Having the courage to stick to your message is one thing, but not having the sense to learn from your mistakes is another. After dominating E3 – as much down to Microsoft’s high profile disaster of an unveiling as Sony’s successes – Gamescom was Sony’s opportunity to reveal the little details of its console, comfortable in the knowledge it didn’t need to have a big wow! reveal this time around.

These smaller announcements are important, because they show how Sony has listened to its consumers and refocused its approach. No clearer was this than in the pricing, a comparatively reasonable £349 compared to the PS3’s hefty £425 launch price – coincidentally, that’s still £4 cheaper than the Xbox One will be.

There was also a big push around independent games, an area that both major manufacturers failed on last generation. The major games developers (EA, Ubisoft, I’m looking at you) have increasingly become a necessary evil in the closed off games console market, whilst PC gamers have flocked in droves to independent games like Minecraft, and the response of the gaming community to this segment of its presentation speaks for itself.

There were also plenty of hints at the PS4’s non-gaming ecosystem (Music Unlimited, Twitch.tv, Netflix, Hulu, a Virgin broadband tie in) it just didn’t shout about them – after all, there’s a reason people buy a games console over a forty quid Chromecast.

photo credit: – EMR –