With Sony’s E3 press conference behind us, we can finally reveal all the little details you’ve been wanting to know about the PS4. Now that we know the PlayStation 4 will be priced at $399 and what’s included in the box, it’s time to round things up with the technical specs that make the PS4 the gaming powerhouse that it is. As the Joes say, knowing is half the battle so after the jump, expect to be schooled on some PS4 internal specs and inputs/outputs.
It seems as though Sony just didn’t want last night to end. After showing off the PlayStation 4 before a packed audience at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, declaring that the console would not require an online connection and that used games resale was never going away, and announcing a price $100 cheaper than their primary competitor, members of the PlayStation community still had more to say.
Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, took to Twitter after the PlayStation press event to address just a few more things. The first order of business, region-locking:
Microsoft made it clear that game sharing is dead in their eye. Between your console needing to connect to the internet every 24 hours, even for single player games, and then odd rules about having to be friends with someone for 30 days, before being able to lend it to them if the developer allows and if you take your game to a friends house, you have to connect to the web every hour, things began to get dizzying and yet clear at the same time. Microsoft does not want you to share your games. To help clear things up on the PlayStation 4 front, President of Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment Shuhei Yoshida (not pictured above) has put together a new video tutorial that shows you the process required to share games on the PS4.
As you probably know by now, Sony has priced the PlayStation 4 $100 under the Xbox One, making the console only $399. This not only makes the PS4 a highly competitive console, it also priced the unit not far off from where the PS3 was two years ago. Still, like myself, you’d like to know what your hard earned green bills will get you. After the jump, we have all the details you’re looking for.
Without a doubt, Sony had a fantastic PlayStation press conference at E3. Sticking to their promise, we heard about games and more games for the PS3, PS Vita, and PS4. However, some final details about the PS4 remained, even after the show’s finale. For example, what does the PlayStation 4 Eye cost? What size hard drive will the PS4 come with, and how much for an extra Dualshock 4 controller? Now, thanks to a detailed press release from Japan, we can answer all of those questions.
It’s not breaking news that Microsoft is going into E3 with a tarnished image. Despite all the gains the tech giant made with gamers in the US, Microsoft has lost all the good will in spectacular fashion that started with their less then well received Xbox One announcement. Since then, Microsoft has gone on and announced that they will “kill Sony” at E3 and that they’re investing a $1 billion into gaming. PlayStation is well known for its first party exclusives with games like God of War, Uncharted, Killzone, and Gran Turismo to name a few, Microsoft on the other hand tends to opt for paying for exclusives as oppose to investing in first party studios.
While in the past, Microsoft has paid 3rd part studios like EA and Activition for timed exclusives to DLC and game releases, it looks like the company is taking things to the next level and paying off multi-platform developers to not show their PS4 title at E3.
With E3 right around the corner, speculations and expectations are high. Information regarding what is being announced and what will be available to preview is slowly trickling into social media, and everyone is generally excited about what the next generation consoles will have to offer. I’ve been thinking a bit lately on what I expect to see, want to see, and would lose my mind in excitement to see, and how that would affect my personal opinion on the effectiveness and success of the Sony press conference. Some things are must-haves, while some things are really reaching into the depths of hopefulness and fangirling.
What I Expect:
1. the box, a price and a release date
This is pretty much a given, and honestly if they DON’T reveal what it looks like, what it costs and when you can give Sony your money, they will get a lot of slack. I expect to see what it looks like because we’ve already seen the new XBox, and I expect a price and a release date because we’re less than six months out, and people need time to budget for spending hundreds of dollars.
If Sony doesn’t provide this information to their fans at E3, they will be behind XBox, and you know that Microsoft will be providing more finite details on the cost and release date. And I think we have all waited long enough.
Sony Computer Entertainment is expecting big things from the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The PlayStation 3 is now the best-selling HD console worldwide, the PlayStation Vita is riding an indie resurgence, and the PlayStation 4 will be coming full force in preparation for a holiday release. As such, you’d expect that Sony would be bringing a metric ton of games to showcase their systems. And correct you are: according to Sid Shuman, social media manager for the PlayStation Blog, the company will be featuring over 40 games on all three platforms during their E3 showcase.
Shuman, along with members of the PlayStation social media team and other special guests, will be live-streaming coverage of both the Sony media conference on Monday night and throughout the week from the show floor at the PlayStation booth. Among the games to be featured, according to the Blog post, are Beyond: Two Souls (Quantic Dream), Destiny (Bungie), DriveClub (Evolution Studios), The Evil Within (Tango GameWorks), Gran Turismo 6 (Polyphony Digital), inFAMOUS: Second Son (Sucker Punch), Killzone: Shadow Fall and Killzone: Mercenary (Guerilla Games), The Last of Us (Naughty Dog), Tearaway (Media Molecule), and Wolfenstein: The New Order (Machine Games). We can safely assume even more will be added to that list as new games are revealed in the upcoming days.
The PlayStation 4 is going to be expensive. We assume that’s a given, as new consoles tend to be high in price and gradually fall as components and chips and processors and everything else become more affordable to manufacture. Throw in the cost of a game or two at launch, plus the added costs of a PlayStation 4 camera that may or may not be bundled, and you can bet there’s a pretty hefty price tag on day one for the latest Sony home video game console. Wouldn’t it be nice to pick up a few games this year for your brand new PS4, free of charge? Sony Online Entertainment thinks it is, which is why their free-to-play MMOs DC Universe Online and Planetside 2 will be making their way to the PS4.
The following article should be taken only 1/4 seriously where I highly recommend you take our other articles at least 1/2 seriously. With that said, the following is based on a true story.
It’s not that the Xbox One will do poorly. I’m sure it will do just fine in sales. Remember all the doomsday scenario for Sony and the PS3? Well now, the console leads the 360 in sales so the truth is that while we beat each other over the head on a daily bases about announcements, companies rise and fall based on longterm strategic visions. However, it would equally be silly not to point out that Microsoft is officially hurting. While Microsoft rode the 360 wave high and mighty for a long time in the US, you now can’t go to a website that isn’t somehow jabbing the Xbox One. So how does Microsoft plan on winning back gamers? By games of course and they’ve already got a new one, Killzone: Shadow Fall. Wait, what?
When the PlayStation 4 was announced in February, the only hardware that Sony revealed was the brand-new DualShock 4 and the PlayStation 4 Eye camera. Since then, the controller has seen much more focus, including the introductory video above, while we’ve been left to wonder just how the new Eye will be packaged, whether it will be included as part of the whole PS4 console or sold separately as the Eye Toy and PlayStation Eye were for the PS2 and PS3 respectively.
Well, leave it to the eagle-eyed posters on NeoGAF to give us our first hints at how we’ll be getting ahold of this brand new motion sensing camera. NeoGAF poster Tieman was watching the same video and spotted this:
Kazuo Hirai, president and CEO of Sony, sat down with Jon Fortt of CNBC’s “Closing Bell” at the AllThingsD Digital Conference yesterday to address rumors that the company was “looking a spinoff 15 to 20%” of their Entertainment division, including Sony Pictures and Sony Music.
While it’s traditionally Japan, Sony’s home turf, that gets things first, this time around, it’s been the West that’s enjoyed the earlier arrival date. Five months ago, Sony launched SEN (Sony Entertainment Network) and the PlayStation Store in one web portal which encompasses music, movies, and games. The idea is to begin expanding beyond ownership of content for singular devices. Purchased content from the store can then be redownloaded and accesses by different devices like the PS3, PS Vita, and their mobile fleet of tablets and smartphones. The web portal is also designed to make purchasing and discovery of content easier by allowing users to purchase their media of choice when away from say the PS3 and then simply visiting the download center on the game console to start the download process once home. In fact, come PS4 time, Sony will be expanding this web portal to iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android via a native app which will make discovery of content a breeze. Even better is that the PS4 will automatically begin the downloading of your purchased content, reducing the time between your purchase and enjoyment of the content.
Sony is no stranger to augmented reality. Before Kinect for Xbox 360 became a household name, Sony had the PlayStation EyeToy for the PlayStation 2 which allowed gamers to interact with their game environment. Sony would then follow up with the PlayStation Eye for the PS3 with similar, but improved features that once again allow for you to be in your game with games like Eye of Judgement and Kung Fu Live. With the advent of the PlayStation Vita, Sony would take this one step further by utilizing the Vita’s built in camera which allows for a more immersive and personal experience. With the Vita, onscreen characters can now interact in your world.
It’s pretty obvious by now that the Xbox One reveal was anything but good for Microsoft. I’ll leave my critique of the event, both positive and negative, for another article but as it stands right now, pre E3, gamers and press are simply not impressed. After the lack of clear focus on gaming, more damming news came out about the potential, or lack thereof, for the Xbox One. Thanks to developer knowledge and architecture breakdown of the new Xbox, it’s now widely believed that the PS4 will be 50% more powerful than the Xbox One. So how have we come to this 50% in performance difference between the two machines? After the jump, we discuss the math.
You must be logged in to post a comment.