PS4 tablet interactivity stomping all over the Wii U?

[J Tyran]

Well it sounds very impressive. I look forward to checking it out when it hits the market.

I have to be honest that isn't the thing that excites me the most, the wireless charging is what really interests me. As if you couldn't tell I am a gadget person and at times my life is a hell of charging cables, docks and battery levels/swapping batteries. Just having my stuff charge because its in the same room as the transmitter would be a massive boost in convenience.

 

[Eddie the head]

Does the PS4 being able to integrate with smartphones and tablets enable them to steal the thunder from the Wii Us only real unique feature?

No, because you forgot the wiiU is backwards compatible

Also remember the PlayStation 3 tried to steal the thunder of the original wii's waggle stick with the Move. Look how that turned out.

A lot of people like it? Did it sell well? I don't know and I don't care. But people like TotalBiscuit seamed to like it.

 

[ThriKreen]

Some good points there, loads of people own tablets using them as a kind of ad-hoc controller for either straight gameplay as well as for asymmetric play was a neat idea I had not thought of.

Yeah, that's a problem I see from a lot of detractors. Most people here are thinking as traditional players, not as a game developer with outside the box thinking. Not to say this is the way to go, just that it offers possibilities we have not had before. Obviously it will depend if the dev has designed the game with it in mind and if the extra support is even FUN.

Even on the WiiU, it was Luigi's Ghost Mansion that perked my game dev interests over the others, because of the chance for more innovative, new gameplay. The other games in the demo van were more Wii motion controller style games, so they didn't really take advantage of the tablet's interface.

Subjective viewpoints is one thing, like how L4D allowed the infected players to see things you could not see normally as a survivor, or TF2 with the teammates seeing friendly spies.

A game like Natural Selection would work with this - or at least NS1, as I believe NS2 did away with the commander. But think about it, you're playing in a MP game, if you sat in the commander chair, and had a tablet bound and enabled, the game recognizes it and switches to tablet mode and you've got a top down RTS interface now. Keep the main TV display for viewing through the teammate's camera (like in the movie ALIENS) and make use of voicecomm to collaborate with your team. If you didn't have a tablet available, it retains it's standard pseudo-RTS scheme with the gamepad.

Using the Vita for streaming has a few problems though, its fine at home or with a good access point but for on the go it really needs an LTE version. Tablets are not the only device though either, considering the Vita has a 5" screen and its plenty big enough loads of smartphones have 4.8" and bigger screens. So phones will generally work as well as a tablet would.

Depends on how the streaming is set up - the quick and dirty easy method is just to replicate the online streaming - render out the frame and send it to the device. A better design would be to utilize a standard client/server architecture and just send network packets to the Vita, allowing it to render on its own, but rely on the PS4 server to send data packets. Much easier on the bandwidth if you sent a 512 byte chunk of "there is a monster model at this position, facing this direction, doing this animation at frame X" instead of a 1280x720 frame at 30fps into whatever compression level.

Heck, one could see the reemergence of personally hosted servers instead of consoles relying on peer-to-peer gameplay. Leave your console and game up and running, let you and your friends hook up whereever to play and contribute to some Minecraft-like world.

Crap... now I wish I had my own studio and a host of PS4 devkits.

Anyone have a winning lottery ticket?

 

[Tarkand]

What I'm getting out of this is thatr JTyran REALLY like Tablets... and something about the ps4.

 

[J Tyran]

Some good points there, loads of people own tablets using them as a kind of ad-hoc controller for either straight gameplay as well as for asymmetric play was a neat idea I had not thought of.

Yeah, that's a problem I see from a lot of detractors. Most people here are thinking as traditional players, not as a game developer with outside the box thinking. Not to say this is the way to go, just that it offers possibilities we have not had before. Obviously it will depend if the dev has designed the game with it in mind and if the extra support is even FUN.

Even on the WiiU, it was Luigi's Ghost Mansion that perked my game dev interests over the others, because of the chance for more innovative, new gameplay. The other games in the demo van were more Wii motion controller style games, so they didn't really take advantage of the tablet's interface.

Subjective viewpoints is one thing, like how L4D allowed the infected players to see things you could not see normally as a survivor, or TF2 with the teammates seeing friendly spies.

A game like Natural Selection would work with this - or at least NS1, as I believe NS2 did away with the commander. But think about it, you're playing in a MP game, if you sat in the commander chair, and had a tablet bound and enabled, the game recognizes it and switches to tablet mode and you've got a top down RTS interface now. Keep the main TV display for viewing through the teammate's camera (like in the movie ALIENS) and make use of voicecomm to collaborate with your team. If you didn't have a tablet available, it retains it's standard pseudo-RTS scheme with the gamepad.

Using the Vita for streaming has a few problems though, its fine at home or with a good access point but for on the go it really needs an LTE version. Tablets are not the only device though either, considering the Vita has a 5" screen and its plenty big enough loads of smartphones have 4.8" and bigger screens. So phones will generally work as well as a tablet would.

Depends on how the streaming is set up - the quick and dirty easy method is just to replicate the online streaming - render out the frame and send it to the device. A better design would be to utilize a standard client/server architecture and just send network packets to the Vita, allowing it to render on its own, but rely on the PS4 server to send data packets. Much easier on the bandwidth if you sent a 512 byte chunk of "there is a monster model at this position, facing this direction, doing this animation at frame X" instead of a 1280x720 frame at 30fps into whatever compression level.

Heck, one could see the reemergence of personally hosted servers instead of consoles relying on peer-to-peer gameplay. Leave your console and game up and running, let you and your friends hook up whereever to play and contribute to some Minecraft-like world.

Crap... now I wish I had my own studio and a host of PS4 devkits.

Anyone have a winning lottery ticket?

There are loads of opperunities to link the games, you could have mini mobile style games that are part of a larger game and your progress would add to the main PS4 game. With the Vita there is the potential for streaming it to your Vita from where you left off, playing the game and then your progress would update on the PS4. Do you remember that Mass Effect 3 mobile game? Your progress in that increased Shepard's EMS, pretty basic stuff but what if it was more? Say the story was affected or it introduced a new path through game.

How the streaming would work is outside my experience, netcode etc isn't something I would talk about much. All I know at the moment is that the current streaming and multiplayer with the Vita is pretty horrible, as its fine with a good hotspot I was assuming its the 3G causing the problems.

 

[Dags90]

What I'm getting out of this is thatr JTyran REALLY like Tablets... and something about the ps4.

It's somewhat interesting. In the demo for The Division they showed someone offering air support via a tablet. So say your BFF or whatever is a casual player or just sucks at FPS, you guys can still play together. Or you want to play The Division a little bit, but you also don't want to get out of bed. Whip out your smartphone and run air support for a random pick up group. Since it's not a mandatory role, you can pop in and out without fucking up the randos progress.

I thought it was pretty cool. The only thing I'm really concerned about is whether the console/PC version will come with a license for mobile platforms or whether it will be sold separately.

The other obvious ways tablets can be integrated is by offering additional map and HUD options. I think it'd be neat to play an action RPG where the screen is just the character/environment and all the HUD/map info is on a tablet/phone.

 

[Dragonbums]

let me try again, the PS4 will connect to all kinds of mobile devices like tablets, smartphones and PS Vitas with Gaikai for live streaming of PS4 games.

Okay, I'm confused.

Why would I want to stream my game from a PS4 to a tablet?

Because you own a game and are part way through it? Because your friend asks you to join a quick co-op game or help get them through a section? All kinds of reasons with the new features of the PS4.

The most obvious answer is why play a game on your tablet? Why play app store games when you can play your PS4 games from where you left off.

That's kind of redundant though.
Isn't that why they have the share button?