Before the Disc Goes In

The PlayStation 4 launched in November 2013, and in the days before it hit stores, a video of a man named Francis unboxing an early unit made the rounds. New controller in his hands, the matte-black slab sitting on a table, and a quality of happiness on his face that felt unself-conscious in a way unboxing videos usually aren’t. He was just happy. Genuinely, straightforwardly, uncomplicated happy.

I’ve grown suspicious of unboxing culture as a genre. There’s something parasocial and slightly sad about watching someone else receive a thing—you’re borrowing the sensation of acquisition without the acquisition itself. But the console launch video is a slightly different animal. It’s less about the object and more about the return of a specific feeling: the one you had at twelve when a new machine meant a new world, a new contract with possibility. That feeling has a short half-life. Francis had it fully, on camera, for about three minutes.

The PS4 itself delivered exactly what it promised—more of what the PS3 was, faster, prettier, with a controller that finally fixed the triggers. Not a revolution. A generation. The kind of product whose value reveals itself slowly, over years of software, rather than in the moment of unboxing. But that moment of unboxing is still something. The box is always better than what’s in it, which is exactly why we film ourselves opening boxes—trying to hold the promise still before reality arrives to complicate it.

A few years on, I still don’t own one.