Sony Announces PlayStation 4, Second-Screen Experience PlayStation App for iOS

Dr. Scott said:

No images, release date or pricing. Worst product announcement of 2013 so far?

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Why? That's what E3 is for.

This was to tease the general audience about the new system and further attract third party developers, which was the number one source of contention regarding the PS3 in its initial launch.

komodrone said:

"I’d like to be watching this on my television, while hooked onto my mobile device, which is being controlled by my tablet device, which is hooked into my oven, all while sitting in my refrigerator.”

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I'd like to add...

I want it to move my laundry from my washer to my dryer, then hang my clean laundry.

Maybe Samsung, with all their innovation, can create that machine instead of making washers and dryers the same way they have been made for 50 years.

AC Wifi would have been nice.

I'm sure my post will get angrily denied by many gamers here, but I think the height of console gaming has passed. Let me first say that I'm sure the PS4 will sell okay, but it won't ever surpass the PS3 current total sales of 77 million. I think they'll be lucky to reach 5 million in the first year, which is how many units of Apple TV has sold in the last year, as Apple's "hobby" project.

The original PS3, XBox 360, and Nintendo Wii came out when the iPhone didn't even exist yet. Times have changed and the recent sales figures for the Wii U shows how much. Nat Brown was right. If Apple ever opens the floodgate and allows app development on the Apple TV, boosts the hardware slightly, makes an accessory controller, and allows games to be streamed from iOS devices through AirPlay, they will kill the other console makers. Even without any of the above, they're moving 5 million units a year. If they add on gaming ability, what will that look like then?? With over 400 million iOS devices, the potential there is incredible.

flux73 said:

I'm sure my post will get angrily denied by many gamers here, but I think the height of console gaming has passed.

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It passed in 2006 in terms of the quality of the Nintendo games. Halo 3 is the best Halo still. But in terms of sales, I think the peak is near (but not now). It's only a matter of time before game consoles become totally obsolete.

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Bill Killer said:

There is definitely an audience out there for complete, immersive games. The blanket statement "kids today just don't care about..." doesn't hold water for 2 reason:

1) They do. The sales prove it.
2) Kids aren't the only gamers. Teenagers and older are more active gamers than kids are.

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What I'm saying is that nobody is going to care how good the old Super Smash Bros was if the new one sucks. It seems like Nintendo is only keeping Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros good while releasing a few good family games like Wii Sports here and there. I already don't like Brawl or Mario Galaxy 1/2, and ESPECIALLY NOT the new Paper Marios. Thousand Year Door was easily the best singleplayer game ever created (again, with OoT taken out, but I've played it a little and already don't really like how it starts), but Super Paper Mario made me very sad.

Genuinely, the only two times where any form of media has ever made me sad were when I beat Thousand Year Door and when I saw the new Paper Mario. All Quiet on the Western Front and Wrath of Khan, no problem. /rant

flux73 said:

I'm sure my post will get angrily denied by many gamers here, but I think the height of console gaming has passed. Let me first start by saying that I'm sure the PS4 will still sell and probably sell okay. But it won't surpass the PS3 current total sales of 77 million. I think they'll be lucky to reach 5 million in the first year, which is how many units of Apple TV has sold in the last year, as Apple's "hobby" project.

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$99 compared to $300 +, depending on the model. Bad comparison.

Nat Brown was right. If Apple ever opens the floodgate and allows app development on the Apple TV, boosts the hardware slightly, makes an accessory controller, and allows games to be streamed from iOS devices through AirPlay, they will kill the other console makers. Even without any of the above, they are selling 5 million units a year. If they add on gaming ability, what will that look like then?? With over 400 million iOS devices, the potential there is incredible.

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Games. Games. Games. Games. Games.

If a console doesn't have the games, it won't sell. Content is key. That's why Blu-Ray won over HD-DVD. That's why DVD won over Betamax. That's why Dreamcast pushed SEGA into software development only.

I just can't believe that iOS games will eventually lead to the downfall of consoles that let you play the latest versions Mario, Call of Duty, GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Resident Evil, Madden, Halo, Left 4 Dead, MLB The Show, etc...

If Capcom, EA, ActiVision, and other major game developers make comparative software for the Apple TV/console, then we could see a potential industry domination, but iOS games aren't enough. And if it is, Apple will have done an incredible disservice to quality in the industry, and we, the consumers, are the losers.

gorskiegangsta said:

Sony themselves have stated that there won't be PS3 game support out of the gate but that they'll be working on a way to emulate those.
...

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Cloud on PS4


If you are speaking about hardware emulation, they said similar w/ the PS2 emulation on the PS3 and they just cut it off. They don't want any backlash for stuff out of their control ATM.

Fatalbert said:

What I'm saying is that nobody is going to care how good the old Super Smash Bros was if the new one sucks. It seems like Nintendo is only keeping Mario Kart good. I already don't like Brawl or Mario Galaxy 1/2, and ESPECIALLY NOT the new Paper Marios. Thousand Year Door was easily the best singleplayer game ever created (again, with OoT taken out, but I've played it a little and already don't really like how it starts), but Super Paper Mario made me very sad.

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Absolutely the need for quality is there. While a terrible film can become a box office hit, video games live and die based on the quality of the games. Resident Evil 4 was a fantastic game, and sold very well across multiple consoles. Resident Evil 5 was fun, if with a few blemishes. Resident Evil 6 sucked, and the sales took a hit.

The price tags for games make gamers more educated about the perceived quality of the games, so quality is of the utmost importance.

Brawl was fun, but it was a retread. I feel the same way about Mario Kart, as well. However, I absolutely disagree with you on the Galaxy games; though were fantastic achievements in level design, pacing, and gameplay.

gorskiegangsta said:

Maybe because they finally realized they're not the king of electronics anymore. There are 400 million iOS devices in the wild, and probably as many or more Android devices - there are only ~75 million PS3s. SONY needs to play ball with the customer in order to succeed.

Still, they'll have their share of proprietary hardware. By the looks of it, the I/O headset port on their new controller is proprietary.
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While I am glad they went with x86 platform, the question of pricing remains. Some speculate that the PS4 will be as much as $999 for the top-ens SKU which would be just ridiculous in our day and age.

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The new $1000 graphic card by Nvidia called the GTX Titan only has 6gb of GDDR5. You can expect the PS4 to be $399 though, that is the common thread for a while.

Bill Killer said:

Absolutely the need for quality is there. While a terrible film can become a box office hit, video games live and die based on the quality of the games. Resident Evil 4 was a fantastic game, and sold very well across multiple consoles. Resident Evil 5 was fun, if with a few blemishes. Resident Evil 6 sucked, and the sales took a hit.

The price tags for games make gamers more educated about the perceived quality of the games, so quality is of the utmost importance.

Brawl was fun, but it was a retread. I feel the same way about Mario Kart, as well. However, I absolutely disagree with you on the Galaxy games; though were fantastic achievements in level design, pacing, and gameplay.

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A $20 million dollar costing game on PS4 should have much better value for the developer than from PS3. They are making games very easy to develop for and asset generation much easier. The point is so that even indie developers can make really good looking games for very little money.

The original PS3, XBox 360, and Nintendo Wii came out when the iPhone didn't even exist yet. Times have changed and the recent sales figures for the Wii U shows how much.

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The Wii U isn't failing because the iPad and iPhone are now popular products. The Wii U is failing because it has very poor game selection, clunky controls, and Nintendo did a very poor job of convincing gamers what the benefit of the LCD controller.

Krafty said:

Maybe I missed it, so what does the actual console look like?

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As long as it fits in most people's entertainment center and has a front loading disc slot, why do we care about what it looks like?

Fatalbert said:

Genuinely, the only two times where any form of media has ever made me sad were when I beat Thousand Year Door and when I saw the new Paper Mario. All Quiet on the Western Front and Wrath of Khan, no problem. /rant

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Field. Of. Dreams.

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bitcloudrzr said:

A $20 million dollar costing game on PS4 should have much better value for the developer than from PS3. They are making games very easy to develop for and asset generation much easier. The point is so that even indie developers can make really good looking games for very little money.

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The PS4 is going to open some doors for smaller gaming developers, and that's what I think this presser was really all about: third party attraction. They are desperately trying not to repeat the disaster of the PS3 launch.

Bill Killer said:

Field. Of. Dreams.

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The PS4 is going to open some doors for smaller gaming developers, and that's what I think this presser was really all about: third party attraction. They are desperately trying not to repeat the disaster of the PS3 launch.

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Yeah, get everyone making games for you and grab every exclusive you can. I feel a little bad that the game I want most from that presentation is Killzone. I'm not into the other stuff mostly, but it's great that they are all there.

bitcloudrzr said:

Yeah, get everyone making games for you and grab every exclusive you can. I feel a little bad that the game I want most from that presentation is Killzone. I'm not into the other stuff mostly, but it's great that they are all there.

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I think Watch Dog could be an amazing game, and I'll buy anything that Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain) develops.

The PS4 will be released "Holiday 2013", so expect it around Christmas this year.

As for backwards compatibility, they just bought the cloud gaming service Gaikai for almost 400 million dollars. With Gaikai, which they talked about heavily in the conference, all previous PlayStation titles can eventually be played via cloud computing through this Gaikai service... I'm sure they are still working heavily on getting it set up. They still have quite a while before launch and many years to improve upon it.

It is not backwards compatible out of the box, but that makes sense since the PS4 is using PC architecture now and not the CELL tech that's currently in PS3.

The GPU:

The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has been enhanced in a number of ways, principally to allow for easier use of the GPU for general purpose computing (GPGPU) such as physics simulation. The GPU contains a unified array of 18 compute units, which collectively generate 1.84 Teraflops of processing power that can freely be applied to graphics, simulation tasks, or some mixture of the two.

PS4 is equipped with 8 GB of unified system memory, easing game creation and increasing the richness of content achievable on the platform. GDDR5 is used for this memory, giving the system 176 GB/second of bandwidth and providing a further boost to graphics performance.

The end result for gamers is new games with rich, high-fidelity graphics and deeply immersive experiences that shatter expectations.

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That's a lot of GDDR5.

The CPU is a new tech being developed by AMD named "Jaguar". It is a lower power consumption chip with 8 cores.

The specific details of the hardware haven't been specified... probably as not to give everything away for Microsoft to munch on.

Just gotta wait until E3 for more details.

You can read more about everything on Sony's site: http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/pdf/130221a_e.pdf

Carlanga said:

Cloud on PS4


If you are speaking about hardware emulation, they said similar w/ the PS2 emulation on the PS3 and they just cut it off. They don't want any backlash for stuff out of their control ATM.

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If I recall correctly the PS3 SDK was run on a special x86 system. So I guess porting and embedding the emulator part of the SDK into the Operating System of PS4 won't be that hard. The challenge though is to make it have decent performance. PS2 -> PS3 was different though as they had to develop a ps2 emulator to ps3 hardware.

On a different note I am impressed that x86 will be used. If the new XBOX has also x86, who knows what great minds can do.

joemod said:

If I recall correctly the PS3 SDK was run on a special x86 system. So I guess porting and embedding the emulator part of the SDK into the Operating System of PS4 won't be that hard. The challenge though is to have it decent performance. PS2 -> PS3 was different though as they had to develop a ps2 emulator to ps3 hardware.
The new uncompatible hardware is obviously the reason why there won't be compatibility between PS3 and PS4

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The PS3 uses CELL technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

Nermal said:

Well, it's fun, but I [Listen!] wouldn't say that it's one of the [Hey!] best games ever. I'm having trouble [Link!] putting my finger on a reason though...

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Also, let's not forget the distractingly bad graphics. I know it's an old game, so it's excusable, but it's still annoying. It's like how I love GoldenEye, but I get annoyed when I can't aim at an enemy simply because he looks like 2 pixels, because the game is lagging, or because the controller sucks.

Bill Killer said:

Absolutely the need for quality is there. While a terrible film can become a box office hit, video games live and die based on the quality of the games. Resident Evil 4 was a fantastic game, and sold very well across multiple consoles. Resident Evil 5 was fun, if with a few blemishes. Resident Evil 6 sucked, and the sales took a hit.

The price tags for games make gamers more educated about the perceived quality of the games, so quality is of the utmost importance.

Brawl was fun, but it was a retread. I feel the same way about Mario Kart, as well. However, I absolutely disagree with you on the Galaxy games; though were fantastic achievements in level design, pacing, and gameplay.

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Agreed halo was a lot like this.
Hell halo/ halo 2 made the Xbox a hit!
But that franchise as well as the genre has turned into crap.

Halo ce>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>halo 2>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>halo 4>>>>>>>>>>>>>>reach title update>>>>>>>>>>>>>>halo 3>>>>>>>>>>>>>>halo reach launch.


Franchises have become watered down to the average 13 year old. Get on XBL and see my point. I don't see myself buying anymore consoles and I've owned everyone from nes up to 360 but a lot of great titles died with the n64, Xbox and ps2. Nothing now is entralling, graphics may be better but that is not compensation for gameplay.

Weerez935 said:

Franchises have become watered down to the average 13 year old. Get on XBL and see my point. I don't see myself buying anymore consoles and I've owned everyone from nes up to 360 but a lot of great titles died with the n64, Xbox and ps2. Nothing now is entralling, graphics may be better but that is not compensation for gameplay.

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I don't particularly like Halo, but I just don't like first person shooters. I'm terrible at controlling them.

As for nothing now being enthralling, there are absolutely some fantastic achievements in gaming released every year.

• The Super Mario Galaxy games achieve level design never attempted on a major console release
• The Batman: Arkham games achieve an atmosphere unparalled, and thus, are the best superhero video games ever made, by a large margin
• Dead Space is one of the few games to achieve true horror, a rarity in games.
• Heavy Rain put as big an emphasis on character development and emotions as it did the gameplay; it was truly a one-of-a-kind experience
• The Uncharted series is getting closer-and-closer to replicating film-quality production values and style of storytelling
• Rockstar Games, between GTA and RRD, are still the gold standard for open-world games

And these are off the top of my head. Video games may lack the awe and jaw-dropping nature of the previous generation of games, but that's mainly because the need for better graphics has paled recently in comparison to the need for better gameplay and storytelling. There are still tons of games that offer incredible experiences.

Welcome to x86. PC gaming is dead.

I've owned most of all the popular consoles since the NES. I loved my original PlayStation (still have one), I really liked my PS2 (still have one) and I'm fine with my PS3.

But, I'm getting less and less excited about new consoles. It feels like every time I want to play a game with my kids there is a new system update for the PS3 or a game update that needs to be downloaded and installed first. Or the controllers have run out of power and need to be wired. Or there is a game disc that the kids can't find. And the price of a new game is somewhere between 10 to 70 times the price of an iOS game.
— All this seriously harms the pleasure of turning on the PS3. Especially the technical stuff. And especially for the kids (boy aged 7 and girl aged 10), they seriously don't want to go through "all the trouble with the PS3". So they simply grab our iOS devices — or their MacBook Pros — and game like mad (Minecraft, TeanFortress 2, Dungeon Defenders, BeGone and Pet City are their all time favorites). And they enjoy doing lots of creative stuff on our iOS devices — drawing, making stop motion movies, taking photos etc.

The announcement of the PS4 — I seriously do not feel any excitement at all. None.
I'm pretty sure the PS4 will be the first PlayStation since 1995 that I wont buy.

Phat Doug said:

I wonder if I will be able to play my PS3 games on the new PS4..?

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I think I saw on TechCrunch that it wasn't backwards compatible but they anticipated re-releasing games on the online marketplace that would be...

el-John-o said:

One day. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But one day, maybe soon, MacRumors can post a story without folks complaining about it being there.

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If I had a quarter for every time someone went off on a gripe spree because Macrumors had the audacity to post something besides Mac and iOS news...

...I'd easily have enough to fill a sock, which I could then use to smack upside their head for being so pointlessly whiny.