Is the PS4 camera worth the money?
When I bought my PS4 last year I didn’t think twice and got the PS4 camera with it. I was excited by the kinect-like possibilities, and I seem to recall the Playroom trailers, or whatever it was at the time, convinced me the camera would be a great accessory for the PS4.
Unfortunately, unless I’m wrong, there aren’t that many innovative games making use of the PS4 camera yet (Edit: check our list of PS4 Camera Games), one year later. Except maybe for Playroom, the series of “tech demos” that comes for free to every PS4 camera owner. Yeah, ok, somebody told me that “Just Dance” uses the PS4 camera. I’ll pass for now. (Update: turns out Just Dance is actually pretty fun on the PS4, and the 2014 version is 52% off on amazon right now!)
Ok, I’ll be honest, this is the kind of stuff I was actually looking forward to: a remake (or sequel) to Wonderbook:
One year after the PS4 was released, no such thing has been announced yet. In the meantime, a few games are announcing gimmick features (possibility to scan your own face in NBA?), but nothing really “relying” on the PS4 camera.
However, Playroom has been receiving surprisingly regular updates: The funny”My Alien buddy” game, Ninja bots, and more recently Playroom AR. None of these are things hardcore gamers would consider as “games”, and I am thinking that the Playroom AR feature, which seems to target people who want to add some customization to their broadcast experience, might not reach its actual target audience.
But I’ll have to say this: as the father of a 3 year old, Playroom is probably the application that has had the most gameplay time on our PS4. The tiny games are made in a way that kids will not find frustrating: You can’t lose in Ninja bots (you just get less gold coins at the end of the game), “My alien Buddy” is pure, crazy fun; and Playstation AR… well, let’s just say it’s been impossible to get my son to stop playing it for the past week, since I showed it to him.
The Playroom might just be a tech experiment from Sony’s perspective, but the controls (be it with the camera, the controllers, the tablet…) are extremely intuitive and fun for a young kid. Although he is not broadcasting, my son is having a lot of creative fun drawing pictures and sending them to the screen. He also insists that we play with him, making for an interesting father-son bonding event. Last week, we created halloween masks and he loved it.
Maybe more importantly, Playroom is interactive and creative enough that my wife does not become angry at me for playing it with our very young kid!
At that point, thanks to playroom, our PS4 camera has had enough gameplay time that it has been well worth the 60 bucks I spent on it (It can be purchased for $49.99 now – Update: Amazon have it at $44.99 for a limited period of time during the holiday. Great deal for that price!).
I’m still waiting for the Wonderbook sequel, and other interesting, creative, maybe educational (why not?) games that can come up with this. But in the meantime, thanks to Playroom and its regular updates, I can say I totally recommend the PS4 camera if you have young kids. It’s totally worth it for young gamer parents. Other gamers on the other hand, except maybe for the broadcast/streaming options, might want to wait another 6 months, in the hope for more “actual” games to be (maybe?) announced for the device.
Nice, i bet if Sony has tons of money to throw they gonna support it greatly.
Afterall, they’re once a Tech behemoth.
*we know they ain’t doing great (financially) now*
Well, the Playstation family is quite a complex and many-layered thing. And I am happy, that Sony is not focusing on casual games (which would be good for them), but on core games.
But nevertheless, I am pretty sure, over time, there will eventually be more games that use the Playstation Camera (why is it not called ‘Eye Toy’ anymore?). Any many people like me buy the bundles with console+second controller+game+camera, so the group of people who own a camera shouldn’t be too low.
I would say as soon as Project Morpheus gets out and has a decent price (I suppose it might even be a little cheaper than Occulus Rift, but nobody wants to believe me on that matter), the Playstation camera will be even more interesting.
Playstations was always hardcore consoles so they should focus on harcore games but it dosn’t mean they shouldn’t support casuals too
I almost bought a camera with my PS4, because everyone was saying loads of games would be coming out, but I decided to wait until they actually did come out, turns out there’s still nothing, Really sad really, I would buy one instantly if there was something for older gamers to play with
You have a kid!!!
IKR so sweet. CX
Yeah, plus he’s awesome and loves videogames 🙂
Did you just scared your kid and hence he threw his controller and went close to you?? Bad DADDY….Bad DADDY…. !!
But i can’t wait to do that… 2 months more to go
Nope, not worth it IMO. The price puts me off as well £40 to £50 for it… And the fact that there are not much games utilizing it puts me off further.
Does the PS4 camera require the wand that the PS3 camera needed? I could see it being useful for sports game like PGA Tour or MLB The Show if they incorporated the camera into their next versions of games.
Considering there is a tracker pad on the DS4 controller, along with motion detection, then why would the PS4 require the PS3’s wand?
You can actually use the PS3 wands for the PS4 camera.
what ever happened to all those amazing things they could have done with that 1 to 1 motion controller!!!! Like make a fighting game or elder scrolls, Instead they make a lame book or wand game!!!
every time sony releases a new innovative product for example the ability to wield a sword with perfect accuracy or bow and arrow with some amazing motion controller, I get really excited and start visualizing all the great games that i will be able to play, but they end up never making any games. Then you are stuck with your 100 dollar motion controller with no games. Nintendo Wii controller had so many games.
Dont believe me? Go ahead and take a look at the past products sony has made all the way back to the first playstation 2 camera. None of these accessorys have ever been fully developed for. They make these products with promises that of what they can do but never deliver and they still keep the money.
Sony merely copied the Nintendo Wii motion design with the wand controller. Whenever I see these “innovations” on a controller, I feel disappointed for it. They ruin games, they make accuracy imprecise, they make doing that “innovative feature” feel like a chore. That’s now what gaming is about. The PS Vita rear touchpad is equally as bad.
Thw wii wasnt the first to implement motion controls either.
If you look, you can see the first motion wand was available for the commodore 64.
from the years ive seen $ony do this kind of stuff it shows fear that what they make wont catch on so they don’t even try. Nintendo tried everything they could some were good some bad but they did figure it out, now if $ony could just do the same we all could be having a blast with this but well have to wait and see.
@solidsnake
i can actually understand what you meant when you’re referring to the past accessories that Sony has made, but you have to understand, that Sony may have a few devs, but it may be harder to makes games that incorporate motion detection based by body motion unless you want to wear those stick-man suit, and i doubt anybody would want to wear it or even attach such things.
but to be honest…when Eye Toy came out for ps3, they had a few games, but i guess the sale markets for those weren’t really as great sale as Sony projected it to be. could be, that even something like that isn’t possible reality yet, as some people are still looking for something similar to VR glasses, where you’re able to explore the world without tv and controllers.
however, when you break down the Playstation Eye that is sold for PS4, they’ve included a motion camera in it, along with mic intgration, but i’ve noticed that they’ve also included a function within the camera that proabably compensate for low lighting.
i HAD thought about buying such accessories, but unfortunally, i play on my ps4 and don’t like to share with my neices and nephews…
riddle43 like how u only want to play nintendo’s on sony’s right ?
They should release another Wonderbook now that PS4 is a little more popular than Xbox One and with all the love of streaming.
Well the Ps4 Camera tracks Project Morpheus Right? So Thats Gonna Enough For Me.
I guess you’ve never played Alien Isolation then.
Thats got camera features. It has head tracking and listens for noise with the mic.
With the camera when you press the LEAN button you move your head to lean side to side, back or forward.
With the mic it detects sound so if you get scared from an enemy or the alien and you scream or yell it hears you.
It adds more to the game as you cant yell at the screen anymore or they hear you.
My brother wants to buy the camera just for this game.
You really need to fix this site. I posted the first of my replies about 30 mins ago on my phone. When I came to the PC now it was gone so I thought it didn’t post for some reason. I refreshed twice and nothing. After trying that 2nd post it showed up.
I hated the charge to this site and this is another reason to hate it more.
No wonder I dont come here often anymore. I read posts on Facebook and Twitter as I just cant understand the layout of the site. Its not user friendly. Well, back to twitter replies I guess.
Shouldn’t have changed the site as it was a lot better the previous way.
There is caching on this site, your comments might take up to 1h to appear depending on your browser. We had to put that in place because the site is getting much more traffic than it used to 5 years ago, this is not directly related to the new layout, which is another issue 🙂
I’m guessing you’ve had heaps of complaints about the website change.
I’m one of those people who say “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” and I think that fits perfect with this site. It was working great and now it’s all kind of broken.
Looks like they just pulled a PS Vita on the PS Camera.
Hahahaha “Pulled a PSVita”
Nope…they just released the camera becausr they had it ready hoping some developers would make games for it.ps4 is barely getting off the ground so we may probably never see a good game for the camera yet.
Originally the camera was supposed to be part of the system but they removed it so they could be cheaper than the xboned. Now the xboned can be brought without the camera trying to be cheaper than the PS4.
In the end it all depends on what you want to do with it. I got one but have the mic muted as the speech is very limited. It can’t turn the system on and as it already automatically logs me on when I turn on the console the face recognition is useless.
If they had more speech options I would use it more. Have it more kinetic like, like the ability to turn it on and off, take screenshots, post messages, start and stop games, things like that.
I think they need to add more features before it becomes a needed part of the PS4.
Nothing to say about the camera since I don’t own it yet, but….Hahahah man you’re so cute! You have a kid!!! And you play PS4 with him 😛 You got to tell me how you can find the all this time between your blog, your job, your family and your life in a foreign country!! Days in Japan have 24 hours too right?
Ha, yeah, I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown actually 😛
I find you have to brighten the room too much for the camera to even register that your there, its voice recognition is better than the xbone kinect, but the xbone kinect has a far superior camera, and with night vision to boot.
Would this game camera work for that application?: http://www.shoppingblox.com/trailcameras
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