Media Mayhem

On February 20, 2013, Sony announced their next generation gaming console, the PlayStation 4. Sony held a two hour press conference in New York City to discuss the future of PlayStation. Various Sony executives revealed the specs of the new PlayStation 4 and game developers dived into live game demos of already completed PS4 games.

With the PS4, Sony has greatly improved their infrastructure. Being Sony's first High Definition gaming console and containing a variety of other new features such as a built in bluray player, the PS3 was seen as large step forward. Unfortunately, the PS3 was described by many game companies as being extremely difficult to develop for. The PS3 contained many custom designed components, which made life difficult for game developers.

Sony learned their lesson with the PS3 and have chosen to use more traditional computing components in the PS4. The PS4 will feature AMD's new 8-core processor. It will also contain 8 gigs of memory, which will help it run faster and reduce load times (more on that later). The graphics card will feature a Radeon card with a whopping 1.84 teraflops of power. This will now allow game developers to potentially use the same CGI technology used in movies, such as Transformers and The Avengers, to create almost life-like graphics and vast worlds for us to explore. As seen in Capcom's "Deep Down" PS4 demo below, the graphic quality over the PS3 is a vast improvement (select HD playback). If you pause the video at the 20 second mark you can see the realism in the soldier's face.



With the high computing power of the PS4, Sony has been able to solve a number of frustrations gamers had with the PS3. Sony Computer Entertainment Vice President, Michael Denny said at the Sony Press Conference in February, "On the PS3, waiting seemed to be an all to common theme. A user may decide they want to play a game, so they turn on their PS3 to find they have a system software update to perform. After performing the update they insert their game only to now find there is also an update for the game. Once they finally reach the game they have to sit through logos and wait for the game to load. With the PS4, waiting is a thing of the past. No longer will you have to wait to play that new demo until it finishes downloading. Simply select the game from the PlayStation Store and start playing instantly."

This no wait strategy is crucial to keeping users happy in this instant gratification world we now live in. Part of this new feature allows the user to put the PS4 in a standby mode. When you finish your gaming session, you don't have quit the game, eject the disc, and shut down the PS4; rather, you simply turn off the console and then when you come back at a later time to use it again, the PS4 will turn on and you can immediately resume playing the game right where you left off. No more waiting for the machine to boot up and then sitting through logos and legal information as the game starts up.

The reason game developers are so excited about the future of PlayStation is because all the major players in the gaming industry had a hand in designing the PS4. It was specifically designed to maximize the potential of the latest technology in order to push the gaming industry forward.

PlayStation 4 System and hardware

Ted Price, President and CEO of Insomniac Games, stated, "Yes, the PS3 got a bad rap for being tough to develop for. I imagine that's kept some developers from making the leap -- no such excuse exists now. There's a lot about the PlayStation 4 that is clearly an advance over the PS3. And that's cool from a developer perspective. It seems to me that there are a lot of Sony loyalists who are pumped about the new console. That's great for all of us who make games on Sony platforms."

Tim Sweeney, Epic Games Founder and CEO, had this to say about the PlayStation 4, "As the developers of the Unreal Engine, we're passionate about not only building great games, but building them efficiently. PlayStation 4 builds upon PC technology and takes it to the next level, providing a very robust and easy-to-use development environment. The PlayStation 4 is a leading-edge hardware platform, and its enormous CPU, GPU and memory resources enables Unreal Engine 4 to reach levels of visual quality and detail that go far beyond the current generation, for games of all sizes and genres."



"The features and effects in our new "Elemental" demo on PlayStation 4 are just the tip of the iceberg, showing dynamic lighting and shadowing, subsurface scattering and GPU-powered particle effects at full resolution," he concluded.

At the Sony press conference, a few new games were previewed for the PlayStation 4. The games revealed were Killzone: Shadow Fall, Drive Club, Watch Dogs, Infamous: Second Son, and Destiny. Below are trailers of the games.  

Page down past the game demos to read more information about the PS4.

Killzone: Shadow Fall 



Drive Club



Watch Dogs



Infamous: Second Son



Destiny



Hang on to your old PlayStation consoles because Sony announced the PS4 will not allow for backwards compatible gaming like the early versions of the PS3. Sony will most likely allow you to play old PlayStation titles by re-buying them in the PlayStation Store and downloading them onto the hard drive on the PS4. This is already a feature available on the PS3, so one would think Sony wouldn't make you buy an old game for the third time. For example, originally buying a PS2 game, then PS3 download, then PS4 download. Unfortunately, big corporations like Sony and Microsoft no matter how much they communicate they care about the gamers, their ultimate concern is making money so it wouldn't come as a shock if purchases don't carry over.

Of course while playing these amazing new PS4 games, you need a great controller to give you the most out of your gaming experience. Sony stuck with a similar look to the PlayStation controllers of old but have updated it significantly.

The PlayStation 4 controller

The controller has a much sleeker look to it. The controller contains a number of new features. First off, the buttons have been rounded to give better grip. There is a share button that will allow you to instantly upload photos and/or video footage from you gaming adventures. Next, the controller contains a headphone jack at the base of the controller as well as a small speaker in the center. Lastly, the coolest new feature is a touch screen located in the center of the controller. Sony says the touch screen will allow for users to quickly swipe through menus and make things easier to access. The PS4 will ship with a stereo motion capture bar similar to Microsoft's Kinect, that will run the speaker on the controller as well as capture the user's movements to be used for games currently in development.

Another area the PlayStation 4 improves on from the PS3 is the use and integration of social media. By incorporating the share button on the controller, gamers will have a quick way to upload stills or video clips from their game play to show off to their friends. With the use of PlayStation sensor bar, you will be able to connect with friends on your contact list and watch a live stream of the game they are playing. If you get stuck on a certain level or hard part of a mission, you can use this live stream feature to allow a more experienced friend to take control of the game remotely, progress past the hard part, and then return control of the game back to you.

Sony revealed that there would be a bunch of other new features, but will go into further details at a later time. One feature that is rumored to be available on the PS4, is Sony's not yet released 4K resolution movie rental service. Sony's PlayStation 4 goes on sale Holiday 2013. 

Sources: Sony News Conference, IGN, Playstation Blog