The "other thing" the PS4 doesn't do.

The Playstation 4 has been out for a few months now and I don't care. I'm content with my PS3. Let me clarify though, I don't care NOW. I'm sure I'll care a little when inFamous comes out and a little more when Batman is released. I'll care when Final Fantasy XV shows up and I'll really care, if and when, The Last Guardian gets made. And really, this is what has happened since the dawn of gaming time, right? A new system comes out, a handful of excited early adopters with money to burn run out and get it, and the rest of us wait till there is an assortment of games we want to play before taking the financial plunge on a new machine. And that's it. That's what goes into deciding if and when to buy a game system, right? Well, not entirely.

An idea occurred to me the other day when I was thinking about how not excited I actually am; no new media. And in a flash I remembered and realized all at once that every new Sony game system brought with it the ability to play a new media technology. The PSX had music CDs, the PS2 had DVDs and the PS3 had Blu-Ray playback. Further than that, the technology wasn't just new to that generation of game systems, Sony also introduced it when it was fairly new in general.

I rememer being 12 years old and knowing that the only CD player in the house wasn't to be touched. It was back when high-priced electronics weren't supposed to be "messed with" by kids. It was a different time. So imagine how adult I felt when I found out my new "toy" could actually PLAY grown-up music CDs. As soon as I found out I thought, "we'll now I have to try it." But I was a kid with no previous CD player and so no CDs. So I tried out the handful of classical albums my parents had. I lifted them slowly and gently, and of course being sure to only touch the outside rims. These were high end grown-up things after all. They were very special and very sensitive. At least that's what I thought. I don't know why I was so surprised that it actually worked but I was. Like maybe this couldn't possibly be as easy as it seemed. But either way, I was now a kid with a his first CD player.

Of course the far bigger addition was DVD playback. I remember reading about a pole taken, if memory serves, within the first year or two of the PS2's life. Apparently Japanese people were buying the system for its ability to run DVDs more than for any other feature, including playing games. It's even been speculated that the Dreamcast might not have died as quickly if it hadn't been for that one feature. And the process was well conceived; make a game system that plays a new form of media people want, charge less than the cost of similar, dedicated DVD players, and count the piles of money. It worked so well that Sony just followed the same road map for its next game system with the introduction of Blu-Ray.

And now the PS4 is out and I don't care. In part, because there isn't anything new it does out of the box that makes it worth buying now. With the old systems I could at least say "well at least it can do X so I'll enjoy that feature while I wait for the games to come." remote play is cool but requires another console and Playstation Now is a ways off. So what we have is a system that plays PS4 games and does all the same stuff I already do with my PS3.

So I'll wait. I may not care now but I will later. And while I wait, I'll do so with less impatience than usual.