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On February 20th, Sony announced and unveiled the Play Station 4 (PS4) at a press conference event held in New York. Andrew House, president and group chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., announced that Sony would be releasing the PS4, and that it would be "a moment of truth and a bold step forward for PlayStation and the company.”
Shortly after House's announcement, Sony lead system architect Mark Cerny went on stage and talked about its development and features. The PS4 has been in development since 2008, and will feature an 8-core 64-bit x86 "Jaguar" CPU built by AMD, an enhanced PC GPU (specifications are unknown thus far, but it will be similar to high-end PCs), and 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM capable of 176GB/sec of bandwidth (click here for more information on console specifications). In terms of graphics, Sony highlighted their focus on improved graphics; if you have a couple of minutes, I highly recommend watching this clip from the conference, which features Sony discussing their focus on conveying emotion through gaming and showing an example of what PS4 graphics will look like. If you want to jump straight to what the graphics look like, click here for a shorter clip.
The video link above illustrates this, a computer-generated man that was presented at the conference to illustrate the detailed and realistic graphics you can expect from PS4. In addition to hardware specifications, Sony unveiled the Dualshock 4 controller, which looks similar to the PS3 controller, with the exception that it now includes features such as a touch pad, share button, built-in speaker, and a Light Bar accessory that's similar to a PlayStation Move:
They also unveiled the PS4 Eye camera, a motion-control camera that looks and and has functions similar to Xbox's Kinect.
More details on the specifications of the controller and camera can be found here .
At the press conference, Sony emphasized what the feel of the PS4 would be like. They're focusing on giving PS4 a more social atmosphere by including features such as sharing games with friends, watching live broadcasts of games your friends are playing and being able to post comments and offer feedback while they play (you can also virtually "give" them your controller and have them play for you), and access to social services like Facebook and Ustream.
As of right now, there is no backward capability (meaning you can't play PS2 or PS3 games on the PS4), but Sony hopes that at some point in the future the PS4 would eventually have backward capability using cloud technology.
Other interesting features include remote play between the PS4 and PlayStation Vita and the ability to play games you're downloading/updating as you're downloading them (no more tapping your feet at the console waiting for a download to finish before playing- you can begin playing the game even if it's not done downloading yet!).
After introducing the PS4 itself, Sony showed clips/demos of many games that will be coming to PS4, incuding Blizzard's Diablo III. At the very end of the press conference, Sony confirmed a 2013 launch, stating that the PS4 is set to release "Holiday 2013," though at the moment it's unclear whether the release date will be closer to October or December.
Two crucial elements of the PS4 that were *not* discussed at the press conference were (a) what the console actually looks like, and (b) how much it will cost. Given the PS3's somewhat bulky design and relatively high release price of $599, some gamers are waiting to see the console and its price before getting too excited. Rumors are placing the cost at $400-450, but there has been no confirmation either way from Sony. Rumors have also been circulating that Sony will reveal what the PS4 looks like in June at E3, but this has also not been confirmed by Sony.
PS4's major rival is set to be Microsoft's successor to the Xbox, which has been termed Xbox720 and more recently Xbox Infinity. Microsoft is expected to unveil the next generation of Xbox at E3 in June (possibly earlier at the Game Developers Conference in March), and is rumored to also have a launch date of Holiday 2013, but as you can guess, neither the unveiling nor release date have been confirmed by Microsoft.
Shortly after House's announcement, Sony lead system architect Mark Cerny went on stage and talked about its development and features. The PS4 has been in development since 2008, and will feature an 8-core 64-bit x86 "Jaguar" CPU built by AMD, an enhanced PC GPU (specifications are unknown thus far, but it will be similar to high-end PCs), and 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM capable of 176GB/sec of bandwidth (click here for more information on console specifications). In terms of graphics, Sony highlighted their focus on improved graphics; if you have a couple of minutes, I highly recommend watching this clip from the conference, which features Sony discussing their focus on conveying emotion through gaming and showing an example of what PS4 graphics will look like. If you want to jump straight to what the graphics look like, click here for a shorter clip.
The video link above illustrates this, a computer-generated man that was presented at the conference to illustrate the detailed and realistic graphics you can expect from PS4. In addition to hardware specifications, Sony unveiled the Dualshock 4 controller, which looks similar to the PS3 controller, with the exception that it now includes features such as a touch pad, share button, built-in speaker, and a Light Bar accessory that's similar to a PlayStation Move:
They also unveiled the PS4 Eye camera, a motion-control camera that looks and and has functions similar to Xbox's Kinect.
More details on the specifications of the controller and camera can be found here .
At the press conference, Sony emphasized what the feel of the PS4 would be like. They're focusing on giving PS4 a more social atmosphere by including features such as sharing games with friends, watching live broadcasts of games your friends are playing and being able to post comments and offer feedback while they play (you can also virtually "give" them your controller and have them play for you), and access to social services like Facebook and Ustream.
As of right now, there is no backward capability (meaning you can't play PS2 or PS3 games on the PS4), but Sony hopes that at some point in the future the PS4 would eventually have backward capability using cloud technology.
Other interesting features include remote play between the PS4 and PlayStation Vita and the ability to play games you're downloading/updating as you're downloading them (no more tapping your feet at the console waiting for a download to finish before playing- you can begin playing the game even if it's not done downloading yet!).
After introducing the PS4 itself, Sony showed clips/demos of many games that will be coming to PS4, incuding Blizzard's Diablo III. At the very end of the press conference, Sony confirmed a 2013 launch, stating that the PS4 is set to release "Holiday 2013," though at the moment it's unclear whether the release date will be closer to October or December.
Two crucial elements of the PS4 that were *not* discussed at the press conference were (a) what the console actually looks like, and (b) how much it will cost. Given the PS3's somewhat bulky design and relatively high release price of $599, some gamers are waiting to see the console and its price before getting too excited. Rumors are placing the cost at $400-450, but there has been no confirmation either way from Sony. Rumors have also been circulating that Sony will reveal what the PS4 looks like in June at E3, but this has also not been confirmed by Sony.
PS4's major rival is set to be Microsoft's successor to the Xbox, which has been termed Xbox720 and more recently Xbox Infinity. Microsoft is expected to unveil the next generation of Xbox at E3 in June (possibly earlier at the Game Developers Conference in March), and is rumored to also have a launch date of Holiday 2013, but as you can guess, neither the unveiling nor release date have been confirmed by Microsoft.
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