As expected Sony announced the next-generation PlayStation at an event in New York today but to the surprise of many, Sony didn’t give a single glimpse of the hardware. Sony revealed most of the details surrounding the hardware, the DualShock4 controller and services but Sony held up the console for a supposedly E3 reveal.
Anyways, Sony says the new PS4 has been designed to give the “most immersive experience” and is powered by AMD’s eight x86-64 cores, 8GB GDDR5 memory and an AMD Radeon GPU that generates 1.84 Teraflops of processing power. Rest of the hardware includes a built-in 6x Blu-ray drive, USB 3.0, Wi-Fi, Ethernet port, Bluetooth 2.1, HDMI, analog-AV out and digital output (optical).
Social aspect is one of the key features and sports a dedicated “Share” button on the controller, allowing users to upload a short video or a friend of the gamer can also participate by offering health packs, weapons etc.
Sony also touts PS4’s suspend mode that keeps the console in a low power state, enabling gamers to pause or resume from any point of the game and even helps to reduce the console boot and game load time.
Sony is also taking advantage of second screen and technology from Gaikai which it acquired last year. PS Vita or an iOS/Android device (with the help of a PlayStation App) will be able to interact with the PS4. For instance, the second screen could be used to see a map when playing an adventure game.
As for Gaikai, they’re integrating the cloud gaming service with the PlayStation Network where an interested user will be able to play a portion from an actual game and not the restrictive version.
Sony has not revealed the price but expects to launch the console before the big holiday season.
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