PlayStation 4

[BreakABone]

How is it we don't have a thread for this nearly a week after Sony pulled the curtain back on the console?

Going to steal most of this from IGN

What's the name of the console?
PlayStation 4.

What are the specifications?
Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation 4 will be powered by a custom 8-core AMD "Jaguar" x86-64 with integrated graphics APU and "next-generation" AMD Radeon graphics processor capable of driving 1.84 teraflops. As detailed at the event, it will come paired with 8GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory, making it competitive with most gaming-focused PCs on the market. As expected, the system will ship with a Blu-ray drive, built-in 80.211 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, as well as HDMI, Analog-AV, and optical digital output. Sony is giving I/O options a boost with the inclusion of USB 3.0 ports and a mysteriously vague "AUX" port. Each system will ship a "Mono Headset" for cross-game chat and other social features.

When will it be available?
Holiday 2013.

What's with the controller?
Yup. Exactly like it, with a Vita-like touchpad, and a lightbar in the front to recognize other players, and use it with a camera add-on to control games with it.




Were any new services or tech announced?
- Gaikai. PS4 is heavily cloud-based, and Gaikai is integrated to the bones. All PS4 games will be available on the new PSN store, where players can instant try the demo without waiting for it to download. All digital titles can be played instantly while it downloads in the background.

- PS4 has a share button where players can record 15 seconds of the game and share it with their friends.

- Players can also broadcast their game with their friends. Sony has parntered with Ustream for the service.

Anything with PS Vita?
Nothing on the handheld itself; no price cuts. However, PS4 will employ Vita as its companion screen much like the WiiU Gamepad, where players can simply resume to play their PS4 games from the console to the Vita.

Were any games shown?

Why yes, here's the rundown:
- Knack
- Killzone Shadowfall
- Infamous: Second Son
- The Witness
- DriveClub
- Watch Dogs
- Diablo III
- Destiny
- New Final Fantasy


Will it have backwards compatibility?
Not natively, but through Gaikai. And if things work out, even PS1 and PS2 games will be supported.

More as it comes in I guess
What are your thoughts?

[Angrist]

Sounds like it will be a good gaming machine. I'm glad SONY wasn't as arrogant as with the PS3 this time.

Personally I'll stick with Wii U + PC this gen.

[Jason1]

Watch dogs looks great. I love that its set in Chicago. Nothing else shown excites me.

[Angrist]

The best part of the PS4 reveal: Watch Dogs confirmed for Wii U!

[Vampyr]

I wanted to make a thread...I was just too lazy to find all the material to post. I knew someone else would do it eventually.

I like everything that was shown. I think the controller looks really nice, but I'm kind of confused on how practical that touch pad is going to be. What do you actually use it for? Only thing I can think of is swiping through menus, but maybe they'll come up with something impressive.

The dominate thought going through my head during most of the show was, "That sounds awesome...if it works right." I can see the streaming thing being really impractical for a lot of people with less than awesome connections.

Watch Dogs looks awesome, mostly because it's a current gen game. I feel like launch titles are usually not amazing, because these days they are almost always just tech demos for what the hardware can do. Knack for example looks really neat, but I feel like it's mostly an excuse to get a lot of particles on the screen.

Graphics are not the reason I'm going to purchase a new console. My PC will always have the console beat in terms of visuals, so it really comes down to exclusives and what neat features they can tack on.

I'm actually really excited for the Share button. It has happened so many times that I'll be playing a game, and do something incredible, and really wish I had a video of it. With the system always recording, I can find it and share it.

I also like how you can put the system to sleep and immediately resume. One of my biggest beefs with Xbox is how much of a pain it actually makes playing a game. Gotta sign in, gotta see a dashboard full of ads, launch game, oh game needs an update because the system only caches the last 5 you played, gotta pick a storage device for your save files, oh we changed some security setting, you need to verify this code. I just want to put a game in and play, please.

The upgrade to 8 gigs of RAM is crazy. Just for comparison, the PS3 has 512 MB, and it's split between the CPU and the GPU. 256 can ONLY be addressed from the CPU, 256 can ONLY be addressed from the GPU. This is 8 gigs of unified RAM. Any bit of it can be accessed from anywhere else.

In addition to better and faster textures, you can expect better and less compressed audio.

Unless microsoft announces something crazy or a big change to Live, I'm definitely leaning more towards a PS4 at this point.

[TheGame]

Ps4 sounds amazing... but I'll reserve my judgement until I see what Microsoft offers. I can tell that Sony kept gaming in mind when making Ps4, but did they keep in mind pricing?

If Microsoft is able to release something $100-$200 cheaper, dropping some of that RAM, not having the game recordings, not having the screen sharing options, but able to play the year to year big selling games just as well as Ps4... then Sony will be handing half of their market right back to microsoft again.

I assume Ps4 will be the better and more complete console, but if it's not the right price it's not going to dominate.

[Shadow Fox]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

I wanted to make a thread...I was just too lazy to find all the material to post. I knew someone else would do it eventually.

I like everything that was shown. I think the controller looks really nice, but I'm kind of confused on how practical that touch pad is going to be. What do you actually use it for? Only thing I can think of is swiping through menus, but maybe they'll come up with something impressive.

The dominate thought going through my head during most of the show was, "That sounds awesome...if it works right." I can see the streaming thing being really impractical for a lot of people with less than awesome connections.

Watch Dogs looks awesome, mostly because it's a current gen game. I feel like launch titles are usually not amazing, because these days they are almost always just tech demos for what the hardware can do. Knack for example looks really neat, but I feel like it's mostly an excuse to get a lot of particles on the screen.

Graphics are not the reason I'm going to purchase a new console. My PC will always have the console beat in terms of visuals, so it really comes down to exclusives and what neat features they can tack on.

I'm actually really excited for the Share button. It has happened so many times that I'll be playing a game, and do something incredible, and really wish I had a video of it. With the system always recording, I can find it and share it.

I also like how you can put the system to sleep and immediately resume. One of my biggest beefs with Xbox is how much of a pain it actually makes playing a game. Gotta sign in, gotta see a dashboard full of ads, launch game, oh game needs an update because the system only caches the last 5 you played, gotta pick a storage device for your save files, oh we changed some security setting, you need to verify this code. I just want to put a game in and play, please.

The upgrade to 8 gigs of RAM is crazy. Just for comparison, the PS3 has 512 MB, and it's split between the CPU and the GPU. 256 can ONLY be addressed from the CPU, 256 can ONLY be addressed from the GPU. This is 8 gigs of unified RAM. Any bit of it can be accessed from anywhere else.

In addition to better and faster textures, you can expect better and less compressed audio.

Unless microsoft announces something crazy or a big change to Live, I'm definitely leaning more towards a PS4 at this point.

I don't know about "faster memory"- GDDR5 is technically 10x slower than eDRAM used in GameCube, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360.

The only difference is there's far more total RAM, albeit with a slower internal GPU bandwidth than 2001 hardware.

Which means that while you don't have to worry about loadtimes once everything's in memory, getting all that crap into memory in the first place is going to be a bitch.

If you thought Wii U initial loads were slow in unoptimized games, get ready...

[Vampyr]

Well, I didn't say faster memory - I said faster textures, because they'll be able to load more into memory at once so you'll have to deal less with the "pop" in issue where you are playing and the game is still loading up textures.

Not sure about actual load times, could be you're right about that.

[Shadow Fox]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

Well, I didn't say faster memory - I said faster textures, because they'll be able to load more into memory at once so you'll have to deal less with the "pop" in issue where you are playing and the game is still loading up textures.

Not sure about actual load times, could be you're right about that.

I don't even know about the "faster textures" comment, because ideally you want textures to use the least latent memory possible second to the z and frame buffers initially.

The only upside to it that I see is that most developers can treat PS4 like they're programming for a Radeon laptop GPU, so any PC versions of games will share similar, if not identical graphical features coming from PS4 and vice-versa.

[BreakABone]

This is a lively board

But the release date was announced for Nov 15th in North America today

[Jason1]

PS3 FTW!

[Vampyr]

I'm super excited for it, but probably not going to get one at launch. I want the library to fill out a bit more, and to see if any major hardware issues arise.

In other news, the Vita has gotten a price drop. It might be low enough for me to buy in now.

[BreakABone]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

I'm super excited for it, but probably not going to get one at launch. I want the library to fill out a bit more, and to see if any major hardware issues arise.

In other news, the Vita has gotten a price drop. It might be low enough for me to buy in now.

I don't know why, but I seem to have a vendetta with the Vita

Maybe, it's because I still don't get the device.

Sony seemed to have released it because that's what you do... after the PSP
But have no real intent to support it.

Like price drop is a cool move, but believe Sony has like 4 major games announced for it for the next year or so.. granted time will tell, but we've been saying that since TGS 2011

[Vampyr]

But there's a ton of cross-play games that you buy once and play on either system, and they've announced a ton of indie games for it, which is my primary interest.

The main thing that has stopped me from buying one already is the memory cards are so overpriced.