS3 is not worth to have it in future or PS4 is too expensive/not worth to have it in 2014, will it be better to wait for more releasing games before considering it? Thanks in advance...

REPLY:

Thank you for contacting Play-Asia.com.

We are sorry to hear about your experience with the Wii; while Nintendo has always had a strong following due to their first party titles, unfortunately their releases with 3^rd party games has been severely lacking.

To answer your question, with regards to the PS3 and PS4, it depends on...

1. The PS3 has a 7 year library and according to Sony, they will still be releasing games within the near future. As to when they decide to stop production, this we do not know, but there are certainly many games that you can play on both the PS3 and the PS4. As well, the PS3 will obviously be much cheaper at this stage with several options: the first, second and third iteration of the console.
   
   Even if you might think that a 7 year library may be too old to consider, some games from 2009 still look as if they were printed today; there are many games that have stood the test of time, especially the PS3 exclusives like The Last of Us, the Uncharted Series and the Killzone Series. As well, many of these titles are in compilations, so at this point you'll be buying 3 games in 1! Furthermore, the PS3 shares many of the same titles from the Xbox360, but the strength of the PS3 library is that all games have been region free, so you can also play Japanese only games exclusive to Sony. Lastly, games now are much cheaper – not to do a plug but our Weekly Specials and Daily Deals often feature AAA titles for a quarter of the price.
   
   If you are looking for a great machine with a giant library of proven games that have been rated, documented and celebrated by many, then the PS3 is a good choice. The biggest con of the PS3 at this time, actually one that has plagued the console, is the lack of a solid voice chat with online games – you have to play the same game as a friend in order to chat as opposed to Xbox Live's service, with the latter being a paid service though.
   
   Oh – and the PS3 also works as a media center that watches videos from a harddrive, plays mp3s, CDs, DVDs, and Blue Rays.
   
   
2. As for the PS4...
   
   Without a doubt this is the most powerful console in the market right now for next-gen, and with that being said, it is definitely expensive. This of course is because of basic economics of global supply and demand, but we expect this to calm down along the next few months with subsequent regional releases. To be honest, we actually aren't recommending anyone to buy one right now, as day one purchases of consoles have historically ended in faulty machines, hiccups and errors. Despite this, Sony has been very good to this next gen by offering a day one patch and a lot of updates.
   
   Regardless, your concern is a system where you can play games. Right now, there are 4 exclusive titles for the PS4, and several other games that are cross platformed with the PS3. Of course the PS4 ones look, play and feel better, but developers have not really made a huge leap with these titles. In the future, more specifically Spring 2014, PS4 owners will see a lot of great games coming in. This will be the console for at least the next 5 years, and we can surely predict that the PS4 will dominate the market just as much as it's predecessor has.
   
   Unlike the PS3 though, the PS4 is really built for games, so many of the entertainment features no longer appear. Instead, these have been replaced by “remote play,” where one can connect their PS Vita to their PS4 through a cloud server and play console games on a handheld. That's pretty damn cool...
   
   Obviously, if you can afford both, that would be the ideal gaming set up, as you can benefit from the rich history and features of the PS3 while waiting for the PS4 to eventually meet it's maturity. As well, it should be noted that Sony is now placing a lot of effort in making their PS+ membership for their PS Network somewhat mandatory (with a nominal monthly or yearly fee) but this is a good thing, as members have access to free games each month, a real voice chat service (for PS4), means to access a giant library of games from Psone, PS2, PSP, and PS3 games! Another thing that might help in your consideration is that the PS4 is not backwards compatible with PS3 games.
   
   We hope this helps in your decision, and if you have anything more questions, feel free to contact us again; we are more than happy to help a fellow video game enthusiast!