I like indepth discussions and you hit some fair points so i'll respond to your points and add some of my own.

1) Cost

I intend to answer each point individually in the other sections but all my comments turned out to be similar in this section.
The cost of the game is not something that is worth the community discussing or worrying about in this situation. Hex are the business that hire the professionals, despite changes that we don't necessarily agree with the decisions at the place we know they know what they're doing and the situation they're in and that's for them to work on in the way that they see fit.
We often bring it up when it comes to features but we know when a feature is worked on it's hexes existing team that's done it. A port is significantly different, especially in this case since it's a console exclusive port seemingly backed by sony. They may have been provided staff dedicated to working on the PS4 versions or at least funding for them to hire the staff themselves so it didn't affect any other part of development. Or it could even have been that they did a lot of system improvements/optimizations stating after the leave of gameforge and the PS4 version was done along with those improvements so it had very little impact on development. Of course I don't know this and no one out of hex knows it but i'm just throwing out possibilities.
The name change could be for several reasons which again we won't know as long as we're outside of hex. The simplest reason could just be search result filtering. Maybe they don't want to split search results before hexes site and playstations if someone searches "Hex: Shards of Fate".
And finally on the future. Again we don't know the system in place here and it's not worth thinking about because we don't know the deal. Maybe there's still the main hex team and a ps4 team converting all that to PS4 at the same time? Maybe it's set up in a way that all code changes apply to both versions now (I'm not actually sure if this is possible but it's just for example sake)? It's also very unlikely that hex would make a deal that delayed other content when they've only recently manged to get on a consistent launch schedule.

2) Audience

i/ This is just a wrong way to look at things that I see many people who primarily use PC do. There's more PC's than PS4 of course. And at an given time their might be more people online on steam than a PS4. PC will always show up as being the dominant console in terms of playerbase because it is incredibly inflated by the low spec threshold F2P games that only exist on PC like LoL, WoW and Hearthstone. Steam numbers are also heavily inflated by people using steam only a couple times then never turning off it's auto-sign in. And finally most of all PC games tend to be far more backwards compatible so the people who do play often end up being split across many more games. While their is cross in the market there's currently 60million sold PS4s and the majority probably do their gaming almost exclusively on the consoles. When people spend all day working on a PC some of them want to avoid interacting with another one as much as possible and a Console lets them do that. Also you know a game (most of the time) will work without issues on a console which PC there is possibility of issues due to the games having to be made with 1000's of PC combinations in mind.

ii/ I don't know this myself (though their's probably numbers somewhere). Though I do know console games tend to come and go faster than on pc. At the end of it though there's 60million users, there's no way there's a box they can be lumped into. I'm actually going to finish my response to this with 2 other questions.
iii/ Does hex have 1 target audience or multiple?
iv/ Do you think hex is actually correct in the audience they are targeting?

3) History

i/ Until the launch of dedicated online card games only what 3 or 4 years ago? with Hex and Hearthstone the video versions of card games almost universally sold better on consoles. They weren't common by any means but of the ones launched the console versions tended to do significantly more popular than the PC ones. Don't get me wrong they weren't like the best selling games on the consoles but their were some getting 500,000 to even over 1 million sales. It's only since Hex+HS (mostly HS) that card games have started being looked at as a PC/Tablet thing.

ii/ This is very subjective. A controller is not necessarily slower than a mouse and keyboard. In fact it has benefits for hex in terms of gameplay. It looks like a targeting is how cards will be selected which I assume will be moved using the D-Pad (though that hasn't been shown yet). So maybe in large hands you may have to click a lot/hold a button down for a few seconds to move along but you will be far more accurate with those large hands as you'll be able to move 1 card at a time through them. In the average game I don't expect there to be much difference between a PC and PS4 player once they play a few games and get used to the controls.
I don't know about the chat situation since we've not seen chat yet, apparently the touchpad on the PS4 Controller has made using the onscreen keyboard very quick to use but I haven't got the console to use it myself.

4) Impact on the game in general

There's one big assumption you are making here that a lot of people are making. You are assuming just because we didn't see FRA or Campaign that means they aren't in. Sony has a marketing strategy planned. It's possible they made hex leave it out of the initial reveal because they want to 'announce' them later. Aside from the trading part one of hexes big ways it is separated from other digital card games is its PvE modes which out shine all other card games. They have a F2P model designed around them existing. They share a server with our server. They will see all the stuff in store for gold and if their only access to gold was buying it from PC players or the little amount from ladder every 2 months problems would begin fast. There's no sense in launching without the PvE side no matter how you look at it and if Sony is helping with it you can bet they would make sure when this game launches it will be on par with the PC versions.

5) From sonys point of view

This is the 3rd side which people aren't necessarily discussing. Do you know how many game that have card as part of their genre are actually on the PS4 right now in its almost 1500 game library? I counted 12.
Risk, Risk: Urban Assault, Uno, Yugioh! Legacy of the Duelist, Twilight Struggle, Duelyst, The Four Kings Casino and Slots, Gwent, Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur, Pox Nora, Prominence Poker and Qurare: Magic Library

Now this was just a Wikipedia list and obviously a lot of those aren't exactly shining examples of a card game. In fact most of them are either boardgames or a different genre of game that happens to use cards.
The only games on that list that are true card games are Gwent and Yugioh. Lets ignore yugioh since that's just a yearly launch game that you pay for, gets some DLC for a few new cards then they stop supporting by the end of the year (in this case it was December 2016). And Gwent is multiplatform game for XboxOne, PS4 and PC which has had a good start and that still isn't a trading card game just a CCG.

My point is that there's no strong competition on this market for consoles right now but there's clearly a market that exists around it. Now they could go around developing their own IP of a card game but Developing+ later maintaining it would be a huge investment for them and by the time it is done it could almost be time for the next console generation and the card game market may have started to fill in. But sony have been loving their console exclusives this generation, looking at the same wikipedia article it lists 1457 games, 109 are apparently straight exclusive and 410 are console exclusive. So over 1/3 of their library but no true card game in that list.
So if making their own IP is too much of a gamble to get to the market why not look for what already exists? They don't need to choose hex but with the steady pace of content and more features planned it's not a bad investment choice either.

It is a mutually beneficial for the companies in that sense. Hex gets a good push from at least for this generation the best of the 3 consoles for marketing. And sony for far less cost than a making a full game now get to add a console exclusive game genre to their games list and it's in a genre which has shown huge signs for potential popularity.

6) This made the post too long so i'm putting it in a 2nd post.

6) The long-term benefit for hex

This is actually where my biggest worry is from this launch. The steam numbers were always going to drop after the launch wave because all marketing is directed to the hex site and players always recommend new players who ask about it use the main client (unless they're have patch issues).
But there's very little reason to see a drop in the PS4 numbers as the game has a different title so players will look up that version if they're interested meaning the only reason is lose of interest.
Now while the dueling pit looks like it will help i'm still very worried about hexes transition process from new player to experienced player to competitive player.
Limited is the closest it can get without offering phantom since it has a very low entry with low difficulty reward in evo then if someone wants to test themselves more they can move to draft (ideally some day there's a more new player friendly draft mode and experienced player friendly sealed but at least there's a stepping stone right now). And it peaks off with the clash if someone wants to try and play for top 16 to get their entry back (The AAAs struggle to sell so there's a good chance they might be worth 0 to someone without a lot of patients, at least top 16 gives a clash ticket which is essentially 6 packs.) Phantom would just add a 'dip your toes' option but phantom for a TCG that doesn't have 10'000's of players concurrently isn't the best idea as it just takes people away from the paid queues.
Constructed is a big problem though. It starts with a free queue but because of the nature of TCG's they may just be stomped over and over by high tier decks even from early on which can deter people, they don't risk anything at least. But if they climb well and get to plat/cosmic they might want to start playing for actual prizes and this is where the huge problem comes in, if someone wants to play for something they have to wait for the Bash and the Bash doesn't actually reward the entry back until top 8 (since again the AAA struggles to sell and even went for as low as 1000 plat even when it did sell in week 2. And top 16 doesn't add much either since it only lets you enter the event again which you may not even be able to do and if you can you might just lose quickly and be out.) Because of this getting your entry back in a bash can need over an 80% win rate which considering the ladder queue doesn't really care about winrate since there's nothing up for grabs to begin with leaves this huge canyon between the two. Some might enter the bash at first but they will fast learn if it's a tournament right for them or not. The fiveshard weekies and vaults might help but the events being free makes them very different to paid events. Basically I worry about just how many of the PS4 hype players will stick around and actually keep playing once they have tried some constructed if that's what they want to play because the barrier line between Bash and ladder is basically vertical right now and I think that will make a lot of players lose interest.

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That's all my thoughts so far. I see it as a very strong short-term gain. Maybe even mid-term one as well but what it comes down to is the same thing i've been saying for 16 months. If they don't make the ondemand situation for constructed better it is going to struggle long term at least for that portion of the game. But the possibilities with Sony working with do so create some fun things to think about in the future if this has a big enough impact for Sony to want to do it.

I strongly believe that as particularly - mentioned in the above comments - console players (in particular PS4) are a rather different clientel from PC players. Console players are mostly casual players, playing two kinds of games: either story-telling/single player games such as Heavy Rain, Uncharted, GTA which from my point of view are conssole heavy due to their similarity in consumption to 20th century TV watching; or party games/sports games such as PES, SSB, Mario Party or NFS which can be played non-chalantly at one spot and console with friends.

I remember times, when I was a kid, playing games on my forget-me-not beloved N64. You all know starcraft, the RTS game which is considered to be the most competitive game of all times. There has been developed a prototype for the N64, which has been developed upon the great success of its PC original. But never actually took off and getting copies nowadays is stupidly costly due to small production series. But why did it not have success in the console format? First of all, playing against each other on one screen is not exactly competitive, but more importantly, the speed at which you could play was very strongly limited to the analog sticks speed and accuracy. Scrolling over the screen was a pain in the butt. You see the point.

What I am alluding to here is the mind set and haptic and mental adhesion toward the essence of a game. HEX is a complex game, which needs thinking, experience and time. It is very okey in the PC format because, atleast to me, it seems as a battle of wits at either the office/job place, or at a table, more as if playing a nice round of chess.

On consoles however, I feel that a majority of players is not sitting upright like playing chess, but rather cuddling into a sofa. The mentality is different, which I believe causes an inner awkwardness toward the act of playing. It is, in the case of HEX, not something you play alone like watching a film, nor is it something you would do with your partner or friends at your home.

I know that this comment is rather emotional, more so irrational. Yet I feel that if spreading HEX on more channels is the strategy, going with SONY is not a good option I believe. I personally would go with an infrastructure at Amazon Webservices making it less platform dependent and universally streamable on any kind of device.

@Karlsruhe Totally agree


With a lot of rainbows and unicorns

This is making so many bad assumptions it's not even funny. The console crowd has a very large portion of competitive players, especially in the fighting game scene, but also for FPS games. Secondly, the RTS genre really doesn't translate to consoles at all, so using that as an example is completely pointless. There's a million ways this endeavor could turn out badly, but it will not be because the console crowd is too casual and it will not be because the game doesn't fit on a console (if the port was done right, and I trust HXE to not bugger that up). Ultimately, until we have more information we're speculating based on almost nothing, so I wouldn't worry too much about any of it right now.

Preface: Man, you are pretty hardcore about this game to have this kind of reaction. As much as I have been a whiner myself and my words sometime might make me look like I am a raging buffalo, I am never that angry. It can be unhealthy, better to be more chilled in the future. Although I am quite surprised by my lack of emotion on this since I don't personally agree with the decision being the best either, but eh.

To start with the intro, I think this PS4 thing will bring in a bunch of players. That's a big tick on player attraction. However, it does absolutely nothing on general player retention, which in my eyes is one of the biggest hurdle of Hex at the moment.

1) Cost

I would like to contribute but I have not much to say on this part. Without knowing the financial detail, there is not much I can comment. To be honest, I am more curious on development time used on this than cost. I don't care about cost, it's not my position to care about that, but I do care about development time spent on it because it affects when I might get the features that I might like, on a personal scale. On a grander scale, Hex still needs features that will retain players. Hopefully they have something very sweet for us real soon.

Eh, that's all I got. Among every sub-topic, this is likely the one I care the least.

2 + 3) Audience & Platform

If we are looking at the Reddit subtopic that you have posted a lot on, there are a lot of people who have said that they have friends that are console-oriented gamers. Personally, I have played a ton of YGO card games on console, Magic Duels is also pretty popular among XBox users. All these look to me that there are players out there for Hex to grab.

I disagree with your teen assessment. I think teenagers have the most time among gamers. They have nothing much to worry about in life and they probably don't have essential stuffs to do on weekends. This is my personal experience but I have been in enough games and communities out there to support my claim that teenager gamers have the time advantage.

I have done a lot of online post-by-post forum roleplay, both system-based(like the infamous D&D and so on) and freeform. In Proboards, the freeform-oriented RP board, most users there are teenagers or young adult and they are very active, like they can post every day and are looking for faster paced games. On some boards that have a higher adult presence, like RPGCrossing, a D&D-oriented RP board, most games are 2-3 posts per week(compared to teenagers' 7 posts per week) because adults have commitment.

In video games, in my experience, a lot of the people that are online more frequently and play the whole day are teenagers/young adults(usually students in college). I think a normal progression of gamer life goes like this: when you are young, you have all the time in the world but not the money to buy all the games you want; when you are older, you have all the money in the world(or at least enough for gaming) but not enough times to play everything. So, teenagers win in time and they would have 5-7 hours straight for a tournament if they commit.

They lack money, which is not that big of a problem here if they are willing to grind - my F2P friend who joined at around set 6 and grinded a lot would have the money to play all the events he want if he choose to. Currently, he is aiming to collect a playset of set 7; more than enough money to be playing Bash and Clash very week if he chooses to - and assuming PvE campaign eventually comes to PS4. Otherwise, then oh well, no grinding is definitely going to cut down on the younger gamers on the console front.

Reeplay's ii(and also Karlsruhe) -- I don't think we have to worried about come and go if we can position the game well enough. It is true that single player games conquered the console market but that doesn't mean there are no hardcore communities among these gamers. It is also false that they don't have competitive games -- PC just have more competitive genres than consoles. Last I checked, FIFA has competitive events. What about the whole fighting game e-sport scene? They even have EVO, an annual event for a lot of fighting games. What about Dark Souls PVP(or any game that have PVP), not competitive in terms of money-to-be-earned, but dedicated players have been playing for a while. Pokemon also has its own competitive scene, even breed an alternative scene that is Smogon with their own rules and such.

All the games I listed above have a decent portion of people that are not come and go. They stick to the game and master it, no different from sticking to games like Hex and CS in the PC platform.

Reeplay's iii & iv. This is the thing I disagree the most with Hex so far. From what I see, they are targeting the PvP crowd, they believe the PvP crowd will give them the most money and so on, but yet they only cater to the top layer of the pyramid. Among all the games out there, no matter how competitive or non-competitive, there are always more players in the lower end of the pyramid than the high end. LoL has released their statistic and Gold is like the 80th percentile I think. Same for DotA 2, the competitive MOBA known for their unfriendliness to new players, they have more 3000 MMR than 5000 MMR players. Hex so far has problem with catering to the lower end of the people and they seem to put too much focus on targeting the higher end and only the higher end.

I have the same observation as Reeplay 3.i. so yeah, the console market is there. Well, they don't have a card game of this scale before though, so that is new. If we are to look at Magic Duels, we can safely assume that players are not going to reject card game directly, whether they will stay after trying the game out is another question.

As for controller, I have played a fair share of YGO and what not with console. It might be slower but not by a lot so I don't think we have to be too worried about this. The only scenario that the controller might have issue is when there is a board with 50 creatures to choose from, that's a lot of D-Pad clicks for the controller. In a general board of <10 creatures, I would say the speed is not an issue.

4) Impact on the game in general

I think they really need to put gold in and make it more user-friendly in the start. As much as Hex Ent would like to push the PvP over and hope for players to pay for cards, they have to understand that a "softer" introduction is important. Not many people, even how willing to pay, is going to pay if they get wrecked on their second fight in the game or if they feel like the game is a horrible money grab five minutes in. No gold grind also cut down on the amount of players. While it doesn't affect their income as much since gold players are largely F2P, it does provide negative impact to their objective of "getting new players".

5) Sony's Point of View

Agreed almost entirely, not much to add, pretty spot on on the situation.

6) Long-term Benefit for Hex

I hold back on the 2+3 point for this part. I agree with the notion that Hex doesn't have enough to make people go from new players to veterans. Limited is fine on this part. Even if the player just draft forever, they are still benefiting in the long term on playing the game at a high level. Constructed, yes, constructed is a pain in the ass. As I have repeated more times than I threw down Lazgar's Vengeance, Hex's PvP is the most unfriendly environment I have been in all the multiplayer games I have played. I have mentioned the pyramid and the lack of low end focus and the current situation is what we get from that. The ladder is full of T1 decks, even at bronze and silver, and this along will piss off many potential customers. This is one thing that CCGs have an advantae over Hex. Their lower ranks actually feel like lower ranks and players can have fun messing around in it. We also have a dead casual queue and absolutely zero official support on casual formats so players can't even play for fun with other players. How much can you expect someone to spend money if they aren't having fun intially? Some players enjoy the more casual part of the game before jumping into competitive. Not everyone comes into the game with the "I am going to win this shit" mentality.

If Hex works on player retention, then long term profit isn't off the chart. Even Magic Duels have a strong player base for 2 years, Hex certainly can achieve that if they did not screw things up.