PlayStation 4 Review

The PS4 was not the most ambitious console of its generation and that was the entire strategy. A conventional eight-core Jaguar APU with 8 GB of unified GDDR5 gave developers a machine they understood on day one, which is why third-party ports consistently landed at 1080p here while the competition negotiated with ESRAM at 900p. The $399 price undercut the Xbox One by a hundred dollars with no camera attached that nobody had asked for.

The DualShock 4 fixed the stick placement, the triggers and the grip depth in a single revision and added a share button that turned clip capture into a default habit rather than a chore. Then the library: Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, Persona 5 and The Last of Us Part II. Sony's studio system peaked here and the hardware never got in the way of it. More than 117 million units without a single gimmick. Sometimes the S grade is just competence executed without one unforced error.