After all the waiting and rumors, Sony has officially announced the Playstation 4 or PS4. Here are the details that came from tonight’s press-event.
At the Hammerstein in New York City this evening, Sony announced the PS4. The next-generation console will launch this year, over the holiday season. The PS4 was announced almost six and a half years after the PS2 but the technology that has been developed in that time is absolutely astonishing. During the presentation Mark Cerny, the system lead architect stated that Sony “talked to developers all over the world” in order to make the PS4 as easier to develop for than ever before. Cerny said it was made “by game creators for game creators”. It was also stated that the PS4 was like a “pc in many ways” but “supercharged”. This isn’t an exaggeration, the PS4 will house the x86 CPU with “enhanced PC GPU” and have 8GB of memory (up from 516mb in the PS3).
The PS4 has already received the attention of “every” major third party developer, as shown in the video above. It was also confirmed that the PS4 will use the “PlayStation Cloud” service to stream all PS1, PS2, and PS3 games that are available.
Video services like Hulu Plus, Crunchyroll, Crackle, Netflix, Vudu, Epix, Facebook, Music Unlimited, Video Unlimited, and Amazon Instant will all be featured on the PS4 with more information to come before launch.
Another amazing achievement for Sony, is that the PS4 will allow users to play games even before they are done downloading. The PS4 will contain a secondary chip, that will handle all of the background downloading and processing without effecting gameplay. A new Dualshock controller (seen to the right) was also shown. This is the DualShock 4. The new controller will have both a built-in touch pad and a new “light bar” that will work with a stereo camera peripheral device. This will help identify players, add new tools for developers and will even track the motion of the DualShock 4. The new controller will also have a built-in headphone jack and a “share” button that allows you to, at any time, upload the last 10 seconds of gameplay or broadcast your game in real time.
