Sony Releases first details of Playstation 4
It was presumed for a long time that Sonys press conference yesterday on 20th February was going to be about the up coming Playstation 4 and this was the case. The first details of Sonys new gaming console have been released and there are a couple of surprises good and bad.
Firstly of course it will be getting the usual hardware spec upgrade, exact specs are not known as yet but we do know that that the system will be based on x86 architecture which is the same as what PC's use. The CPU is being produced by AMD (Intels main rival) and it will be a custom designed 8 core processing unit. Graphics will be a next generation Radeon chip with 8GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory which will be up there with most gaming focussed PC's. Of course when this is released PC's will have moved on a bit more but with the all the PS4's games and software being specifically coded it will make very good use of the power availabe to it. The base system will also come with wifi, bluetooth, hdmi, analouge A/V, USB 3 and an AUX port for I can only imagine is something for the future. The Playstation 4 will also ship with a mono headset which will be capable of cross game chat and other social features.
It was stated in the conference that the Playstation 4 would be aimed more at being a social system, with more features aimed at sharing the gaming expereince, sharing things to social networks is just one part of this but the cross gaming chat and an ablity to let a friend take over your character in a game to help you out also in the working.
The controller now going to be the DualShock 4 has also had an upgrade, it sports an LED screen in the middle that games can use for various things like character health or level maps etc. It also has a light bar which is is used to track movement. A new share button has been included which is linked in with the social improvements of the PS4.
Now the bad news and something that seems to be getting a worrying trend, as it stands at the moment the PS4 would not be backwards compatible, meaning all you PS3 games will not run on the new console. Bad news for all those with a large collection of PS3 games. It is rumoured that PS3 games will be available via the playstation store but at a cost and this wont go down well with the people already owning the game.
The released date has not been confirmed but was quoted as saying around the holiday time so we are expecting a pre-xmas release. The cost has also not been confirmed but Sony may consider selling the console at a loss and push the Playstation plus model to get a large consumer base in order to sell more of the add on products and software. They will also be hoping that getting people into the world of Sony with a reasonably priced console that they will be able to sell more linked items such a TV's, home cinema systems and phones which im sure will be seemlessly interconnected with the PS4.
Now we wait to see what Microsoft have in response with there next generation coonsole and how it measures up to the PS4