Playstation Meeting 2013: See (Portions of) the Future, Part I

This console
generation has been a long one, but we received the biggest signal that it’s
slowly coming to an close when Sony presented the next generation Playstation
console at a Playstation Meeting held in New York. Prior to the conference
starting, we knew it would be about the next Playstation, but how much time
would be dedicated to it? Sony has two other systems, the PS3 and Vita, and
they need attention to; especially the latter.

 

But they
didn’t get much here. Nope, not even news about a Vita price drop, which was
announced for Japan on Monday, and
is apparently not happening for the west. The entire show was about the next Playstation, which Sony has decided
to call the Playstation 4.

 

A focal
point of the conference was about the social, hardware, and firmware features
the system will have. Since Ken Kutaragi was forced to exit the company after
the PS3 fiasco, Mark Cerny has taken over development of the hardware. It also
means the PS4 is the first Sony system to be developed by a western team, and
represents a change in philosophy for the company. Of course, this also means
we didn’t receive the treat of Kutaragi giving lofty, insane promises about the
system’s capabilities (4D, 120 fps, get two jobs, jack you into the Matrix).

 

The features
are a much-needed sizable step up from the PS3’s, allowing for sharing
screenshots, videos, and general information with everyone via Playstation
Network and various social networks. You’ll also be able to suspend and resume
games, a welcome feature previously exclusive to handhelds. The system will let
you see what’s happening in a friends game, and will either allow you to jump
in for co-op play, or let you take it over for them. There’s also cross-game
chat, which was a 360-exclusive console feature throughout this gen, though Vita
allows for it too.

 

A screenshot
of the UI also displayed a real name, which you can hopefully turn off. That
didn’t fly with Battle.Net, and it probably won’t here either.

It can run Unreal Engine 4, in case you didn’t think it would.

The system
packs 1.84 Teraflops of processing power, and contains 8GB GDDR5 Ram, which is huge (the PS3 contained 512MB of split
system memory, by the way). They mentioned that its build is similar to a PC
this time, which means it won’t be as much of a pain for developers to take
advantage of, like the PS3. But really, the amount of Ram should immediately set
off a “how much is this thing going to cost!?” alarm in your head; as if that
signal wasn’t going off before.

 

As you could
have predicted, downloadable games are going to be a big focus. As you may not have predicted, Sony’s doing some
unique things with that. You’ll be able to start playing a game after a certain
amount of data is downloaded, while the rest of it finishes. Games and other
media can also be downloaded in the background while you play a game, and also
heralds the end of the PS3’s arcane patching feature. You can also start
downloads with your smartphone or tablet. Also, the system will recommend and
pre-download data for games they think you’re interested in. You probably won’t
want to keep your credit card information on it.

 

The new
controller will be the Dual Shock 4, whose design has been overhauled compared
to previous Dual Shock controllers. You’ll notice that the analog sticks are
concaved, similar to the 360 controller, which should make them more
comfortable for your thumbs. The triggers have also been redone, making
them…similar to the 360 controller. Quite the coincidence. There’s also a
dedicated share button to share videos and screenshots. A touch pad is located
in the middle of the controller, which can be used to control the camera in
certain games and…well, it does other things, I’m sure. You should also notice
that the Start and Select buttons are gone. Their functions have been
implemented into the “Options” button.

 

And
hopefully you like the controller, because the
Dual Shock 3 will not be supported. It will support the Playstation Move
controller, though.

 

Sony
acquired Gaikai shortly before E3 last year, but now was the to reveal what
plans they have for them: they want to bring a huge library of Playstation
legacy games to the service via streaming, including PSOne, PS2, PS3, and PS4.
They also confirmed that, as heavily rumored, the PS4 will not be backwards
compatible with PS3 games. Nope, it
won’t even play PSN games, nor will it take your save data. Instead, they
want to provide that through Gaikai…eventually. But everything won’t be there at
first, which makes it difficult to get excited for at the moment.

 

The system
also has two cameras, one for capturing the setting, and the other for
detecting motion. Their function will be similar to Microsoft’s Kinect in a
way, through it also works with the Dual Shock 4 and Move controllers. Whether
it will come with every PS4 package is currently unknown.

 

Yeah, so
they didn’t show off the actual console. It’s either not finished yet, or they
want to save it for E3. As for other info after the conference, there is some good news: it was
confirmed that the system will play used games, and does
not require you to be online to play. This doesn’t mean some individual
games, like Destiny, won’t be online-only,
though. The second part will go over the software presentations at the show, and
is coming later tonight.