Sony announces the Playstation 4 - Well Sort Off

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 02/21/2013 08:46 AM | 176 comment(s) ]

Weirdest launch ever ? Without showing even one photo of the product Sony Entertainment announced the Playstation 4 to much fanfare today in New York. The company hopes to make use of its acquisition of Gaikai in the next generation console by incorporating its cloud technology. It also hopes to make its online platform a lot more social than it was back with the Playstation 3. Unlike past launches, Sony declined to show off the console itself. Instead, it showed off the new DualShock 4 controller and the games that will be running on the new Playstation 4 when it hits the market during Holiday 2013.

After the press conference, Sony issued a press release outlining the technical specification of the new console:

Single-chip custom processor, with eight x86-64 AMD Jaguar CPU cores and 1.84 TFLOPS next-gen AMD Radeon based graphics engine
8GB GDDR5 memory
Built-in hard drive
6x Blu-Ray and 8x DVD drive
USB 3.0 and auxiliary ports
Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1
HDMI, analog AV-out, and optical S/PDIF audio output
DualShock 4 controller, with two-point capacitive touchpad, three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer, vibration, light bar with three color LEDs, mono speaker, micro USB port, stereo headset port, extension port, 1000mAh battery
PlayStation 4 Eye camera, with two 1280 x 800 cameras, f/2.0 fixed focus lenses, 85-degree field of view, 30cm minimum focusing distance, four-channel microphone array

Sony's president of Worldwide Studios explained the absence of the presence of the new console was that it would be revealed at a later date so that the audience will not "get bored" in future announcements.

At launch, critics slammed Sony for charging upwards of $500 for the PS3, arguing that it had too many features. HDMI, Wi-Fi and optical audio didn't come standard on the Xbox 360 at launch, but they all proved important over the years. Meanwhile, the fast XDR memory of the PlayStation 3 came in handy, but there was far too little at 256MB. Here, Sony's seeking to maintain the speed with GDDR5, but ups the capacity to a generous 8GB. Similarly, gamers ended up appreciating the PS3's built-in hard drive when they started downloading games or installing them, but the first-generation 2x Blu-ray drive made that a painfully slow process.

The Microsoft Kinect took the world by storm at its debut, and not just because of the 3D depth camera: the always-on microphone array allowed a Kinect-equipped Xbox 360 to recognize voice commands. Now, with the PlayStation 4 Eye, Sony will have both motion tracking and voice recognition hardware at its disposal, but also higher resolution and a much larger field of view. While the Kinect can only fit two people in its sweet spot, and has difficulty tracking them at times, the PlayStation 4 Eye could do more... theoretically, anyhow.

Last but not least, there's that custom AMD processor to discuss, and here's where we need to be extremely careful about jumping to conclusions: with a custom design, there's no telling exactly how powerful the processor might be, or how much developers might get out of it. Still, we can draw a few parallels: we actually saw a quad-core Jaguar processor at CES, inside AMD's Temash reference design. Contrary to what you might believe, Jaguar actually isn't a beefy CPU; AMD's selling the tiny cores in chips designed for low-end laptops and tablets. And yet, with floating-point performance of 1.84 teraflops and a next-gen Radeon architecture, the GPU will likely have more power than a 1.76 teraflop AMD Radeon HD 7850, a mid-range graphics card for gaming computers. Source the verge

Sony announces the Playstation 4 - Well Sort Off

12 pages « 3 4 5 6 > »

tsunami231
Maha Guru

Posts: 2283
Joined: 2003-05-24

#4533953 Posted on: 02/21/2013 04:56 PM

I assumed if you already paid for the game on the PS3, then you would be able to play it for free via cloud gaming, but at this point who knows.

Your bound to see that on some games, not all developers are created equal, or even have the same priorities, and i see sub 30fps and tearing on most PC games these days due to my hardware getting long in the tooth.

Vsync eliminates all tearing. which alot of console game never use.

And how exactly would they know we bought the ps3 game already? Unless the ps3 used a system like steam to keep track of games that would link to each account. which would of ment we would of had block ps3 games from used sales. Which we did not nor does the ps4. I doubt there is any way for them to tell. The only way they would be able to tell is if each and every game requires registration of that game with KEY.

AbjectBlitz
Ancient Guru

Posts: 3271
Joined: 2004-09-30

#4533961 Posted on: 02/21/2013 05:01 PM

Vsync eliminates all tearing. which alot of console game never use.

Because like his system the console hardware is getting long in the tooth.

By end of every cycle it is the same.

I on the other hand would rather have tearing than vsync induces lag.

Therefore for me hitting the magic 120 fps is the goal as that eliminates most tearing without inducing the lag.

There is little about the PS4 that gets me excited, or consoles in general. PC gaming is where it is at.

The only things that interest me a little are the motion controllers, cameras, touch pad and all that jazz which would make it a interesting family toy or party gaming device.

Redemption80
Ancient Guru

Posts: 13413
Joined: 2009-01-06

#4533996 Posted on: 02/21/2013 05:28 PM

Yep, it will be up to the devs to decide if vsync will be used or not, and everyone has a different opinion on it.

Im sure Fallout3 on the PS3 had an option for VSync.
Personally I would like to see that as a standard on console games, some people like myself cant handle tearing as it ruins the look of the game, while others cant handle the input lag or the framerate drops it causes.

I dont believe having any fancy graphics options is a good idea, but Vsync - On/Off/Adaptive would be simple enough and Im sure welcomed by many people.

Veeshush
Master Guru

Posts: 249
Joined: 2010-11-28

#4534009 Posted on: 02/21/2013 05:36 PM

The hell with the hardware, it's good enough. Give me the The Last Guardian. Give me good games.

edit

this

this

THIS
****ING THIS

PS4 Announcement - Abridged Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJDn0jRnUQ

scatman839
Ancient Guru

Posts: 8728
Joined: 2004-11-19

#4534414 Posted on: 02/21/2013 11:02 PM

PS4 Announcement - Abridged Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJDn0jRnUQ

1:23, amazing delivery.

die4die
Member Guru

Posts: 124
Joined: 2005-07-15

#4534459 Posted on: 02/21/2013 11:39 PM

what os will it use? x64 or x86
sounds like x64 since it will be equip with 8gb of memory.

-Tj-
Maha Guru

Posts: 2397
Joined: 2012-05-18

#4534494 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:16 AM

The CPU section is going to be Bulldozer or Piledriver based and the rumours have been that it will be clocked 1.6GHz. Can you say with a straight face that that's not a joke? And yes I believe Bulldozer is absolute trash that has no practical use in reality compared to other architectures which have far superior clock for clock performance which matters a lot. K10 would have been far superior if it was continued, it would have been great to have another option, but now we're stuck with a near monopoly.

No I don't want philosophical debate with you why you think it has a purpose. I disagree.

...

The four cores, unlike Bulldozer modules, are completely independent, and only share a 2 MB L2 cache.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=180394

So its way more efficient then bulldozer ever will be

Darren Hodgson
Ancient Guru

Posts: 9661
Joined: 2004-08-18

#4534497 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:18 AM

The PS3 wasn't running a unified shader architecture. There was definitely a lot of engine design choices that needed to be made in order to accommodation for that, lack of memory and it's processor. Those design changes don't exactly port over nicely to hardware that is nearly the exact opposite of that.

People like to think that its' because console games are closer to hardware or something. That's not really the problem, it's all the targeted hardware optimization that screws PC users over.

Now that the PS4 is X86 on a normal GPU with DX11 support, the hardware is way more similar to a PC than it ever has been. Porting games will be significantly less time consuming which will hopefully mean more time spent on developing better keyboard and mouse controls and interface changes.

I think it's going to get a lot better personally.

Very true. The PS2 and PS3 were heavily criticised by developers for being a pain to code for so the PS4 should be a lot more straightforward and it isn't that different from the next Xbox either if rumours are true. Both share AMD GPUs and the same GPU with 8 GB of memory.

Also, the fact that the new consoles will have 8 GB of memory means that 64-bit coding will have to be used which should be good news for us PC gamers still stuck with 32-bit games that are limited to 4 GB of memory or less. We should see a transition from 32-bit to 64-bit games over the next few years.

Veeshush
Master Guru

Posts: 249
Joined: 2010-11-28

#4534515 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:36 AM

So, with the PS4 having 8 GB of GDDR5, is that ALL for its GPU or will the rest of the system use it as well?

Basically, I'm wondering if they did something as stupid as actually slap 8 GB on its GPU while having it's CPU use other memory. And if they actually SHARE that memory, then what? Even if you split it 4GB even...

edit

The processor is an absolute joke and 8GB GDDR5 FOR THE ENTIRE SYSTEM is the absolute bare minimum they can get away with without causing a memory catastrophe like last generation.

So they are indeed using it for the whole system?

Redemption80
Ancient Guru

Posts: 13413
Joined: 2009-01-06

#4534520 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:39 AM

I was under the impression the 360 was already 64bit, the CPU certainly was and there would of been no reason to use a 32bit OS.

scatman839
Ancient Guru

Posts: 8728
Joined: 2004-11-19

#4534522 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:40 AM

It's shared, same as xbox 360, and it'll be up to developers how to use it.

Of course, a lot will be reserved for the OS, likely in the region of 2gb.

(.)(.)
Maha Guru

Posts: 2170
Joined: 2010-11-10

#4534529 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:46 AM

Have to admit that im really really looking foward to the Ps4. As much as i love PC, the price vs performance is just a joke, there's just no real reason other than time/cost for the dev's for games that look like C3 to run like they do on a 680 sli rig.

As an example: 680 sli costs upwards of NZ$1500, in US$ thats about $1250 give or take, just to run a $40 game is really ludicrous and when i look at the how much my pc cost me (3500-4000 NZ$) and all the head aches, the only time it feels its worth it is when im playing something that hasnt focused all its effort on just visuals or has struck a balance and used pc tech to its fullest while gameplay has come first, or that fact that we can use emulators etc.

Sure there's lots of indie stuff out there but if everyone's honest with themselves, you all know just as well as i do that most of it is just 2d side scrollers and top down shootem up's - the 80's is over let it go, dont have a go at COD for not changing then go and make a decade old type game and call it innovating.

Gaming in it's current state is to me is rather lifeless, in fact the most fun i've had, is on the Wii emulator dolphin ( Mario Galaxy, wow!). It was fun, it had character, it had game. But all these titles of late seem to be just a show of violence with no substance, pretty lights and particles but no reason to play other than seeing then next environment/ level or getting the next upgrade.

What i think the problems is, is that gaming became to serious to fast and i think that was because we/the industry were so intent on proving gaming as an art form or as a legitimate pass time that isnt just for kids. All the money spent on advertising and all the fake looking trailers etc, sometimes more than whats spent on the actual game and considering technology is apparently getting better, games should becoming cheaper to produce not more expensive.

I think a back to basics approach is whats needed, drop the bull**** of promises of game features and all that and just make something different. I think that even though the game developer are the ones that make these games, its almost as if they've been removed from the creative process and instead are there simply to put together someone else's puzzle, rather than have the opportunity to create something of their own.

So yeah, PS4 for me until (Dedicated) PC gaming sorts it's **** out.

Veeshush
Master Guru

Posts: 249
Joined: 2010-11-28

#4534531 Posted on: 02/22/2013 12:46 AM

It's shared, same as xbox 360, and it'll be up to developers how to use it.

Of course, a lot will be reserved for the OS, likely in the region of 2gb.

Ah, thanks! I was trying to figure out why that 8 GB sounded weird to me.

Loobyluggs
Master Guru

Posts: 325
Joined: 2008-09-07

#4534866 Posted on: 02/22/2013 11:19 AM

Tech specs seem fine for 1080P/60Hz stable couch-gaming to me...not sure why anyone would want a PS4 beyond that reason.

If this was a GPU or CPU release cycle, I think there will be people who say words like "I think I'll skip this and wait for PS5", because in terms of on-screen visuals, I really cannot see much of a difference based on the videos they have shown of the PS4 games in development. All the videos look as if they are using the UE4 engine though, and I never truly liked the UE3 'look' to graphics - too bloomy, or dusty; no realistic sheen to things.

There could be those who owned a PS2, and skipped on the PS3 who might wish to buy this new console - I can see that happening...got married, times moved on, got some kids, excuse to buy PS4...probably have some ports of old PS2 games on it.

I'll maintain this is a short-term console though, before 4K Gaming hits at the end of the decade and there will be a PS5.

I call 'hack' on the 4K visuals though - I reckon that sounds a little bit like 1080P content up-scaled to 4K using the PS4 architecture.

Darren Hodgson
Ancient Guru

Posts: 9661
Joined: 2004-08-18

#4534875 Posted on: 02/22/2013 11:29 AM

I pre-ordered my PS4 last night from ShopTo.net which lists it as £450 RRP but discounted to £400. They did not ask for a deposit (unlike GAME!). I suspect the actual price will be around £350-£380 but ShopTo.net are just covering themselves by listing a higher price. Once the final price is announced at E3 then they'll change it for pre-orders too.

12 pages « 3 4 5 6 > »

Post New Comment

Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.