Is the PS4, at this early stage, a better value proposition than the PS3? Possibly not, if you just want to play a few games and watch a Blu-Ray this Christmas and don't care about the long term. And is it a no-brainer buy compared to the Xbox One? Also no - particularly not if you're attracted by the wider media features and vision Microsoft has delivered so far and has in mind for the future.
And the thing to remember is that buying a PS4 is still an investment - if not in outright financial terms, at least in buying into the long term future of a machine and a service. The upside is that the console has a rich and rewarding life on the cutting-edge of games. The downside is that, well, it might not - there is risk here: the games might not come, at least not for a while, the network and future features like the Gaikai streaming games services are unproven, and the prev-gen competition is still really decent.
But at £349, is a PS4 worth the money today?
Yes. It is. The hardware is beautiful and powerful. The controller is brilliant. The games aren't overwhelmingly amazing, and are mostly very familiar - and it's not backwards-compatible. But the games it does have are all much more impressive visually than their current-gen rivals, offer a wide range of familiar and extremely tight genre experiences, and hint at a potentially dazzling future. It's not that expensive to buy, and you'll have loads of fun with just a couple of the above titles. Out of the box, today, the PS4 is a super-fast, top-of-the-line, focused gaming machine. Buying one is still a gamble - but it's as sure a bet as has ever been offered by a new video games console at launch.
