The PS4 is a great console, but so many problems have never improved.
Among this generation of home consoles, the PlayStation 4 is clearly the absolute king. Sony has continued to launch a large number of exclusive games for this console, in addition to the now popular “Detroit: Become a Man”, “God of War” and “Horizon: Zero Dawn”, etc., there are also “The Last of Us 2” and “Soul of Tsushima” and other games that we are looking forward to.
Although from a gaming lineup perspective, the PS4 is excellent. But when you compare it with other hosts, you will find that the platform still has some flaws. If Sony can solve these problems, then the PS4 is truly perfect. Unfortunately, even though the world has begun to expect the PS5, these problems still plague us, making this console unable to reach a 10-point evaluation after all. Let’s pick a bone in an egg today.
There is no native backward compatibility
It’s always good to have backward compatibility for gaming devices. With the current development of technology, it is no longer a hassle for new machines to play old games, especially some attractions can have fun whenever you revisit. Backward compatibility with this feature can extend their life cycle for the games themselves. However, Sony used to be one of the proponents of backward compatibility, but their attitude has obviously changed after the advent of the PS4 era.
Now they are promoting PlayStation Now, a streaming game subscription service, on which there are quite a few old games to play. It’s understandable from a business strategy point of view, but if your PS3 is no longer bright, then those games may be lonely. Looking at the Xbox One next door, backward compatibility not only supports Xbox 360 games, but even the original Xbox games can take into account some of them.
I hope that when the PS5 comes, I will not let everyone have this regret.
“Noisy like a jet”
Usually the life cycle of home game consoles is about 5-6 years, and in the later stage of the console, many game developers will try to develop performance to the limit. In order to achieve these technical effects and experiences, the hardware needs to run “deadly” and speed up the fan speed to dissipate heat to ensure stable operation of the hardware. If you played The Last of Us on PS3 back then, you should have had such an experience.
And for the first PS4, the sound of this fan seems a little too loud… You’ve probably seen a lot of complaints about PS4 fans being too loud on the Internet, and some people in Reddit and other discussion boards abroad even describe it as “noisy like a jet plane”, while others describe it as even “competing with lawn mowers”. Many players with strong hands-on ability even modify the console to solve this problem by themselves.
The PS4 Slim does alleviate this problem to some extent, being small, lighter, and much quieter.
The mystery of the boot button and the spit button
In addition to solving the noise problem, the PS4 Slim console has another great improvement is the improvement of the boot button. The buttons on the PS4 Slim console are so clear that you can easily distinguish between the boot button and the eject disc button. But for the PS4 of the first model, this is not necessarily the case.
The PS4 boot and spit button of the first release is not only very close, but the icon of the power button is very close to the spit button, not only that, but the logo is so small that people have to look at it with a magnifying glass (especially for people like me who are myopic + astigmatism). This design made many fans complain and even became a laughing stock.
Of course, if you can’t remember the location of the boot button after several years, either change the machine or put a sticky note to mark it.
The dominant player of Blu-ray, but does not support 4K Blu-ray movies?
As a member of the Blu-ray Alliance, Sony led the development of Blu-ray technology. Since the PS3 era has supported Blu-ray, Sony has also launched many Blu-ray players. Under Sony’s vigorous promotion, Blu-ray successfully replaced HD-DVD as a new high-definition medium, and was also used on Xbox One and PS4. Although Sony has been improving and improving Blu-ray technology, it does not seem to apply these improvements to PS4 Pro consoles.
As an enhanced and upgraded game console for PS4, the most incomprehensible thing is that it does not support 4K ultra-clear Blu-ray movies. As a game console that supports native 4K, it can’t play 4K movies. The Xbox One console’s S and X models can support 4K movies, why can’t Sony’s own game console?
Perhaps one day, online fully digital audiovisual experiences will become mainstream. But before that, you have to remember in the little book: Sony PS4 Pro can’t play ultra-clear Blu-ray, it’s very angry.
Abandon the handle’s battery life for treatment
As someone who plays games every day, it’s important to keep your controller well charged. I believe that after all these years, everyone has developed the habit of avoiding seeing the “low handle battery” prompt. Despite this, the PS4’s controller battery life is still very worrying.
Power Profile has reported that the PS4’s DualShock 4 controller lasts about 7 hours. The Xbox One controller with basically the same specifications can reach about 13 hours, and the Pro controller of the Nintendo Switch can even be used for 40 hours, which is almost 6 times the battery life of the PS4 controller.
During the life cycle of the PS4, Sony has introduced improved and upgraded PS4 consoles, but it has hardly solved the problem of controller life – even if only turning off the controller light that is the culprit of power consumption. If you can make a wish, I hope Sony will work more on the PS5’s controller battery life.
What exactly is the use of a seemingly cool touchpad?
Did you know that there is a touchpad on the PS4 controller? Of course you know, after all, it occupies such a large piece in the center of the handle. In some games, this touchpad can be used as a button, but other than that, whether in games or on Sony’s systems, there are almost no applications for this touchpad.
This somewhat reminds me of the back touch pad of the PSV at that time, which sounds beautiful but is not of any use…
So the problem is, such a large trackpad does not have a good application, and this is even worse for the PS4 controller’s already poor battery life. The function of this trackpad can actually be completely replaced by other buttons, and Sony itself does not seem to use this thing very much in games or other functions. One Reddit user said that when surfing the web using the PS4’s browser, you can’t even use the trackpad to control the pointer…
So what’s the point of this function and buttons? Increased power consumption?
Disappointing overprotection strategy
A few years ago, Apple was widely criticized for its “protective wall” policy, and the music and movies you buy on iTunes can only be played on Apple devices, and there is not much you can do yet. Now Apple has also made changes, music no longer comes with DRM digital rights protection, and movies you buy on iTunes can be watched on other platforms.
At the same time, Sony has followed Apple’s old path, and when other consoles have launched cross-platform access, only Sony PS4 games are still closed.
Sony has chosen a protective attitude towards the PS4 player base, so many multi-platform games cannot use cross-platform or cross-platform save features. For example, the most violent trouble a while ago is “Fortnite”, if you choose the PS4 version, you can’t even log in to other platforms with the same account. At the same time, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch are interconnected on multiple games.
The Fortnite incident is just the beginning, and while I can understand Sony’s motivation for doing so, it’s not a bad thing to start a cross-platform support if it’s really “for the gamers.”
PSN still can’t change its name
Change is part of human life. As human beings, we grow, we change, and become better versions of ourselves. In the process of change, we can do better. But despite this, in today’s Internet epidemic, the online identity cannot be changed. Especially here is your PSN account, is it suddenly in a mood of “I have to admit that this is because of the mistakes made by youth”?
If you registered your PSN account in 2007 and came up with a name like “WTMSB233″… You’ll find that you’ll either continue to use it or you’ll have to sign up for a new account. All your game records and trophies are associated with your account, you must not bear your account, and is it shameful to see your name written blindly for convenience when you are not sensible? Although many people hope that PSN will launch a name change function, even once… But Sony has so far kept silent about it.
Having money can make ghosts push the grind, and I believe that many players hope that even if they want to spend money to change their name, they will not hesitate to pay for it. But anyway, is it hard to get users to change their names? Sony begs you to change the name once.
Will recording videos with headphones be forced to mute?
For many players, this may be a problem they will not encounter in a lifetime. Only when you plug in the headphones with the controller and still want to record a video will you encounter, you use this method just to watch movies or play games, and players who record or broadcast live through the capture card on the computer will not encounter this problem. But the PS4 is very strange about sound processing in this regard, and if you plug the headphones into the PS4 controller, then you will find that the video you recorded is completely muted.
Yes, this problem only occurs when you record a video directly on your TV and use a headphone to connect the handle. I probably can’t experience playing with a capture card.
When you use headphones, the PS4 will completely turn off the HDMI audio part of the TV part, and it will not be changed back. That is to say, if you insert headphones into the handle, and you do not record through the computer capture card but with the TV video capture equipment, you will find that the recorded video does not have any sound at all. We don’t know exactly how this works and for what reason, but the Xbox One next door doesn’t have that.
Hopefully, this problem, and everything mentioned above, can be corrected on PS5.
