As we come out of coverage of E3 and eagerly anticipate the release of next-gen consoles later this year; there has been a good deal of discussion about the social networking, graphical and visual capabilities of these new boxes. The two things that have excited me the most about the Playstation 4 specifically aren’t it’s custom processing unit, background downloading, or even integrated Playstation Move functionality. What I am happy to see is two things the new DualShock 4 controller has: a headphone jack and a SHARE button.
Let’s start off with the headphone jack which according to Wikipedia is a: “stereo jack (3.5 mm TRS connector) will support the connection of a headset to allow a user to speak and hear audio simultaneously.” Why is this such a big deal? Such a jack’s primary purpose seems to be for a mono headset, so how can that possibly raise the visibility of audio? Easy! When used as an actual stereo output into decent headphones; those of us with sleeping girlfriends, sleeping children, sensitive neighbors and awful TV speakers or poor 5.1 setups will be able to hear crisp, clean and clear audio for maybe the first time ever.
The Wii U controller also has a headphone jack that can be used in such a way. Anecdotally I have had great experience hearing the fantastic sound design in Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City this way. Regardless of the time of day or state of slumber anyone around my proximity is in; I have been able to enjoy game audio at full volume in my headphones. Unfortunately the Wii U is in a bit of a Western AAA game drought with no forecast of precipitation. This functionality in Nintendo’s console will still be useful for first party games like Zelda and Mario, but I don’t think these titles enough can shift perception of audio as much as Sony’s third-party friendly device.
The Playstation 4 has the potential for all AAA multiplatform titles as well at it’s own exclusive titles which all the the possibly of fantastic audio. While the last generation has shown a significant increase in interest and budgets of game audio; the headphone jack will make it even harder for consumers and developers alike to ignore or marginalize audio in games. Soon; even an infrequent consumer of games whose console is basically a First Person Shooter and Sports game machine might plug their Beats by Dre headphones into their controller and hear a whole new world of audio that may or may not be to their liking. This is an impending a reality teams will have to think about: boring or substandard audio will be a bigger factor in the success of games than in the past. (Not to in any way suggest the above mentioned genres have poor audio. Quite the opposite: sports and FPS games have pushed game audio technology and quality forward a great deal).
And much like the Wii U; one can assume the headphones will work with DVDs, Movies, and streaming videos. Not only will games benefit from a user’s ability to hear great audio in their headphones, but tv and films will also hopefully see a boost from the new functionality.
Moving on; the SHARE button on the controller activates an interesting feature: “allowing the player to cycle through the last 15 minutes of gameplay to select a screenshot or video clip appropriate for sharing. Media is uploaded seamlessly from the console to other PSN users or social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.”
In addition to being able to show off cool headshots or weird game bugs with friends; the SHARE functionality will allow people like the contributors to this site or others into game audio discussion to share sound studies. Sound studies like the many Damian Kastbauer has done; are video captures of gameplay for the purpose of viewing/listening to the sound and implementation in said titles. Without the need of expensive and complicated video capture hardware and software; many more people will be able to capture snippets of gameplay for the purpose of discussing the pros and cons of specific sound design and technical sound design decisions and implementations. While this sounds like a fringe use of the feature; I think it will be integral and incredibly useful in future discussions and even convention talks on game audio.
Who knows if these features will in fact make any sort of difference in the state of audio in the coming console generation. However, between the above hardware in the PS4 and the rumored sound block in the Xbox One; I think now is a very exciting time in game audio and part of that positive anticipation is due the console manufacturers.
What an exciting news!
Gamers now can use headphones and not crappy tv speakers!
Wait… There is something wrong about that…
It is not 2003 today! It’s 2013!
PC users have been using headphones for decades. Another confirmation that pathetic consoles only hamper the industry.
I dont think that’s entirely true Robert. The hardware inside consoles like the Super Nintendo’s Sony Audio Processor and PS3’s Blu Ray’s capacity have certainly helped deliver high quality (at the time) and memorable sounds in the case of the former and capability for more files at higher quality sample rates in the latter.
To be fair; headphones are much more of a requirement (or at least very common) on the PC since 5.1 Surround hardware is much more rare on PCs whereas headphones arent as much of a priority for console designers or console developers as they have 5.1 hardware output easily available. I don’t think anyone would deny that 5.1 capability in consoles has only helped the industry.
I’m glad to see the headphone jack coming to the PS4 controller, but I’m hesitant to assume that game/system audio will play through it. The 360 also has a headphone jack as you may recall, but only VOIP functions come out of it. I haven’t seen (nor not seen) that this will be the case with the PS4.
The Xbox One seems to actually bring something perhaps more interesting to the table – the fact that you can “Picture In Picture” television and a game side-by-side. I don’t really understand how this won’t come out as a jumbled mess for audio, since you can’t PiP a sound. However, if Xbox were to implement a sound-through-controller-headphones, it would make a lot of sense to have the tv over the main output, for example, and the game through the controller’s headphones.
Very interesting and exciting times for console audio.
According to the PS4 website: “Built-in Mono Speaker and Headset Jack
Enjoy high-fidelity sound effects of games from both the TV and also from the controller. Chat with friends playing online with the bundled headset.”
I assume that means the same functionality as the Wii U. As “high-fidelity sound effects” does not mean mono sound.
Hi,
the real question you have to ask first if the topic consern audio quality experience is the compression format inused in the wireless system.
On the wiiU it’s a bluetooth low rez compression that destroy the rendering. I would definitly prefere plugging an haedphone on my tv to appreciate Masseffect 3…:)
What’s really good in the next gen concerning audio quality is actually simple: memory size. It’s huge so we can hope games will use more pcm sound than mp3.
wait and listen…