PS4 release date, news and features
At GDC 2013 at the end of March, a room full of would-be PS4 developers and press got some new details about the hardware, controller, online and social functions of the forthcoming PlayStation 4.Well before Microsoft eventually announced the Xbox One, Senior Staff Developer Support Engineer Chris Norden unveiled the news under an overarching theme of a "frictionless and seamless" gaming experience.We've known that the PS4 will track both the controller in a gamers hand, as well as their face, since the consoles launch in Feb. But during his GDC talk Norden revealed some interesting ways that this technology will be implemented in games.For example, the old multiplayer standby of split screen, divvying up television real estate when two or more players go at it, will be aided by this tracking tech. If a gamer gets up and moves right or left, his section of the screen will automatically be swapped.
PS4 release date
The PS4 release date is "Holiday 2013" for the USA. That's the only official detail Sony revealed at the launch in February and it's unclear which other territories it applies to, if any.However, Sony recently took out a newspaper ad in the UK, clearly advertising the PS4 release date as '2013'. That tallies with an interview in May with our buddies at CVG, a source inside Sony said that the company is pulling out all the stops to launch worldwide in 2013 and ensure that the PS4 is not trumped by the new Xbox.Sony also advertised at the Champions League final at Wembley Stadium, London, with 'PS4 - coming 2013' signs.Officially, Sony has said it wants the PS4 release date in Europe to be as soon as possible but makes no promises on whether the UK and other European countries will get a release date in time for Christmas this year or whether it'll be an uncomfortable wait until sometime in 2014.Stock issues might be the reason for this, and that's exactly what happened back in 2006/2007 when the PS3 launched. It went on sale in the US and Japan in time for Christmas and Europe and the rest of the world had to wait for March the next year.But that newspaper ad certainly seems to confirm that we'll be able to get our hands on the PS4 before Christmas in the US and Europe.What we know for sure is that we'll get our first glimpse of the PS4 at E3.
PS4: Hardware specs
AMD, as we guessed all along, is coursing through this new system's veins.Post-event, Sony revealed the system runs on a single-chip custom processor and utilizes eight x86-64 AMD Jaguar CPU cores, with a next-gen AMD Radeon based graphics engine powering the way.So it's very much a PC-based system then, which is great news for developers who will find it much easier to code games for the next gen consoles and for PCs. However, that CPU is hardly next-gen - it may have been modified for this system but the AMD Jaguar platform is by no means the fastest of its kind - indeed it's slower than Intel's fastest by orders of magnitude.However, with fewer redundancies than a PC has, the PS4 will certainly be able to make use of every single Watt of power it draws.The "highly enhanced PC GPU" is another story. It's another AMD part - something along the lines of a Radeon 7850 card - and packs 18 GCN units. That may sound a like a lot of techy mumbo jumbo but what it essentially means is that the GPU packs 18 processing clusters, each packing up to 64 cores. That provides a lot of parallel processing power, and will thus handle the majority of the PS4's grunt work. It hits 1.84 TFLOPS of processing mojo. This is a far more powerful component than the Jaguar CPU and is rumoured to have the edge on the GPU inside the Xbox One.Sony announced at the NYC event that the console will even use GPU compute features to take advantage of the GPU's raw power - it'll be used for general computation tasks as well as making games shiny.
Memory
- The PS4 will ship packing 8GB of GDDR5 memory. That's some super-fast stuff right there and should enable lightning fast performance.Indeed, Sony has revealed that you will be able to power down the PS4 mid-game and then switch it on again in seconds and pick up right where you left off. That's the sort of loading power that this memory enables.
Other specs
We're also looking at Blu-ray disk support plus good ol' DVD, plus HDMI output support as well as Analog-AV out and an optical digital output.
PlayStation 4 Eye
What's really grabbing though is the development of the PlayStation 4 Eye, a newly developed camera system that utilizes two high-sensitivity camera equipped with wide-angle lenses and 85-degree diagonal angle views.Sony said the cameras (amounting to 1280 x 800 pixels) can cut out the image of a player from the background or differentiate between players in the background and foreground, enhancing game play handily. There's also mention of logging in using facial recognition and using voice and body movements to play games "more intuitively."If you want to know how these specs stack up against what we know so far about the Xbox One (clue: PS4 is more powerful) - check out our comparison of PS4 and Xbox One specs.
PlayStation 4 Specifications
- CPU: low power x86-64 AMD "Jaguar", 8 cores
- GPU: 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD Radeon™ Graphics Core Next engine
- Memory: GDDR5 8GB
- Hard Disk Drive: Built –in
- Optical Drive (Read only): BD 6xCAV, DVD 8xCAV
- I/O: Super-Speed USB (USB 3.0), AUX
DualShock 4 specifications:
- External Dimensions: Approx. 162mm x 52mm x 98mm
- Weight: Approx. 210g (tentative)
- Buttons: PS button, SHARE button, OPTIONS button, Directional buttons (Up/Down/Left/Right), Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square), R1/L1/R2/L2/R3/L3, Right stick, Left stick, Touch Pad Button, Touch Pad 2 Point Touch Pad, Click Mechanism, Capacitive Type
- Other Features: Light Bar, Vibration, Built-in Mono Speaker
- Ports: USB (Micro B), Extention Port, Stereo Headset Jack
- Wireless communication: Bluetooth® Ver2.1+EDR
PS4 pre-orders
We don't yet know what the PS4 price is going to be in any territory, but in the UK at least, retailers are clambering all over each other to take £20 deposits in return for guaranteed PS4 consoles on release date.So far, you can pro-order your console at ShopTo, GAME and ASDA.
PS4 price: how much will it cost?-is the question...For many
We really don't know what price the PS4 will fetch. Some rumours suggest a figure of around $450/£399. But it's pure speculation at the moment.The sake Zavvi page which lists the UK release date as 31st December 2013 has a pre-order available for £399. Again, we'd take that with a pinch of salt, but if it's their best guess, there might be a grain of something in it.
PS4 launch titles
A number of games have been revealed for the PS4. They Are: Deep Down(Capcom), Destiny (Bungie), Diablo III (Blizzard), Driveclub (Evolution Studios), Final Fantasy (Square Enix), Infamous: Second Son (Sucker Punch), Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerilla Games), Knack (Sony), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt RED), Watch Dogs (Ubisoft).
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