Sony Continues Its Quest To Port Every Game In Existence By Bringing Ingress to PlayStation 4

In an effort to port every game released prior to 2014 to their console, Sony announced yesterday that the Niantic Labs developed geolocation game Ingress will be ported to the PlayStation 4. Revealed alongside other upcoming ports such the Mass Effect Trilogy, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider (1996), Bioshock Infinite, Braid, God of War I and III, Beatles Rock Band, LittleBigPlanet 2, Borderlands 2, Dishonored, Demon’s Souls, Dead Space 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Horse Armor add-on pack and Madden ‘09 among others, Ingress is expected to release sometime in the summer of 2014 and feature little to no changes to the game currently played on Android devices worldwide.

For the uninitiated, Ingress is a real life game of capture-the-flag featuring two teams, the green “Enlightened” and the blue “Resistance”, physically moving to real life monuments, churches and other historical landmarks to “capture” portals and gain points for their teams using their smartphones. Many players choose to drive or even walk to the portals to capture them and often times meet up with other players to form strategies and gain more points through linking portals into giant fields. 

Sony and Niantic Labs have confirmed that the game will still require the player to be physically at portals to do anything, despite the fact that the PlayStation 4 itself is not portable.

“You know that portal right next to your house that you love so much?” one Sony executive told IGN, ”well imagine being able to hack it from your PlayStation 4 instead of having to go through the grueling process of taking out your phone and unlocking it to do so. We believe the comfort of sitting with a nice controller in your hand and typing via the PS4’s on screen keyboard is the optimal experience for Ingress.” The executive also noted that players are more than welcome to pick up and move their console to the a friends house, local Starbucks, bus station, middle of nowhere in a park late at night, or middle of a busy intersection to hack the portal they’re after.

Play between an Ingress agent on console and phone will be seamless, with chat being integrated as well as items being able to be easily swapped between platforms. Players can also expect several improved social features to the game, such as Facebook updates via the PlayStation network whenever an XMP burster is fired to attack an enemy portal. While the updates are mandatory and cannot be in any way changed, Niantic and Sony both promise they will be infrequent and subtle. “Really, how often do you fire bursters anyway? Once? 40 times? in a minute? The updates will hardly be noticeable to anyone not following you on Facebook,” said one Niantic engineer.

Veteran Ingress players as well as curious PS4 owners all appear to be excited about the release, with long-time player HackUrPortal69 telling us,”I can’t wait to stop playing this game using my stupid phone and start playing it on my powerful PS4. I’m already working on a waterproof hoodie/backpack/carrying case that can house the PS4 and a 7,500 watt power generator!” and several PS4 owners telling us how excited they are that they can finally play something other than Infamous: Second Son.