Revisiting the PS4 presentation - Mark Cerny

Daingurse said:
f30aef312ce917062a0f6a7067005c64.jpg
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This one picture tells so well why PS4 has been received so much better.

Labour of love.
 
I'm currently watching PS4's conference again and it's like day and night compared to the nightmare i watched yesterday.

In fact it was so good that i'm afraid they will somehow fuck it up in E3.I don't think they can top it.
 
Zekra Dezivad said:
THIS.

The real difference between Cerny and other presentation guys is that he knows what he's talking about. He is a gamer, a game designer, a game director, a programmer, a system architect. he's talking about his own work, something he dedicated his life to.
Other guys simply don't know how to design a console or a game at all, that's not their job. It's Cerny's. And this makes a tremendous difference, because the Chef can surely talk about cooking better than the restaurant's manager.
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That's what I thought.
Cerny is someone who spent a lot of time (to say the least) working on PS4, it's his creation basically.
Microsoft's guys were accountants.

sublimit said:
In fact it was so good that i'm afraid they will somehow fuck it up in E3.
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My fear too.
 
I really enjoyed the PS4 conference's "gaming first" approach. Cerny is an amazing speaker and was the high point for me. He comes off as sincere, enthusiastic, and informed about what he's talking about. Seeing his presentation has increased my awareness of his contributions to the industry and i'm genuinely looking forward to seeing what he can do with Knack and the PS4. There were of course some parts I could've done without (Media Molecules whatever that was, SE showing the same trailer and begging people to still give a shit), but I think they still managed to communicate a strong message and generate alot of positive buzz. Definitely the best of the 3 next-gen console reveals for me.
 
Rewatching it, it is MUCH better than I remember,

Mark Cerny knows what's up, that's a guy you can trust when it comes to gaming.
 
Uncle Rupee said:
I wasn't floored by the PS4 reveal or anything, but I still thought it was pretty good.
Yesterday's conference was more of an affirmation for me than anything that Microsoft doesn't belong in the game industry.
They want to own the living room, to squeeze their bloated OS into every corner of your life. Making games is a means to an end for them, and they're willing to dump literally billions into the business if it means they succeed.

They literally lost a billion dollars in their gaming division every year of the Xbox's life.
Same thing with Bing - it's not as good as Google, has resorted to stealing search results from Google, hasn't gained much traction, but they're not quitting because Microsoft thinks they need to be in that space.

Meanwhile you have Nintendo, who are only invested in games, and Sony, which has proven since the PlayStation 1 that they are a great company for the industry.
Microsoft has been irrelevant to me, and it looks like they will continue to be.
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Couldn't say it better.

One of my best friends called me yesterday and he is an extreme Xbox fanboy but yesterday he told me, "you know, now i'm really gonna say it, i always defended Microsoft but to be honest, they're really a cancer in the industry".
 
Yea, watching this for the first time now.. and Cerny is the man. I love when he talks and I actually believe what he is saying and believe that he cares.
 
So, it seems that most people experienced this the same way I did. Cerny seems to care about his job, as he should considering his role, and the things he was talking about felt mostly valid for me as a gamer. Interesting. The Xbox reveal actually made me like the PS4 reveal a lot more than I did earlier. It made me realize how genuine it felt, as others have mentioned before me.

Edit: Interesting to see how many people that had missed this.
 
Whilst only somewhat Cerny related, I loved the iconic theme music and sounds of various games as each speaker was introduced at the Sony conference.


Brilliantly done.
 
sublimit said:
I'm currently watching PS4's conference again and it's like day and night compared to the nightmare i watched yesterday.

In fact it was so good that i'm afraid they will somehow fuck it up in E3.I don't think they can top it.
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Pffft.

I dunno if Cerny is there (I sure hope so!) but insiders all over seem to be way more excited for Sonys E3 this year than they were for the reveal event. I think the content will be really great.

I expect/will prepare for the fuckups at E3 being pay to pay online and/or used games bullshit. But I am not scared at all when it comes to the focus being on games and delivering on that promise more than at the PSMeeting.
 
Cerny did have a sort of eeriness to his look.
But thinking about what he has done and continues to do for a living tells me that all nerds have their quirks!
 
yurinka said:
He looks creepy but he seems a gamer with a lot of knowledge and experience developing games, and that did a great job making an easy to use and easy to program powerful console focused to gamers and gamedevs. Who don't want water coolers, so 10/10.
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Yerolo said:
lol, id almost forgotten about that. What a strange thing to liken a console to
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It's not strange at all, if you're a corporate executive. And that's who running the games department at Microsoft right now.
 
Sincere Cerny treated the audience like adults who do not need to be shouted at. "Simple" nicely describes the design philosophy. Simple but not to the point of excluding other forms of entertainment. PS4 will do many things.

Sony's in the enabler role. Get out of the way of consumers. Boot up immediately, download updates transparently, let them connect with their phones and social networks. But give them a choice. Get out of the way of developers. Give them hardware they can work with, and great games will come.
 
Rewatching the Sony conference juxtaposed to the Microsoft one is very interesting. Cerny presented the goals of what they wanted to do very well and pretty concisely on top of that. For the most part, he talked directly with didn't really try to "swoop" over our heads with marketing/PR talk. It was just a much better conference overall.

That Infamous guy was still lolworthy though.
 
The first thing I did after watching the Xbox reveal was watch the PS conference again. The difference is night and day. Cerny was genuine, and that's what sold it to me. I felt like someone who was passionate about their project was telling me all the things he was excited about short, concise, and clearly.
 
Just rematched parts of this, especially the Cerny part. The difference from MS conference is night and day. Less buzz words, more to the point, actual gameplay and a lot of honesty. The only bad part of that conference is probably the Gakai part about the future.
 
I think the difference is that Cerny is a developer and thus his talk is more about development and games, and less about PR spinning. This is what I liked of Sony presentation.
 
Sony showed games and talked like they give a damn about games. Microsoft did not. Since I want a games console and the extra stuff are just minor perks to me it failed to grab my attention.

Sure maybe they're saving all that for e3, but given the rumours about xbox one, microsofts direction these past couple of years etc - its really not surprising that tv and media talk came first and games come later. Not interested.
 
Cerny's presentation was really awesome. I rewatched that part with my wife yesterday and we were impressed with how sincere and passionate it sounded. The conference had its problems (both conferences could have reduced 1 hour of their time), but even the less interesting parts were about games.

I hope E3 delivers.
 
I think the thing that separates the conferences most is that Sony didn't try to take credit for the speed of light the way MS did, or act like they invented multitasking.
 
I don't understand this rewriting of history to make the Sony conference seem good. It was shit, just Microsoft's was in a whole new level of abysmal.
 
To me Cerny seemed like he new what he was talking about and was genuinely excited at what he and Sony had come up with, the MS conference on the other hand just seemed scripted and used loads of buzz words.
 
It must be amazing for Cerny, to think of what he's doing, he's an American, who is building the next PlayStation, that is pretty insane.
 
What I noticed (and enjoyed) more in subsequent viewings is how little 'whooping' and cheering there is. It is so awkward watching stuttering gaps where the presenter is waiting for a crowd reaction - it happened at the X1 reveal and was also in plentiful supply at Google's IO keynote.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that Sony are usually just as guilty of this irritating habbit as others, but the PS Meeting felt a lot more grounded and adult because the likes of House and Cerny weren't pausing every two sentences in anticipation of some vocal outburst. They had information to communicate and that's what they went about doing. I know there were a few whoops in there, but for the main, it was just polite audience applause at relevant points.

As for the content, repeat viewings just confirm how torrid the MS equivalent was. The message, the speakers, the material - I felt they came a distant second in every sense.
 
StuBurns said:
It must be amazing for Cerny, to think of what he's doing, he's an American, who is building the next PlayStation, that is pretty insane.
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Dude's been around forever in all sort of positions from game designer, to programmer, to president. The dude had enough pull to convince Yuji Naka to work on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 after SEGA screwed him over, that's gotta count for something.

So it isn't mindblowing that Sony gave him the keys to the next Playstation. He's more trustworthy than a lot of people in the industry that's for sure because not only does he have a stupid amount of experience in every aspect of the games industry but he probably has a lot of positive connections.
 
bigbaldwolf86 said:
I hadn't watched the PS4 reveal in the first place so after the Xbox One reveal I watched it. My impressions from the PS4 reveal is that it's about developers and gamers. The PS4 will be a console for gamers. Everyone that came on that stage made me fell reassured that the PS4 is the console for me and the next gen console I have to have. It was far and above what MS did.
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Amen.
 
Thanks for reminding me how great this PS4 even was. MS had 3 months to plan and top it and they didn't even come close.

PS4 for me, not that I was on the fence before.
 
Cerny sounded human and sincere, the things he talked about rang true.

MS only had media trained PR drones on stage, which were really good at reciting marketing buzz word stacked scripts. Their whole spiel left the impression of a condo sales pitch.
 
Whiteshirt said:
Dude's been around forever in all sort of positions from game designer, to programmer, to president. The dude had enough pull to convince Yuji Naka to work on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 after SEGA screwed him over, that's gotta count for something.

So it isn't mindblowing that Sony gave him the keys to the next Playstation. He's more trustworthy than a lot of people in the industry that's for sure because not only does he have a stupid amount of experience in every aspect of the games industry but he probably has a lot of positive connections.
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Well, it's amazing to me they'd give it to an American, regardless of his credentials.
 
I know the Cerny circlejerk can get pretty annoying, especially considering a lot of people didn't even know who he was before the PS4 unveiling, however i think Sony was really lucky to have him on board at this point.

He seems seriously passioned about his craft, seriously skilled and knowledgeable on both hardware and game design accounts and, most of all, he is the perfect bridge for Japan and the West, something Sony desperately needed.

He also seems to be a pretty great and honest speaker, the public loves it.

Seriously a good hit for them.
I don't think he'll come on stage at E3, but he definitely should, above all other suits who talk buzzwords.
He can deliver the same teleprompted stuff in a more convincing way than anyone else i've seen in these years of Sony conferences.
He has this "dad reading you a fairytale before bed" kind of speech manner, that is charming.
 
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