Updated: PlayStation 4 Becomes Reality

[Terramax]

Fairly impressed by the visuals, but they aren't too high a jump from PS3, and it seems like we're going to be seeing the exact kinds of games next generation as we did this generation. As a Vita owner, however, the ability to play PS4 games via remote play is a good seller to me, especially as, having not owned a PS3 yet, I would get to play PS3 games as well on the vita, a massive library open to me at launch.

I wasn't amazed by this presentation though. I don't think it will be very hard for Microsoft to at least reach the same technical level with their console.

 

[RicoADF]

8Gb of DDR5 RAM? That's INSANE!

you mean 8 gb of GDDR5 ram on the graphics card. still quite powerful but not uncommon.
the radeon hd 4870 series has GDDR5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDDR5

Nope. Not GPU RAM. System RAM.

Your both right and your both wrong, its shared ram, used by the CPU/GPU

 

[Tanakh]

Also, Adam Jensen is plain wrong. Current enthusiast cards have 4 GB DDR5, those on SLI will get the 8,

I just want to clarify that SLI/Crossfire setups don't double the amount of dedicated video memory you have. You always have the amount available that the lowest card has (if they don't have the same amount, otherwise you would have 4GB of VRAM available in your SLI scenario.)

That's right, forgot about it.

 

[sleeky01]

One thing that kinda surprised me was that EA didn't show anything.

 

[dalek sec]

Haven't heard a damn thing about it blocking or not blocking used games. As I've stated many times by now, if it does well the next Xbox get's my money. I'll be honest, alot of the "social" stuff is just wasted on me since I always play alone and offline.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Price? Used games functionality? The console itself?

Come on Sony, tech demos are cool and everything, but we need to see more.

 

[Crazie_Guy]

According to Destructoid: "It will have 8GB of unified memory, a X86 CPU, 8 CPU cores, 2 teraflops computational performance, and a "Supercharged PC architecture."

How exactly do they plan to sell this thing at a profit? Are they planning on losing even more money in losses?

And before anyone quotes me on this, no, just because Sony stopped making a loss on production of the PS3 in 2010, that is not the same thing as being profitable. They burned through their entire PS2 warchest with the PS3, and that was a huge amount of money. They haven't even begun to recoup the losses they accrued this gen, and now they're going to try and sell yet more consoles at a loss?

Look away from the tech-porn and this isn't exactly good news for Sony. The Ps3 cost them money. The Vita is currently costing them money. They need to start turning an actual profit, not repeating the same business practises that have seen them go from $120 billion worth to $17 billion.

Sorry, I know this is going to be one of the sole cynical voices in amongst all the "WOOOH PS4 YEAH!" but this is not good for Sony. Financially, they're on the ropes. They need to get their shit together.

Burning piles of money in a gambit win hearts and minds is the right of multi-faceted companies like Sony and Microsoft. Did you know they have departments other than for games? It's true! And some of those other departments make a lot of money! This is why Nintendo, which only has games, is the one that's been forfeiting the power game and trying to work a 3rd angle miracle.

 

[southparkdudez]

So they allow you to play a game while its downloading thats cool but I never thought the download times for the PS3 was bad and I have HORRIABLE internet connection.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

"Holiday 2013"?

Is that a remix of the old Madonna song, or what?

 

[Rad Party God]

No thanks Sony, I'm not impressed at anything you announced today, although the idea of recording your own gameplay is pretty neat and about freaking time, but I'm not a fan of streaming content, especially PS3 games.

The games announced... meh...

And that new controller... just no.

I'll happily and gladly skip this entire new generation.

 

[TK421]

Colour me jaded but I give zero effs about sharing and videos and blah blah blah; I just want to play my damn game.

No doubt. Better hardware is awesome. Gimmicky motion controls and social media integration is crap.

It looks pretty good, but I hate the Xbox UI, and I'm very skeptical of the friends taking over your controller stuff. I'm just really worried about the industry treating consumers even worse this generation. Oh well, here's hoping for the best.

 

[NoPants2win]

According to Destructoid: "It will have 8GB of unified memory, a X86 CPU, 8 CPU cores, 2 teraflops computational performance, and a "Supercharged PC architecture."

How exactly do they plan to sell this thing at a profit? Are they planning on losing even more money in losses?

And before anyone quotes me on this, no, just because Sony stopped making a loss on production of the PS3 in 2010, that is not the same thing as being profitable. They burned through their entire PS2 warchest with the PS3, and that was a huge amount of money. They haven't even begun to recoup the losses they accrued this gen, and now they're going to try and sell yet more consoles at a loss?

Look away from the tech-porn and this isn't exactly good news for Sony. The Ps3 cost them money. The Vita is currently costing them money. They need to start turning an actual profit, not repeating the same business practises that have seen them go from $120 billion worth to $17 billion.

Sorry, I know this is going to be one of the sole cynical voices in amongst all the "WOOOH PS4 YEAH!" but this is not good for Sony. Financially, they're on the ropes. They need to get their shit together.

This is actually way less crazy than the PS3. They went with x86 instead of inventing a whole new processor (cell) and a new type of optical drive (blu-ray). And, they aren't putting an entire PS2 inside it. It's actually sort of sane as Sony goes.

 

[xorinite]

8Gb of DDR5 RAM? That's INSANE!

you mean 8 gb of GDDR5 ram on the graphics card. still quite powerful but not uncommon.
the radeon hd 4870 series has GDDR5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDDR5

Nope. Not GPU RAM. System RAM.

Your both right and your both wrong, its shared ram, used by the CPU/GPU

Hang on, they cannot both be right. DDR and GDDR are different in more ways than simply where they are soldered, voltages, timings, frequencies and such are different between them.

"GDDR5 is based on DDR3 SDRAM."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDDR5

Additionally, I am not sure that DDR5 ram exists, despite the existence of DDR3 based GDDR5.
I haven't even heard of DDR4 being released yet.

Edit additional: I am glad that they have increased the total level of ram in their system. We hopefully might begin to see continuous environments in bethsoft games.

Edit additional: DDR4 ram isn't finished yet, and its expected to be released for use in 2015, which makes the claims that PS4 uses DDR5 SDRAM pretty suspicious to me, its more likely they use GDDR5 which is modified DDR3 SDRAM.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Price? Used games functionality? The console itself?

Come on Sony, tech demos are cool and everything, but we need to see more.

Ive been on a few sites about this topic. People are thinking that judging by what we where told in the vid and the total lack of actual releasing of a console could mean its digital only. If they showed the console, we would see it would have no disc port for games. It has the ability to download PS1, PS2 and PS3 games so why not PS4 games as well? They would definitely prove the no used games thing.

 

[Crazie_Guy]

Burning piles of money in a gambit win hearts and minds is the right of multi-faceted companies like Sony and Microsoft. Did you know they have departments other than for games? It's true! And some of those other departments make a lot of money! This is why Nintendo, which only has games, is the one that's been forfeiting the power game and trying to work a 3rd angle miracle.

Yeah, except that in case you hadn't heard, Sony's other departments are all losing money as well. Their TV department has sunk billions, their phones are way behind the market leaders like Samsung and Apple, and their music division is frankly a joke compared to the glory days of the Walkman.

It doesn't matter how many divisions they have. They're still losing money. They were worth $120 billion in 2002. They're worth $17 billion now. Their credit has been downgraded to junk status. Their share prices are down at a 30 year low.

They need to start making profits in all their divisions if they want to stop from sinking. And blowing cash on expensive hardware that has to be sold at a loss is not the way to do it.

Somehow I doubt they're going to crash all that hard, and even if they do, I don't really care. I'm more interested in pushing all gaming forward than worrying about Sony's future.

Still... on one side, we have the company itself with their revenue figures, their treasury, their experts working on marketing and financial analyses, all of their knowledge of their own situation both from inside and out, all culminating in a well researched decision to follow this path, one that is already backed by an army of the biggest developers who also think they're going to do fine. On the other side, we have a guy on the internet shaking his fist and telling them to be more careful with their money. Hmm... which side to bet on....

And it's not like gaming itself revolves around Sony. Given the choice, I'd rather them crash spectacularly with a monster of a gaming box that hopefully pushes the next Xbox into being something even better, than cow their head and drag out a weak box that could only compete with the Wii U so they can lick their wounds and push no boundaries.

 

[Twilight_guy]

The console must be camera shy, or maybe it just doesn't want to whore itself out on stage.

Looks interesting, will continue to watch. Yet deep within my soul I know that in the future it will only cause suffering, why so much hate on game forums, why so much hate?

 

[Crazie_Guy]

Firstly, it's not just some guy on the internet. Financial analysts and economists have been saying this for ages. Sony needs to sort itself out, or it will run out of money in all its divisions.

And you should care about this. The last time a major hardware company actually went bankrupt, it was Atari. And it caused the videogame crash of 83. Hardware companies have a huge impact on the medium, as their products are the foundation of the industry, the hardware on which all the other companies are dependent. If Sony crashes, then that will have a huge impact on the industry, and huge negative repurcussions. This is the sort of thing that can cause stocks to plummet, and cause industry wide meltdowns.

The 1983 game industry is incomparable to the one today. It was fledgling, VERY niche enthusiast focused, not taken seriously by a vast majority of people and not populated by the sheer volume of powerful and well established companies that we have today, without even mentioning the avalanche of indie developers and the flood of crowdfunding. Oh, and that niche group of enthusiasts and handful of indecisive people wondering if this gaming fad was going to turn into anything has grown into millions of avid gamers eager to throw their money at whoever is bringing them the best games, whether it's Sony or whatever rises to take their place. I'm sorry, but even Sony crashing is not capable of causing an industry wide meltdown. Hell, it might even make things better if it could break up the AAA market stagnation somewhat let the indie stuff come to the forefront more.