An earlier than usual PS4 successor has its benefits. But why is the PlayStation NEO coming now?
Early console releases are usually for companies with lagging hardware and low sales. The news grabs attention, can drive sales, and establish a clean break from the past. Nintendo’s upcoming NX console is a textbook example.
Sony’s the opposite of underperforming. They’ve exceeded expectations: 40 million PS4s sold, over double the Xbox One, and sales are accelerating year over year. And consoles thrive on momentum. Sony’s lead allows them to coast on the PS4’s success for a while; don’t rock the boat and watch profits grow. Yet success also buys the chance to take some costly bets. That’s Sony plan, an investment on the NEO today for the chance to solidify PlayStation over the long run.
Flexbox is a powerful web styling tool, one my favorite recent CSS additions. It’s an effective replacement for hacky, float-heavy layouts. Given its wide browser support and mature feature set, I lean on Flexbox for most project work.
However, I’m surprised many developers stay away from Flexbox. They’re worried about browser support, a big learning curve, or otherwise strange behavior. They shouldn’t. Here’s how to get started.
Giant Bomb confirmed an upgraded PS4, codenamed NEO, is real and coming soon. There’s still a lot we don’t know, but based on the leaked developer guidelines, I’m cautiously optimistic about this news. However, a shift to a more iterative console isn’t won through hardware or development studio relations. It’s with marketing to gamers and the larger public. And it’s on that angle Sony can turn this into a mess.
I like design teams built around collaboration and transparency with outsiders, especially engineers. Yet that openness has to be balanced against productivity. Even with formalized designer-engineer connections, I still structure meetings to give designers as much uninterrupted time as possible.
An open structure largely derives from designer/engineer ratios. Across technology, from hot startups to well established brands, designers are almost always heavily outnumbered. And given it’s a fairly young industry, design is often underrepresented in company leadership. Granted, with “design thinking” surging in popularity, that’s changing. But across many companies, it’s still an uphill battle. If you box your design team in, you’ll stack the deck against you.
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Most critical attention on 2014’s Nightcrawler centered on Jake Gyllenhaal’s lead performance. It’s understandable; Gyllenhaal’s character actor eccentricities gel together in a way we’ve rarely seen before. He’s intense and deeply unsettling as lead character Lou Bloom.
However, it’s smart cinematography that underlines his performance and sets the film’s dark, gritty tone. DP Robert Elswit forces the audience to empathize with Lou’s own sociopathic worldview.
Nightcrawler chronicles Lou’s growing career in L.A. crime journalism. Along the way we get a handful of conventionally filmed conversations with Lou at diners, cars, and TV stations. But crime scenes are the heart of the film and push the story forward. It’s also where Elswit makes many strong and unconventional shot choices.
Capturing and organizing tasks is a highly personal exercise. Some turn to simple tools like pen and paper or a Google Doc. Others prefer complex systems with filtering, contexts, and customization like Omnifocus.
After trying several options, I’ve found a sweet spot between these extremes with Todoist. It provides some structure for work, but remains flexible for whatever flow I’m managing. That said, the basics I outline here should work with most task management systems.
Inefficient web styling slows performance, adds inconsistencies, and harms developer and designer productivity. But many teams don’t prioritize CSS tech debt; gains are subtle and hard to measure. And CSS testing suites aren’t as robust as those for JavaScript, Rails, and other web languages.
Yet the effort necessary to keep web styling lean and efficient is overblown. The key is abstracting page level styling into reusable components.
Components are distinct groups of elements on a page. Common examples include navigation bars, carousels, and form sets. Components should be standalone, easily moved to different pages without breaking layout. Some styling methodologies substitute other terminology for components, calling them modules or blocks. And the size and scope of component usage differs widely among projects. Large projects, given their size and scope, tend to rely more on components than smaller works.
The PS4 has record sales and gained significant mind share among gamers. Yet among game journalists and core gamers, there’s disappointment. Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton recently ran a positive yet tempered post on the PS4, calling it an “unexciting video game console.” Kat Bailey at USgamer finds this console generation “disappointingly conservative”. And I see similar resentment all over popular gaming forums like NeoGAF.
I’m a big fan of both Kirk’s and Kat’s writing. But I suspect their enthusiast perspective is coloring their viewpoint. For those of us that are more casual gamers, the PS4 has been great, a big improvement on previous console generations. It feels tailor made for what I’d term a “tech prosumer” market.
As evident from recent sales figures, there’s a lot of new PS4 owners. Console bundles have reached a $300 sweet spot, and both the Xbox One and PS4 have built up a decent library. But most game recommendations I’ve seen online – from enthusiast (Polygon, Kotaku) to mainstream (BBC, The New York Times) – feel safe. They lean heavily on mega hits and franchise sequels like Halo 5, MGS V, and Destiny.
Granted, they aren’t bad choices. I’m currently hooked exploring the wastelands of Fallout 4, and I’d recommend it to almost any RPG fan. Yet the PS4 has many strong games that received little coverage. They are accessible, cover a wide range of genres and are affordable. Here are some of my favorites from the past year:
Fallout 4 relies on a classic RPG feedback loop. Venture out and discover. Aquire loot and experience from combat and finishing quest lines. Improve your character, equip cool weapons and armor. Repeat. But thanks to an unwieldy user interface, part of Fallout 4’s feedback loop is broken. It’s increasingly problematic for me as I advance through the game’s main narrative.
Admittedly, that’s not a factor during most of my playtime thanks to Fallout 4’s superb open world design. There’s always something new to explore, little of which feels like filler content. The art direction and detail on most locations is impressive. Map layout is intuitive and influenced by real world constraints. Many terminals and safes add to a location’s backstory and the characters that populate it. It all adds to a breadth and unpredictability to Fallout 4 that I haven’t encountered in any other game this year.
Yet solid open world exploration and interesting loot only get you so far. Once you’re back at home base, Fallout 4 strains during character improvements and management. I’ve burned long stretches of time micromanaging inventory, encumbrance, and crafting items.