Firstly, no one has argued or said they don't want better for there system. All fans of each system knows they want something and air that. The suspect and ridiculous notion that are always echoing in these threads is one doing something FASTER than the next. It's not about the support of it not being there and improving. It's literally about implication and efficiency when to some that does not matter. The feature is not there, and we completely understand that, however is it some how hampering the system because I can't pause one game for another to download? No, especially if whatever is downloading isn't taking 3 days to do so. Does it hinder the system if I can't see one friend signed on? No. Is my system totally not working because I can't see my media files on my system? No Is it not a priority? Of course it is, but as is said before, the basic functions of downloading is not hindered because of the lack of it. The product as advertised is received. A personal feature (that is standard) is missing.
Acknowledge it's missing, however people can also acknowledge it's not a big deal (in the grand scheme of things) that obviously is something that will be implemented with a firmware update.
Lastly, I understand that people totally want it and it is up to Sony to ensure those needs are met. But the way it's being said as if the lack of these features are somehow killing the system. It really isn't and it's such an exaggeration.
Firstly, nobody has argued or said that it's killing the system (I can also be overly specific when the general point is obvious).
I'm not really sure what makes the idea that one company is moving faster in a given area ridiculous tbh. That's exactly how I'd have described the OS progress last gen between the 360 and PS3, and is also how it currently feels this gen too. Many people were saying that the Xbox One OS at launch was significantly behind the PS4's. Today it's difficult not to see it as being significantly ahead. That to me implies one is progressing faster than the other. The same is often said about Nintendo, who often appear to progress so slowly it looks like they're standing still.
I definitely
do think that not being able to pause downloads, or receive notifications is hampering my use of the system. I'm sure you're aware that when downloading large amounts of data, you sometimes find that you're not able to do other things online well. So when I have a 50gb download that can't be paused in the event that I want to do pretty much anything else with my connection - be it playing another console online, watching a streaming movie, of even just loading up a gif heavy page on GAF - then it's causing me significant inconvenience. I already posted earlier how I didn't get to try the FFXIV beta, because hours into the download process I needed my connection for other stuff, and had to make a choice between not having my connection available, or losing all download progress up until that point.
Not having friend notifications also has a significant effect on how I play games online. I'm not going to keep pausing my game to check my friends list regularly so I know that people are signing in. At most, I'm likely to check once when I first turn the machine on, before I start a game. This means if you sign-in after that point (let's pretend we're friends) I have no idea you're there, and as such won't invite you to join me in whatever I'm playing. I'm not a play-with-randoms, matchmaking kinda guy, so knowing that someone I want to play with has come online, or is playing the same game as me, is a pretty big deal. As a result I pretty much never end up playing anything online on the PS4, because the situations that allow for it never arise.
I too often see people saying "They have different priorities. MS is going for an all-in-one entertainment system, whilst Sony is focusing on gaming. #4theplayers" or whatever... but the current PS4 firmware is doing a lot more to harm my game playing experience, than any amount of TVTVTV/Kinect/32gb ESRAM ever did.
I'm going to use the same exact quote BruiserBear used in his quote.
I think if Sony wants to put those features in, they want to do it right. They aren't just going to put the half assed feature in there if they want it to work well with the system, and not create additional problems on their head about it.
And I'm going to use the exact same response I used earlier when someone applied BruiserBear's quote to the PS4 OS situation.
I'd like to see someone make the case for how that would be applied to pausing downloads or friend notifications.. which happen to be the two features they get the most shit about.