Having to pay for multiplayer on the PS4 is somewhat unfortunate compared to not paying on the PS3, but the article really doesn't do justice to what a great value PS+ is. I was an Xbox 360 gamer for most of the last gen but did buy a PS3 later on to play The Last of Us and some other PS3 exclusives and ended up getting PS+ on that machine just because the free game offerings were ridiculously good, way better than the stuff Microsoft has been doing in response on Xbox Live (giving away super old games like Halo 3, Gears of War and Asssasin's Creed 2 which most games who would be interested in already have). I now own a PS4 and don't mind the cost of PS+ because I'd be keeping my PS+ subscription active anyway.
Backward compatibility for consoles is rightly a thing of the past. I don't want companies to have to worry about making the hardware massively expensive (see: PS3) or reducing their ability to innovate by moving to new architectures. If I want to play PS3 or Xbox 360 games, I still have my PS3 and Xbox 360.
That aside, I do agree with the gist of the article.
I've noticed a relatively recent trend where big companies have no problem releasing a new version of something missing massive amounts of functionality missing from the previous version. I guess Final Cut Pro was one of the first big obvious instances of this, but it is happening all the time now from new consoles to Google's Map app, to lots of other things, and it can sometimes be really infuriating as a user, especially as we move into a world (via SaaS, web apps, forced updates, etc) where the app ecosystem virtually forces you to upgrade things on a constant basis with no easy ability to keep using the old thing that worked better for you.
Backward compatibility for consoles is rightly a thing of the past. I don't want companies to have to worry about making the hardware massively expensive (see: PS3) or reducing their ability to innovate by moving to new architectures. If I want to play PS3 or Xbox 360 games, I still have my PS3 and Xbox 360.
That aside, I do agree with the gist of the article.
I've noticed a relatively recent trend where big companies have no problem releasing a new version of something missing massive amounts of functionality missing from the previous version. I guess Final Cut Pro was one of the first big obvious instances of this, but it is happening all the time now from new consoles to Google's Map app, to lots of other things, and it can sometimes be really infuriating as a user, especially as we move into a world (via SaaS, web apps, forced updates, etc) where the app ecosystem virtually forces you to upgrade things on a constant basis with no easy ability to keep using the old thing that worked better for you.