PlayStation 4 has been out in the wild for a year now—and it’s been steadily growing since it first hit shelves last November. The PS4 interface has been smoothed a bit and improved in overall performance; an array of third-party games delivering fantastic experiences continues to expand; the list of heavyweight media partners keeps lengthening.

The System

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The Interface

The Dual Shock

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The Games

Streaming

Sharing

Content Partners

The Add-Ons

Yet at the same time, owners have also had to deal with recurring service problems. Sony’s new system is selling incredibly well, but still seems to be searching for that one magical exclusive game. The controller, camera, and Vita each offer intriguing features that still haven’t been fully utilized by games or apps. Certain popular apps like HBO Go and Spotify are still missing—and we suspect in some cases that this is because Sony wants to boost attachment to its own proprietary media services.So where does PlayStation 4 stand now, given that our original PS4 review is no longer as applicable as it once was? That’s where this re-review comes in. After spending 12 months with the PS4, it’s clear that it’s a system that’s still growing toward its full potential. But while there’s still plenty of room for future developers to explore the full potential of the system, make no mistake—this is a great console that’s maturing into an even better one.The PlayStation 4 is an attractive system, with a sleek profile that keeps to a modern aesthetic. The box is small, with clean lines that extend even to the thin LED strip that displays its power status. The capacitive buttons that power on the system and eject discs are flush with the front of the system, which can make them a bit tricky to activate, but still maintains the sense of minimalism. There are also two USB 3.0 ports that allow you to charge your controller, stream music from a USB storage device, or save games to a USB storage device. At the back, Sony has done away with non-digital ports, offering only HDMI video/audio output, SPDIF for surround sound audio, a gigabit Ethernet port, and a proprietary jack for the PlayStation Camera.The only real problem with the PS4’s form factor is how its trapezoid shape creates an angled back that can make seeing and accessing its ports difficult. If you need to check or change a plug, the whole thing has to come off the shelf so you can get at what you need. I’ve fewer complaints about the thermal exhaust at the back, as the system stays relatively cool during extended use.That said, the fans that draw in air are loud enough to be heard as a slight hum during quiet moments of movies and games, at least on my system; other users aren’t having the same problem. What those fans are cooling is certainly more powerful than last gen, though. Under the hood lie an 1.6GHz AMD APU composed of two quad-core modules and 8GBs of GDDR5 memory that power the fast, fluid performance of the OS and various apps, and of course, the long overdue leap in graphics from last-gen. There’s also a 500GB hard drive that’s upgradable using off-the-shelf parts. And capping off the list of internal parts is 802.11a/b/g/n wi-fi, which, while not cutting-edge, should still feel fast if you’re on an average broadband connection.The PS4’s operating system is straightforward and fast, improving and expanding upon the PS3’s XMB interface with a greater focus on social interaction and content. All of the core functions, such as the PSN Store, your profile, and Trophies, are all presented in a linear horizontal row that uses big, legible icons and grants you immediate access to your recent games and the most relevant information about your recent accomplishments in those games. Sony has smartly reduced the endless horizontal scroll of the games and app bar, which makes finding your most recent content a bit more manageable.Getting in and out of content is remarkably fast, even without an upgrade to a solid-state drive. The system boots up from a cold start or standby in under 30 seconds, and you can swap in and out of apps with a minimum of fuss. Games also load impressively quickly, and you can immediately pause the action to go to the dashboard, start watching a stream on Twitch, check the status of downloads, or see what your friends are up to—the first time I placed the Dragon Age: Inquisition disc in the system, I was in the game’s Options screen in 3.5 minutes. Twenty seconds later, I had quit the game, gone back to the dashboard and had Minecraft loaded up and ready to go.The opportunity to interact with PSN friends permeates every corner of the OS, in contrast to the sterile, isolated social experience on the PS3. There’s a new consolidated activity feed called What’s New that lists out all of your friends’ recent activity, which includes what games they’re playing, Trophies they’ve earned, friends they’ve added, screenshots they’ve posted, and videos they’ve captured. While it does provide a comprehensive view of what your friends have been up to, the abundance of trivial information, such as who watched Netflix, or who earned a particular Trophy, is really just so much noise and not particularly informative or encouraging. And while you still can’t change your PSN user name, at least you have the option to share your real names with people on your friends list.The PS4 also benefits from cross-game party chat and unified, multi-user messaging. Parties offer the ability to have voice and text communication with up to seven other players. Within the party interface, you can choose to boost chat audio over in-game audio or even swap between talking to your party and chatting with your in-game team on the fly. Oddly, however, neither group is muted regardless of which you choose, which depending on how you look at it, can be an annoyance or a useful tool. On the one hand, it’s helpful for preserving awareness of strategic information provided by your in-game team, but on the other, it can conflict with your party members when the two groups end up talking over each other without knowing it.The primary issue with the PlayStation infrastructure primarily comes from the sometimes spotty status of PSN. It wasn’t a particularly grating problem when it was free, but now that it’s behind a $50 subscription fee, I expect a bit more reliability. The same is true of the firmware updates, which have caused no small amount of problems for users of the service. Sony has been relatively quick to respond to outages and bugs, but the experience would be better without these issues cropping up at all.Of all the new tweaks and changes in this current generation of PlayStation consoles, the PS4’s redesigned controller is my favorite part. As someone who never took to any prior iteration of the DualShock, I’ve found this more ergonomic, convenient design easy to adapt to. The grips are rounded and textured now, which makes play more comfortable overall, while the dimpled thumbsticks and curved triggers lend a sense of stability and precision. This is a controller that has a great fit in your hand and puts everything right where you need it. The “Start” and “Select” buttons have smartly been renamed “Options” and “Share,” which frankly make more sense than the previous terms. Even better, the buttons are flush with the face of the controller, reducing accidental presses during more frenzied moments.The DualShock 4 also adds new functionality—most notably, game audio runs directly through the gamepad. You can plug in any standard set of 3.5mm headset or earbuds into the headphone jack at the base of the controller to access in-game audio, as well as chat. (The controller doesn’t support USB-powered headsets, unfortunately, so if you own one of those, they won’t be of use to you for this purpose.) While you don’t get surround-sound processing, the audio quality is surprisingly good, even if the included single-earbud set is not.) Not all headsets or earbuds work perfectly, though—I’ve noticed odd feedback issues with certain headsets, like Apple’s earpods, but most work just fine. It’s by no means a replacement for high-end headphones, but it’s more than sufficient for general use and cuts down on wire clutter considerably.You’ll likely interact with other new features, like the controller’s touchpad and speaker, far less. At this point in time, developers haven’t bothered much with incorporating either into their games or apps. The touchpad has been relegated, for the most part, to simple text entry that isn’t much faster than using the d-pad. And the speaker still hasn’t been used for anything more sophisticated than the chimes in Knack. As for the colored lights on the front of the controller, which work with the camera’s face recognition to identify players, it’s nifty, but it’s not any faster or more reliable than just selecting players using the buttons on the controller. (Incidentally, the light can’t be disabled if you don’t want to use it or it bothers you, but it at least isn’t visible when looking down at the top of the controller.)As for battery life, you’ll drain the controller’s battery over the course of a day of dedicated play, meaning you’re either stuck buying a second controller or playing no farther than your charging cable allows. Fortunately, the two USB 3.0 ports on the front of the PS4 make it easy to charge, even while the system is in standby mode. For me, a second controller was the easier option, but it seems that battery life could be extended if Sony allowed you to disable some of the less essential (and less exploited) features of the controller.As powerful and advanced as a system is, it’s ultimately just a platform for content. In a nutshell, while the PS4 has had plenty of great multi-platform releases, the lineup of first-year exclusives hasn’t offered much beyond Killzone and Infamous. Sony’s console is still waiting for that “must-have” exclusive and, as excited as people are about Bloodborne and The Order 1886, I think we’ll be waiting until Uncharted 4 is released (hopefully) next year before we see that one essential game that everyone can play only on PlayStation. That said, despite the occasional problem caused by firmware updates, the experience of the third-party games on the PS4 has been relatively robust and the PS4 is a great option for the current generation of games.(For a fuller look at all the platform offers, check out our list of the top 25 PS4 games , as well as our highest scoring PS4 game reviews .)Sharing gameplay experiences both inside PSN and with third-party services like Twitter or Facebook is seamless—and quick. That goes for both memorializing your best (or funniest) gameplay moments as well as having friends join your session. The PS4’s social and game-sharing tools are accessible at any time thanks to multitasking; jumping in and out of games to view a message or check the status of a PSN download is almost instantaneous. The only time I’ve experienced any slowdown at all is when my connection quality dropped or I was disconnected entirely, at which point the OS struggles to retrieve social data.For livestreaming, getting up and running is as easy as tapping the share button on the DualShock 4 to save a screenshot or video clip, or broadcast live over Twitch or Ustream. Unlike on PlayStation 3, streaming gameplay doesn’t require additional hardware and software—you can get up and running within seconds. The ability to see comments onscreen in real time makes interaction with viewers simple and fun, and a picture-in-picture view (offered when you use the optional PlayStation camera accessory) adds a personal touch. There are a few disappointing limitations currently, however. For one, the software lacks the ability to dictate compression levels and resolutions outside of generic presets like “good,” “great,” and “best.” There’s also no ability to archive broadcasts, which eliminates replay value for anyone who missed the initial stream.If you’re not interested in streaming, but still want to show off your achievements, you can also upload saved gameplay clips to YouTube as well as transfer clips and screenshots to and from a storage device via the system’s USB ports. Performance is mixed for the YouTube experience, though. Uploads can be spotty, with frequent errors that generally aren’t addressed in any of the troubleshooting resources we’ve searched. The feature came on very recently, and relies on Google, so we imagine this is just a fleeting growing pain, but it’s still frustrating that you can’t yet easily upload clips to YouTube from the PS4 directly. In contrast, the USB uploads to the system are very convenient and simple, in terms of the transfer speed as well as the overall file indexing and access on the PS4 itself. I was able to copy 250MB of files in 3 minutes.And if you want to share your gameplay session with a friend or family member who’s physically elsewhere, PlayStation’s current firmware at the time of this review supports a Share Play feature, which was initially announced during the system’s reveal at E3 2013 but has only just come online. Through it, you can replicate the couch co-op experience both by handing control of your game over to anyone on your friends list, or inviting any of them to participate in two-player co-op online for a game that otherwise offers only local multiplayer. A third but understandably less advertised use lets you give your friends a chance to try out games that you’ve already bought.To host a Share Play session you must be a PS+ member, but anyone who has a PSN account can join and share in any hosted single-player experiences. To get the most out of the feature, including participation in online co-op sessions, all players will have to be PS+ members. All sessions are, unfortunately, capped at an hour, at which point the host will have to reinvite the participants. The limitation seems designed to discourage hosts from setting up sessions that they’re not monitoring or participating in, thereby granting unlimited access to games that the participant has not purchased.Share Play works, and definitely adds some value to the experience of owning a PS4, but the reliability of the connection leaves a bit to be desired, particularly for twitch-heavy action games. Strangely, many of the co-op games that’d benefit most from this feature simply don’t allow it. That means no online co-op play for games like Minecraft or Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. To add further annoyance, the PS4 doesn’t bother to tell you Share Play is restricted; it simply keeps Share Play from happening with virtually no explanation, leaving you to wonder what the problem really is. We had further confusion over the feature, as Lego Batman 3 inexplicably didn’t work and then, just as mysteriously, started working fine two days later.If you’re a gamer who also uses the system as a media player, you’ll get a lot out of the PS4. In addition to being a reliable Blu-ray player, the PlayStation 4 incorporates most of the heavy hitters in the streaming world, including Netflix and Hulu Plus. The system also offers support for watching games via the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL Sunday Ticket apps, but sadly for sports fans, there’s no ESPN. Video-hungry users will also note the absence of HBO Go and Comedy Central.Sony has also prioritized its own video-on-demand and music services, which means not only that there’s no third-party music apps like Spotify or Pandora on the system, but also that Netflix has been pushed off of the console’s landing page. Sony’s obviously heavily invested in its own proprietary media players, but that’s small consolation to gamers who are used to a world where the platform is relatively insignificant when compared to the content. Recent updates do allow users to run music off of an attached USB drive, but the media-streaming feature that was so popular on the PS3 is absent here on the PlayStation 4. Previously, the PS3 supported DNLA streaming, which made it possible (and easy) to play content stored on your PC. You can’t do that on PS4; instead, Sony’s pushing gamers toward its own proprietary Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services.In the ecosystem beyond just the console, the PlayStation 4 can utilize both a camera (the PlayStation Camera) as well as connect remotely to the PlayStation Vita. Each adds to the experience, but not as much as fans of each could hope for.Right now the camera is most useful for three main functions. Most importantly, it allows for picture-in-picture of your face when streaming over Twitch or Ustream. It also allows for instant face recognition, which, when combined with the colored lights on the front of the controllers, immediately assigns profiles to the gamers present. The third option, and quite likely least important, is the camera’s limited series of voice commands that work well enough start games and navigate the menus, but recognizes far fewer commands than Microsoft’s Kinect. (And annoyingly, it lacks a command to turn the system on at all.)But despite these useful functions, the camera feels a bit like an afterthought—perhaps even just a way for Sony to respond to Microsoft’s Kinect. There’s still no bundle for the system that includes the camera, and developers don’t currently seem motivated create content around the camera. (Though to be fair, on the flip side of the coin, Microsoft’s decision last year to only offer the Xbox One with Kinect doesn’t seem to have encouraged much Kinect-oriented development in its catalog.) Sony’s PlayRoom is essentially a rough tech demo, and there aren’t any video-conferencing options.PS Vita owners will have a less disappointing experience than PlayStation Camera purchasers, but it’s still not as perfect as it could be. The Vita can be used for Remote Play of PS4 games, but it only works over wi-fi, and it’s not as lag-free as I’d like to see. Even when you’re on a great connection, with no interference and the two consoles near each other, you won’t get the responsiveness you need in twitch-focused games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. And I still saw lag in games like Minecraft.So when will you use Remote Play? It has intriguing potential for a secondary-screen experience, like you’d see on the Wii-U game pad, but its main utility is in keeping your game going even when other people in the house want to use the big TV. As with the camera, we’ve yet to see any developers treat it with the same sort of inventiveness as we’ve seen on the Wii-U -- Assassin’s Creed 4 treasure maps notwithstanding. Neither the PS4 nor the Vita will sell each other based purely on this feature, but it’s a great bit of additional value for gamers who already own both.