“Gaming Experiences and Completely New Ways to Play”

Earlier this week in New York, Sony introduced their next-gen gaming console, PlayStation 4. This time PlayStation is focusing on powerful graphics, speed, great gameplay, innovations, personalization, new OS, social networking, cloud technology and the system ecosystem. PS4 will be available in the end of the year for holiday season with launch titles such Killzone: Shadow Fall.

“Gamer Focused, Developer Inspired”

According to Sony, PS4 is designed with many developers and they have listened their wishes to make the best possible gaming console for them. This means less complicated system architecture and easier developing and more time can be used to making the games itself than learning the system.

The PS4 system architecture is is centered around a powerful custom chip that contains eight x86-64 cores and a state of the art graphics processor. The Graphics Processing Unit (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 GDDR5  ram that is gives the system 176 GB/second of bandwidth and providing a further boost to graphics performance which means that there will be more details, items, larger areas… For example no disappearing enemies or cars in open-world games.

“Shared Game Experiences”

Social interaction will be playing big part in PS4 experience. There are new features like “always on” video compression and decompression systems that enables seamless uploading of gameplay for friends on Youtube, Facebook and live streaming gameplay on Ustream. There also is a SHARE button on the controller which allows gamers share their experiences with friends like gameplay, screenshots, status updates…

Users can also connect their Facebook account with Sony Entertainment Network account. Through PS4, users are able to play co-op and talk with cross-game chat like in PARTY on Xbox 360.

“PS4 Second Screens”

PS4 will have Wii U like second screen feature which allows gamers see their content wherever they are via PSVita, smartphones and tablets. A key feature enabled by second screen is “Remote Play” which lets you play ALL PS4 GAMES on PSVita.

A new application called “PlayStation App” will enable iPhone, iPad, and Android based smartphones and tablets to become second screens. Once installed on these devices, users can, for example, see maps on their second screens when playing an adventure game, purchase PS4 games while away from home and download it directly to the console at home, or remotely watch other gamers playing on their devices.

Gameplay Screenshot from Killzone: Shadow Fall

“Immediate Gameplay”

PS4 will radically reduce the lag time between players and their content. PS4 features “suspend mode” which keeps the system in a low power state while preserving the game session. The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past. With PS4, gamers just hit the power button again and are promptly back playing the game at the exact point where they left off. Additionally, users can boot a variety of applications including a web browser when playing a game on PS4.

PS4 also enables games to be downloaded or updated in the background, or even in stand-by mode. The system takes it one step further by making digital titles playable as they are being downloaded. When a player purchases a game, PS4 downloads just a fraction of the data so gamers can start playing immediately, and the rest is downloaded in the background during actual gameplay.

Also used-games can be played on PS4, so no need to worry about buying games from GameStop in the future!

“Personalized, Curated Content”

On the newly designed PS4 menu screen, players can look over game-related information shared by friends, view friends’ gameplay and obtain information of recommended content, including games, TV shows and movies. According to Sony “the long-term goal of PS4 is to reduce download times of digital titles to zero.”

“Gaming in the Cloud”

By combining PlayStation Network with Gaikai’s cloud technology, Sony’s goal is to make free exploration possible for various games. In the future, when a gamer sees an interesting title on PlayStation Store, they can immediately start playing a portion of the actual game. The cloud tech will give players a chance to play their PS1, PS2 and PS3 games on PS4 and Sony has promised to tell more about other cloud services later.

Controllers and PlayStation Camera

The DUALSHOCK 4 controller has got a brand new solid-looking design and includes a new highly sensitive sixaxis sensor and a touch pad located on the top of the controller, which offers new ways to play and interact with games. Start and Select buttons has been taken away and “SHARE” and “OPTIONS” buttons has taken their role with new features. PS4 won’t support PS3 controllers – only Move.

The newly developed PlayStation Camera has two high-sensitive cameras that have wide-angle lenses with 85-degree diagonal angle views which can recognize the depth of space precisely. This will most likely be Kinect like Camera and provides more deeper gaming experiences with Move-controllers.

The pricing or the design of the console weren’t revealed at the PlayStation meeting but expect hear about them at E3!