DEVELOPING: In order to compete with the current next-generation consoles, Sony announce their plans to release the highly anticipated PlayStation 4.
The early console specs are a supercharged PC architecture, “state of the art” x86 CPU, 8 GB unified memory, enhanced PC GPU, and local HDD. Rivalling the current Nintendo’s Wii U, the PlayStation 4 will promises to “surpass gamers’ wildest expectations.” Sony has also said that they got feedback from game developers to help it decide what hardware the console should use. As such, the APU (with 8GPUs) will have around 2 teraflops of processing power.
The new controller, the DualShock 4 slightly deviate from their iconic controller; but will include a touch pad, headset jack port, and a ‘Share’ button; supporting Sony’s plans for a social console; while adding a different style of play. Moreover, the DualShock 4 will have a stereo camera and will track the controller’s movements.
In addition, Sony release information about their new plans to widen the consoles’ “single-boxed use’. Supporting an social aspect, the PlayStation 4 will add “video compression and decompression”. An early look at the PlayStation 4’s menu shows support for live streams from UStream, continuation of the PlayStation’s Trophies system, and movie, TV and music streaming services.
The PlayStation 4’s market system will preemptively start downloading games, whilst allowing players to play those very games that they are downloading. Sony announce that the PlayStation 4 will have a “secondary custom chip” allowing for “background processing.”
Supporting PlayStation’s older generation games, Sony plans to the re-release fan favourite and popular PS1, PS2 and PS3 games via the PlayStation Cloud service. This cloud service will be rolled out in phases. There is no native backwards compatibility from PS3 to PS4 games – so don’t go out and throw that away just yet. Moreover, Sony have announce a cross-platform service called ‘Remote Play’. “Remote Play” will allow players to access and play their PlayStation 4 games from their PlayStation Vita, allowing for mobile gaming.