Sony announces PS4 with 8-core x86 processor, 8GB GDDR5 memory and DualShock 4
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
When PS3 came out, it was excellent. It was an adult-oriented standalone console that worked well as a media center and it was also really well designed. It was true to the spirit of old Sony electronics - a self-sufficient device with a polished interface that matched its function. Sure it had a hook up to the Internet and PSN, but it was secondary. But then they started "improving" things. First, you got promo ads in the corner of the home screen. Never asked for a permission, no way to turn them off, even by disabling the network connection. So my device was little bit less mine. Then they started pushing "selected apps"- Netflix-Shmetflix and what not. Again, without asking, just because it was good for me, and, again, the device became even less mine. At the same time they increased the font size and replaced that beautiful Navier-Stokes visualization of a loading indicator with some generic spinner clock thingy. Sprinkled some other crap over the UI.
Just now imagine your old Sony cassette deck deciding to show you ads for new Justin Bieber album and offering to share shit on Facebook. That's PS3 now. So it's hardly surprising that I have no hope and zero expectations that PS4 will be anything else but a disappointment.
New card arrived within 3 days from old card being stopped. Money was reimbursed the same day it was taken.
The false positive was when I was traveling, and it was a minor hassle (as I had multiple credit cards).
I take it from the responses from people, my experience isn't typical.
http://greenthrottle.com/ - Play mobile games on your TV
http://www.bluestacks.com/ - Play mobile games on your PC
http://www.ouya.tv/ - Android gaming console
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/6/3958162/valve-steam-box-cak... - Play games sold on Steam directly on your TV
Mobile games thus far can be placed into one of two categories:
A: Ports of obsolete PC/Console games with terrible control schemes.
B: Casual games.
The last time around, Sony tried to position itself as the platform for hardcore gamers. It appears that they are doing the same thing with the PS4. Hardcore gamers only play casual games either when they are away from home, or when they don't have time to play on their platform of choice. I'm not sure who technically won between Sony and MS, but it wasn't a landslide victory.
Don't get me wrong, casual games are great. Nintendo, Apple and Google have proven that there is a huge market for casual games, and it probably has a larger market than there is for hardcore gaming, I don't really know. Even if it is, that doesn't necessarily mean that traditional gaming is going to die.
Sony and its advocates will argue that their focus is on serious/hardcore gamers, not casual/mobile gaming. Casual gamers don't pay premium prices and there may even be a smaller margin on mobile sales, such that it currently makes business sense to yield that market. But the PS is locked into long hardware development cycles and the platform needs to support games for years into the future, while mobile hardware is updated continuously such that the difference between the platforms will shrink - stealing away increasing numbers of consumers and development shops.
Even at it's best, controlling a 3d game with a touch screen is a horrifyingly awful experience. It's so bad that I haven't made it out of the first level of any of the games I've tried. Not because I can't clear the content, but instead because doing so is such an awkward experience, that I'd rather go back to playing angry birds or read HN. As someone who spent his teen years playing GoldenEye, TF Classic, Q3A and Counter-Strike for 12-16 hours at a time, I find it quite an accomplishment when someone manages to make a FPS that I can't stand to play for more than 5 minutes.
I think that it's possible that we'll eventually have a level playing field on all platforms, but I don't think capacitive touch screens are going to be the innovation that makes it a reality.
How can there be any question of mobile game hardware surpassing hardcore gaming in profitability in the next console generation when it has already occurred?
If you're Activision or Blizzard, sure, the money is still in selling $60 titles. But in terms of hardware manufacturers like Sony and Microsoft, the ship has sailed.
False: http://business.time.com/2013/02/11/game-over-why-video-game...
Most importantly to the point at hand, there is no evidence that iPhone is stealing many sales from Xbox and PS3, nor that it will start in the foreseeable future. I very, very much doubt that many people find themselves wondering whether to get an iPhone or an Xbox to play games on.
But take a game like space invaders. When it came out, it was new and shiny and amazing. When I played it in the late 80's (My parents were too cheap for a Nintendo, I didn't play one of those until the SNES / Genesis were already out.) It was so awesome that I couldn't imagine any game ever being better. Now, decades later, it's still a good game, but it's so simplistic in comparison to current games, that I can't see myself playing it for hours on end.
Now take a game like Grand Theft Auto 3, represents one of the more complex / graphically intensive games ported to Android / IOS. When it was first released, it too was an amazing game. I spent countless hours driving around, shooting things, and completing the missions. While it was amazing for it's time, in comparison to this generation's games, the graphics are dated and the game play seems to lack depth. Once again, I can't see myself enjoying it now for more than a few minutes.
There are some games that are truly timeless, like Contra, Mario, Chess, Go, Quake 3 Arena, Mario Kart, etc.., but most console and PC games don't age well.
I can't believe I forgot to mention Tetris though.
It might very well sell ok, but not to replace PS4's or any other "real" consoles.
PS3: 256MB for the Cell and GPU each 360: 512MB shared
I don't think Ouya is worth anything, but comparing RAM sizes is almost useless.
bf3 sold more copies on PC than both "hardcore" consoles combined. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/18/mouse-keyboard-st...?
I will probably buy a PS4 just for FIFA XX
Purchasing a console to play only non-exclusive titles... I have never understood that.
A PC will ALWAYS do more things than a console, and the better you PC config is, the better all your applications will run so it's win-win for all you do with it.
Besides, even games are cheaper and faster to buy on PC. So compare the price of a PS3 with 30 games with one of a PC with 30 games and you will see your argument is wrong.
I just told you. It's cheaper. That's not some obscure "gotcha" reason.
My argument is not that people don't want to play CoD. My argument is that even Activision wants Apple and come in and kill the current console paradigm. They don't want to keep making 30% of $60 games that sell 10 million copies when they could be making 70% of a $10 game that moves 50 million copies.
I don't understand. Are you saying that Activision should kill CoD and fund the next Angry Birds so they could sell more copies of a cheaper game, or are you saying that CoD could sell 50 million copies if it was priced at $10?
Both of those claims are questionable. I am pretty sure Activision is scared shitless of becoming the next Rovio, and I doubt CoD would even break even being priced at $10.
Considering that CoD had a 200 million dollar budget, they would need to sell 20 million copies to break even vs 3.33 million, and consider to date (4 months) they have sold 20 million copies.
Even if such a price cut caused sales to double, you would have:
20 million * $60 * 30% - $200 million = $160 million dollars
40 million * $10 * 70% - $200 million = $80 million dollars.
Again, they would break even with their old model if they sold ~50 million copies, however, I don't think "hardcore" gaming is that price sensitive, and I doubt we would see a 150% increase in sales if you cut CoD's price to $10.
Lastly, where would these people come from? I don't think Activision has an untapped market 5x their current market size that want to buy Call of Duty but only for $10. Even if you talk about opening to the "casual" market, Nintendo showed us just how toxic that is. Casual gamers don't buy games. I'm sure its a lot smarter to sell to the gamer who buy 3 games a year @ $60, than it so to sell to 5 people who will buy 1 game /year @ $10. So if Activision could sell 50 million copies of CoD, would that stick them in the same position as Rovio, where all they can do is sell CoD, while WoW and Diablo bleed cash?
Wait, you're doubting whether a price cut of 85% would even double sales? With a demand curve like that someone will need to tell the game companies they are leaving billions on the table when they could be charging $150 a copy.
I'm pretty sure we'd see sales explode on price alone but the limited console installed base is also depressing game sales. A large percentage of high end console users use them primarily for netflix and other non-gaming uses but they aren't marketed effectively for these uses. Apple isn't even marketing the ipad as a game machine but they move far more $300+ units than Sony and MS put together each month.
"I don't think 'hardcore' gaming is that price sensitive"
You're talking yourself into a conclusion here. Not only "hardcore" gamers enjoy playing Call of Duty. {And the notion of console fps players being hardcore itself is problematic}
Microsoft may be the competition right now, but they can't count on it staying that way. When the PSP and PS3 came out, the iPhone didn't exist yet, but things change.
Steam is fantastic, but it's a name that is totally unknown to almost all console gamers. Just the presence of a Steam Box isn't going to magically convert people, they have a huge uphill struggle ahead of them. Most of their market, IMO, is PC gamers.
OTOH Homebrewing is perfectly legal in countries like mine (outside the USA).
(1) http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.19.htm
I find it just wonderful that a bunch of enthusiasts can get together and make their own game console, and accessories, all the while struggling under the economics forced on them by the broader consumer electronics market .. yet still build something that is just plain FUN to use.
If there is anything to be learned by the mainstream, it is that parts of it get too big, fall off, die and become the new old-thing. This happens in minor localities such as the Pandora project too, but nevertheless for one who wishes to participate in construction/usage/culture of an open, well-designed, affordable, powerful device .. with its own people .. the DIY hardware markets are lucrative. Sony going down like this, as its peers too, reminds me that new new-things are the new thing.
Now, almost four years later, I'm still waiting.
I'm sure it will be awesome, but of course the hotness (relatively speaking) of it specs will have cooled off a bit during these years. Any day now ...
I'm also not happy about potentially buying the same game 2 or 3 times with their streaming game service. Though I think the spectating option could be cool.
-- silent preloading of games you may be interested in
-- immediate local play of digital titles while they download
-- OnLive/Gaikai style video streaming of full disc games you haven't yet purchased
-- rolling video replay of your screen as a core system service
-- Mobile-style instant system hibernation
-- continuously streaming your display to remote friends
-- allowing remote friends to assume control over your currently playing game
All of these are welcome, but "play the full game as a streamed demo" and "preload digital games of likely interest" are brilliant, wiping out so many pain points from digital software purchasing.
(and back to cynicism: every game they showed off was pre-rendered nonsense, their target market is plateauing at best, mobile's strangling them, etc etc etc)
What everyone seems to worry about here is that Sony can use this against piracy and/or game resale. Going streaming-only is a long-term direction that, if implemented right, could well improve Sony's bottom line and introducing it gradually is a great means for them to ensure gamers don't simply take their business elsewhere when it is the only option left.
Take the ability to stream older PS1-PS3 titles. Old titles can be a source of free money for a publisher like Sony but due to those titles' smaller size they are especially easy to pirate (according a torrent tracker the entire PSN PSX collection takes up around 58.7 GiB; that's 179 game titles for the PlayStation). Streaming would eliminate the possibility of this kind of piracy.
Still, I think you can make a strong argument that Sony won't implement a stream-only policy for games this generation since in the US, a key market, far too many of gamers just don't have the bandwidth yet.
>-- rolling video replay of your screen as a core system service
You've got to note that this feature will be "free" in terms of computational resources for every streamed game.
In a country like Australia where we have data caps, pretty much the ONLY feature above that will actually benefit us, is the feature that involves us turning the console off.
Ironic.
This is only brilliant if consumers don't have data caps.
"The new system uses a DualShock 4 controller with a touchpad, share button, lightbar and headphone jack."
I know the one thing that I have been missing on all consoles to date is a share button! It doesn't go far enough though, it really should have separate share buttons for each of the online services I use!
The new PlayStation 4 is also highly focused on offering social experiences. You’ll be able to stream your play sessions to allow input, including your friends taking over control to help you out with a rough patch, for instance. You can also quickly share video clips to friends and the PS network.
Gaikai’s technology is also behind the spectating feature of the PS4 which allows you to share your gaming session with a button push and allows friends to jump in and take over control to help you. Some games will allow people to give you items that will help you in game play like ‘health potions’.
Having friends take over sounds pretty cool to me.
That being said I liked Andy Levy's Tweet.
I hope I'll be able to turn off all of these social features on the #PS4. If I wanted to be social I wouldn't be playing videogames.
I really liked this controller as it had the bulk of an xbox controller but with aligned sticks.
There used to be just game buttons (joystick + one button on Atari, for ex). There there were start and select. Then there was a console-specific power button (the "XBox" button and the "PS3" button on the Xbox controller and DS3 respectively). Now there's a share button. I dunno dude, it looks like the arrow of history is actually pointing the opposite direction from what you said in this comment.
"Look at this cool thing I did" is the go-to example in this kind of demo, but in reality nobody cares. We want a human voice.
You can't navigate a menu to reach a power-on function. A competing power button service will never come out to replace the currently popular power button service. Every single Xbox or PS3 owner will use the power button(s) with regularity.
Pressing the power button on the physical machine, as far as I remember, does not load the dashboard.
We may still be swinging toward "programmable" buttons, but trust me, things will start swinging back at some point, though perhaps not for the reasons we might think.
http://www.sennheiserusa.com/wireless-stereo-headphones-home
In other words, keep in mind that there are setups where even the best wireless headphones don't work.
Yes, I'm a sore loser, maybe the share button will make me think twice.
Sony, you finally showed up to the party with hardware that devs actually know how to use and optimize for. While Cell was cool, it took ages before anyone knew what to do with it. Thank you for going with something more common!
Now, instead, you get 8 x86 cores, with multithreading, and quite probably a GPU you can also use for general purpose computation if you want to. Simplicity is going to be an advantage.
I watched the Killzone trailer and couldn't help but think, "Man, Insomniac folks have got to be so goddamned happy about this."
The real problem with having a separate instruction set and architecture is that it's going to be longer before game engines come out that can be targeted to your system and thus you'll be giving the other guy exclusives that would otherwise have been multi-platform.
In three years it's going to be too easy to compare the specs and quality to the latest and greatest pcs.
EDIT: I'm watching the live stream now: http://www.gamespot.com/features/playstation-meeting-2013-ps...
It’s do or die time for consoles. Decent hardware is necessary, far from sufficient. The real battle will be fought elsewhere.
Also, PCs won’t even be competing there. Apples and oranges.
This is why consoles are still producing pretty good looking games with 512 MBs of ram.
You lose in the end of course, but the goal is just to keep the momentum going until your next release.
PS4 is doomed to be years behind PC. Even at launch, PS4 will be at least a year behind spec-wise.
It's like saying: "The iPhone X is years behind the latest PC chips"
Your iPhone "argument" makes no sense, it's a red herring.
PCs serve the "PC market" (A subset of that is the High end gaming market that enjoy keyboards and mice).
Show me a Street Fighter tournament being played on PC?
Or a Starcraft game being played on Consoles?
...
The reason you can't find those things, is they are different markets.
With the new PS4 x86 + GPU architecture, portability becomes trivial.
PS4, essentially, is a PC stuck in one configuration.
Fighter games, in general, are on consoles. You simply just don't play them on PCs. Similarly, RTS games are PC only; the only RTS on console I know of is Halo Wars, which sucked.
Just these two cover ENORMOUS markets, with Starcraft tournaments having millions of dollars in prizes, etc, yet are based on entirely different markets. PC vs Consoles more accurately share _subsets_ of the high end gaming market, which overlaps in some places (like Call of Duty), and differ in many others.
And people couldn't and can't do that if it isn't x86 hardware?
The "weakest link" of most consoles right now is the GPU, and those GPUs are branches of the current gaming GPUs, just as they were with the prior generation. People have long been comparing the two.
But it's irrelevant. The target market for an Xbox 360 isn't going to get a triple-SLI GTX Titan PC.
>triple-SLI GTX
Roadmaps supposedly show the next Xbox is planned for a(nother) ten year cycle, presumably the ps4 is the same. Half way through it's lifetime it will be beaten by low-end GPUs; perhaps even integrated graphics and smartphone graphics. Not to mention the fact that there has been a faster single GPU available for a year already, then $350 (7870).
The PC-master-race notion of upgradability is utterly detached from the mainstream gaming public who have neither the interest, patience or financial ability to run that gauntlet.
It's about the console I buy today having a comparable shelf-life to one purchased 5 or even 7 years ago. When the 360 in my home office died late last year, I was faced with paying essentially as much as I spent in 2008 to get a new one, but knowing it would be end-of-lifed and all-but-unsupported in a year.
To say nothing of the odd situation where that same 360, purchased in 2008, was no better than the 360 I bought for my living room in 2006 (insert RRoD joke here).
Yet the Roku I bought last year for my folks was better than the one I bought in 2009. And the AppleTV I bought last year was better than the one I bought a year before.
The public is never going to swap a GPU. But they certainly understand the difference between a $300 purchase that lasts 5 years and one that lasts 2. And a $300 purchase this year that confers an improved product over what one could buy for $300 five years ago.
On February 8, 2008, during the Game Developers Conference 2008, Microsoft announced that the "Failure rate has officially dropped", but without mentioning any specifics.[28] The same month, electronics warranty provider SquareTrade published an examination of 1040 Xbox 360's and said that they suffered from a failure rate of 16.4% (one in six).
Personally I'm on my third Xbox 360 after the first suffered a Red Ring of Death failure and the second had a faulty DVD drive that killed any inserted disk, destroying my copy of Rock Band. It actually convinced me to switch to gaming on the PC, as I refused to trust my Xbox and I didn't want it to fail until I had finished the Mass Effect trilogy.
The peak of the PC gaming world was Windows 95 to Windows XP (2003/2005 time frame). Shareware was extraordinarily popular and accessible during the first part of that, and the Internet had made downloads / patches / updates / modding possible in the last part. Meanwhile consoles began to present increasingly superior accessibility to casual gamers while providing enough of the eye candy to satisfy many serious gamers.
If you go down through this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_g...
You'll find the lopsided majority of those hits occurred during the 1995-2005 era. The biggest hits however, are since then. The PC gaming market has simply become smaller and consolidated to a few hit franchises.
This also doesn't account for the rise of free to play gaming on PC. The most popular video game in the history of the world isn't on this list at all.
Also, fatally, digital sales are not factored into these numbers. There's this thing called Steam . . .
34 of those games were released after 2005. 79 were released in the 1995 / 2005 time frame. So those ten years averaged 7.9 per year; the seven years after averaged five per year. It's a nearly 60% increase per year.
In my opinion digital PC game sales would do nothing but tip the scale toward my point about the PC gaming market consolidating into just a few mega hit franchises that generate all the sales while the volume of games has significantly contracted. In PC gaming there are maybe ten titles that matter, such as WoW or Sims. In console gaming, there are over 100 titles a year that sell 1 million or more copies.
Free to play PC gaming is a very small market still. The Sims 2 alone made more money than the entire free-to-play market combined did in the previous four years. That may change in the next few years, but it doesn't change the facts that exist right now.
Four of the top five on that list are from 2004 or earlier. Meanwhile of course total console game sales have exploded to the moon during that time.
First of all, would you mind showing me the sales data from Steam? No? Then how do you intend to use that as part of your argument exactly?
Which game on steam has sold 11 million copies on the service, like Starcraft did at retail? 20 million like Sims 2? 9 million like Half-life 1? 12 million like Half-life 2? I'd wager it's not even remotely close.
It's my opinion that Steam is moving a mid number of high priced new releases, and a lot more lower priced discounted games (eg buying Shogun for $9.99 or Torchlight 2 for $9.99 during discounts). A quick look through their top 50 best selling reveals the strong majority are $20 or less, with many being $11.99 or less. Is Steam popular? Of course, but what does that have to do with whether the PC gaming market has consolidated into a few hit franchises with less total games produced per year?
Also, I count only 73 in ['95,'05). Are you counting ['95,'05]? That's 11 years. 7.3 per year is really not that different from 4.8/yr (29 in ['06,'12)), which includes two to three years of recession.
As for this:
> First of all, would you mind showing me the sales data from Steam? No? Then how do you intend to use that as part of your argument exactly?
I'm not interested in winning a debate with you, I'm just trying to demonstrate what's true to any fair-minded people reading this. If you want to pretend that Steam sales didn't account for a huge portion of all PC games sold, and therefore that the PC sales are extraordinarily under-represented in the last few years of this chart, be my guest. It's only yourself that you're deceiving.
> The PC gaming market has simply become smaller
I'd argue that the second half of the 1990's was actually something of a bubble. 3D-ness and CD-ROM's were the hot new thing, and everyone tried to make their games 3D, increase polygon counts and texture resolutions, add cutscenes, fill an entire CD with assets -- which meant bloated art and development budgets, and a loss of focus on innovation.
In short, new 3D and storage technology, dotcom-era funding of big publishing conglomerates, those conglomerates' control of retail channels, and a lack of alternative distribution for smaller developers, led to an unusually large number of big-budget games.
IMHO gaming's "natural" state is more similar to the era c. 1975-1995, where small studios and innovative gameplay were a big part of the industry.
There's still a market segment today for big-budget "A" titles, but c. 1997-2005 was the heyday.
Anyone in the world who can make a game now has affordable access to a number of digital distribution and payment channels like Steam, Gamersgate, Android/Apple Apps, Facebook, HTML5, or plain old downloads on a website with payment provided by Paypal/Stripe/Dwolla/Amazon/Google Checkout/Bitcoin [1]. There are plenty of open-source and commercial tools and libraries for developing games. This means individual developers and startups can enter the industry relatively freely, with minimal upfront costs, can restore innovation to its rightful place, and can exert downward price pressure with their small costs.
I believe the number of games/developers/publishers in the ecosystem is larger than it ever was [citation needed], as is the revenue of the industry as a whole [citation needed], but A-list console and PC titles have given up a fair amount of ground to the "long tail" of modestly successful indie games.
[1] 1990's connection speeds, and the pesky business of tying up telephone lines for hours or days during long downloads, made yesterday's Internet an unappealing distribution platform.
It's also generally better to buy on steam directly versus physical copies to avoid headaches (usually cheaper as well if you catch steam seasonal sales). I can understand not doing that if you preorder for some special items though. That and to always make sure the game does not come with some sort of other annoying DRM that is not listed[2].
[1] http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/09/deus-ex-human-revolution-s...
[2] http://steamdrm.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?page=DRM_Lists/T...
I am curious where you are getting this information
Steam wouldn't start is a vague statement, care to elaborate? Steam.exe wouldn't run, or the window wouldn't show, or...?
And which game took 30 minutes installing on a not-too-ancient PC (one that we're lacking the specs for, keeping in mind not every PC can game well).
Losing the activation code is just as likely to happen with consoles especially with the increasingly amount of games that require codes for online gaming.
Those of you chiding the PS4 for being the same thing seem to forget how well xbox has worked out for microsoft.
The average person playing video games does not care what makes the video games go.
Things that didn't happen: Two HDMI ports, three ethernet ports, and six USB ports.
Backwards PS2 compatability, multiple card reader formats, and SACD support were all dropped later on. Ones that do support SACDs still no longer support digital surround output.
I love my PS3, but Sony seems to have quite a history of over-promising and under-delivering with these announcements, and then cutting features that they launched with down the line as well.
The point is more that Sony sells the systems at these announcements as having everything, and eventually... have less.
"
There is background uploading and downloading, allowing the console to update game and system items in the background even if the main power is off. [...]
This is enabled by a secondary processor that allows for background work while the main processor is handling gameplay.
"
Aside from this, I am somewhat undecided if the PS4 could be interesting. The Kinect+Move controller sounds good, if it is implemented well ( and the libraries are anywhere close to the Kinect ones). And the hardware seems to me okay, roughly what one would expect from a new console. On the other hand, I do not see anything like the blue ray drive of the PS3, a really compelling reason why I should get a PS4 instead of an xBox ( or an upgrade to the PC that sits next to my TV).
Also, think of the power user case. I'd much prefer a 3W processor waking up during the night doing silent updates, instead of the whole 100W monster (or maybe a fifth of that if they do intelligent power-gating).
"We already live in a culture of fear"
That just got political real fast.
(From the live stream)
(Game’s no doubt gonna be awesome, though. So I forgive their dumb marketing shenanigans.)
That would be far more revolutionary than social integration and some buzzwords.
Console dev used to take special, expensive development kits, although moving to a more PC like architecture will make a public SDK at an affordable price more likely. Probably the easiest way to do it right now is to just use the multi-platform Unity engine.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
It's a refreshing combination of hardware and software I'm keen to try out. It merges features of say Steam combined with a dedicated gaming machine. Some people don't want to screw around with buying individual hardware, and at the end of the day just want to switch on a machine and pick up where they left.
We'll see how it goes here, but I'm pretty sure it will be a good experience (that will only get better as internet infrastructure and their servers expand).
Why? I can't think of a single reason to buy this... unless there are some really good exclusive games.
Even as a PC gamer, this is incredibly exciting. More powerful hardware means you can do fancy graphics and still have plenty leftover for other features. Every cross-platform title benefits.
But definitely not "way". The 600$ the PS4 is rumored to cost(yes, i know, just a rumor) can get you a decent gaming rig.
Actually, I'm very excited about the next XBOX. Microsoft has been onto something with the whole gaming thing.
Personally, I'm more excited about the Steam console.
The 720 is a generational upgrade, but is not, strictly speaking, new. The Valve console, on the other hand, is from someone whom I have developed a good deal of respect for over the years. I'm curious to see what they come up with.
I read it as: If MS locks it down, it would be on even footing with the Steam console, in which case his preference is for Steam.
A) Hardware that is extremely similar to the old system, so that you can either run its software natively on the metal or virtualize it without much of a penalty
-- This is how the Wii ran GameCube games
-- In a strange way, this is also how the original PS3 ran PS2 games — it included special hardware just for PS2 compatibility
B) Hardware that is radically more powerful than the old system, so that even though you have to emulate the old hardware, you're doing it fast enough to run the software at full speed
-- This is how the PS2 and PS3 play PS1 games
-- This is also how modern PCs do emulation of old consoles
Neither of these is the case for the 720 as far as I know. The hardware is very different from the 360, and although modern hardware is significantly more powerful than the 360, there still aren't any emulators for it or the PS3.
It lasted 4 beautiful seconds. Not sure whether to blame Sony though...
This is another area where Google will blow the doors off of the competition. Or at least get them to upgrade their offerings so that we can actually use these gaming boxes like they are supposed to be used. Yea, right. Oh well, I guess that the Kansas City folks will be happy anyway.
> We are pleased to announce that we have ported Paradox Engine and Yebis Post-Processing Middleware on PS4 last year. In order to successfully achieve this, we have managed to develop a full compatible Direct3D11/DXGI/D3DCompiler API on top of PS4 existing graphics API. We plan to use also this layer to port other middleware developed at our company.
There are no 32-bit x86 processors for sale anymore. "x86" means x86_64 as well.
It'd be interesting if Sony choose to run the processor in 32bit mode for that reason, they could also use something like the Linux x32 ABI (i.e. use the AMD64 instruction set but with 32bit pointers).
Of course referring to the processor architecture as "x86" doesn't mean anything in that regard.
I like the eye candy I've seen in beginning of the PS4 gameplay of Watch Dogs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PODJJN3fTME
But I really notice the roughness, like when he slows down after running across the street, and the unrealistic smooth circular pans that don't accelerate and decelerate like a normal panning movie camera would.
And, of course I think the Atari 2600 was the best home gaming console ever invented.
In the meantime there is plenty of time to reveal more and more as is opportune. The design, the price, etc. I feel like this is also a cat and mouse game with Microsoft. Who will show their cards first? Now the ball is certainly in Microsoft’s court (seeing as so far, Sony is ticking all the right boxes but has not yet revealed some critical information).
Can someone explain to me why this even requires thought from Sony? A headphone port costs like 5p each when mass producing them surely? You get a lot of value added for that 5p. Is this to simplified? Can someone who knows more about factory production elaborate?
Armchair programmer speculation: The latency of GDDR5 matters less when you don't have to transfer data back and forth between system memory and GPU memory. In fact, effective latency should be less all things considered compared to a traditional PC architecture.
This might also prove useful as a reference: http://solidlystated.com/hardware/difference-between-gddr-an...
Are you sure? My brother's got a 3 GHz Core 2/8800 GTX/4GB RAM system. Judging from the release dates of the parts, it would've come out in 2007 (5-6 years ago). That could still probably run some great games if developers continued to optimize for it. 3 years ago would be more like Nehalem core i7 and GeForce 300 graphics. Still very serviceable, again assuming game companies continue to optimize for it.
PC hardware improvements have really slowed dramatically since the 1990's and early 2000's.
Well you cannot double frequency anymore on chips if that is what you are referring to. But there are more and more cores, and GPUs is where the innovation is happening (and that's what matters with games). A 2 years old graphic card does not compare well with a new graphic card at the same price nowadays. I usually renew my PC hardware every 2 years or so and I definitely see the difference when I do in games and how well they run on the new config. And I stopped turning on my xbox and PS3 a while ago when I could have full HD games on my PC at great frame rates - playing on console then became slow (loading times) and ugly (certainly not as good as on PC).
This puts peta-scale APU computing into the sub-$500k range. That's affordable by a (funded) startup, and there are certainly interesting things one could do with that kind of supercomputing firepower.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-21-sony-tells-euro...
I have a 360 because I can buy burned games on a dvd-dl for 3$ a pop.
This is going to put Sony out of business.
Likely using the same tech they use for playing a PS3/4 on a PSP/PSVita (respectively)
However, the platform is sufficiently close to the PC that shipping the PC versions with slightly tweaked GPU code should be relatively painless. PS4 should have a huge library at release.