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PlayStation 4 is official: Details, games, videos and release date

New DualShock controller and cloud gaming plans also revealed

Posted on Wednesday 20th Feb 2013 at 11:35 PM UTC

Sony has officially announced PlayStation 4, which will be available "holiday 2013".

[PlayStation 4: All the news | All the facts | Every video of all the games | Official pictures | PS4 Specs]

PlayStation 4: The full story

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PlayStation 4 was announced in New York
Sony Computer Entertainment president and group CEO Andrew House took to the stage at the Hammerstein Ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios in New York to reveal the name of Sony's next-gen console.

The exec said Sony's "most powerful platform ever" will allow "worlds to come alive with greater fidelity and intensity than ever before".

House also noted that "ease of access regardless of location or device has been a priority" in the system's development".

"Our vision for the future is consumer centric and developer inspired," he added, stressing that Sony is keen to enable developers to utilise "new business models that enable more flexibility including episodic and free-to-play".

Lead PS4 system architect Mark Cerny was up on stage next. "We wanted to make sure nothing would come between the player, the platform and play," he said. "Our main goal was to architect the system so as to support a breadth of experiences."

Boasting 8GB of unified system memory, PS4 houses a "highly enhanced" PC GPU "containing 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".

It is also "centred around a powerful custom chip that contains eight x86-64 cores and a state of the art graphics processor". Check out the full PS4 system specs.

Cerny then showed off the PS4 controller, "DualShock 4", which will include many of the recently rumoured features. It will offer enhanced rumble and reduced latency, a touchpad, a headphone jack and a new Share button, which will allow players to record gameplay or screenshots and share them instantly. "Our goal is to make the sharing of video on PS4 as popular as the sharing of screenshots is today," he said. PS4 will also support cross-game chat.

The new pad was developed in tandem with the next iteration of Sony's PS Eye camera, dubbed PlayStation 4 Eye. Here are the full DualShock 4 specs.

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The DualShock 4 controller

Sony also said PS4 radically reduces the lag time between players and their content. The system utilises a "suspend mode" which keeps the console in a low power state while preserving game sessions. "The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past," according to the platform holder.

Users will also be able to boot applications including a web browser when playing PS4 games, while the system will enable titles to be downloaded or updated in the background, or in stand-by mode. Digital titles will be playable while they're downloading too, with only a "fraction" of data required to start a session.

Dave Perry, founder of cloud gaming platform Gaikai, which Sony acquired for $380 million last year, was up next on stage. "What we're creating is the fastest, most powerful gaming network in the world," he said.

"With Gaikai and the PlayStation Store, you'll be able to instantly experience games for free [and only pay for the full experience if you want to]."

PlayStation cloud services will be rolled out in phases, with the ultimate goal being to give players access to all of their favourite PSone, PS2 and PS3 titles.

Perry said PS4 will let other players look over your shoulder virtually as you're playing and, if you allow them to, post comments directly to your screen. Friends will even be able to take over your controller virtually and help you complete a section you can't beat yourself.

Sony also said that Vita, along with iOS and Android devices, will be capable of acting as second screens for PS4. The new system will allow Vita users to "seamlessly pull PS4 titles from their living room TVs" and play them on the portable over Wi-Fi, while a PlayStation app will enable players to supplement their console gaming experience by - for example - displaying maps or inventory screens on supporting devices.

Guerrilla Games managing director Hermen Hulst was up next to announce Killzone Shadowfall, the next entry in PlayStation's flagship FPS series, for PS4 with a debut gameplay trailer.

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Killzone Shadow Fall is a PS4 launch game

Another new announcement was action platformer Knack, which is in development at Sony Japan Studio.

That was followed Sucker Punch's Infamous Second Son. The demo showed a heavily-militarised city where citizens are closely monitored. However, people have started developing superpowers and revolting against big brother. There was no sign of series protagonist Cole.

Braid creator Jonathan Blow also came on stage to announce that open world puzzle game The Witness will launch on PS4 as a timed exclusive.

MotorStorm developer Evolution Studios then unveiled Drive Club for PS4. The next-gen racer will focus on team-based online racing and will link to a companion app on smartphones and tablets, allowing players to have "24/7 untethered access to their club".

Sony told us it's planning for Killzone Shadow Fall and Drive Club to be PS4 launch games later this year.

Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono appeared on stage to demo Capcom's new engine, Panta Rhei, which is being used to develop a new IP for PS4 called Deep Down.

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy brand director Shinji Hashimoto said Square Enix is developing a new entry in the series for PS4 using its next-gen Luminous engine, which it plans to show off at this year's E3 in June.

Blizzard's senior vice president of story and franchise development then revealed that Diablo 3 will launch on PS3 and PS4, with more details to be revealed in the coming months.

Bungie also offered a brief glimpse of Destiny, which will launch on PS3 and PS4 as well as other consoles, before confirming that the studio will be developing unspecified PlayStation exclusive content for the shooter.

Ubisoft showed off a new Watch Dogs gameplay demo and confirmed that the title will be available for PS4 at launch.

Rounding things off, Media Molecule presented a PS Move PS4 tech demo, and a Quantic Dream PS4 tech demo showed off the Heavy Rain developer's "completely new engine".

Full specs: PS4, DualShock 4, PlayStation 4 Eye

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PlayStation 4

Main Processor


  • Single-chip custom processor
  • CPU : x86-64 AMD "Jaguar", 8 cores
  • GPU : 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon based graphics 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

Communication


  • Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)
  • IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
  • Bluetooth 2.1 (EDR)

AV output


  • HDMI
  • Analog-AV out
  • Digital Output (optical)

*Specifications are subject to change without notice.

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Wireless Controller for PlayStation 4 (DUALSHOCK 4)

External Dimensions


  • Approx. 162mm x 52mm x 98mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)

Weight


  • Approx. 210g (tentative)

Keys / Switches


  • PS button, SHARE button, OPTIONS button
  • Directional buttons (Up / Down / Left / Right)
  • Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
  • R1 / L1 / R2 / L2 button, Left stick / L3 button, Right stick / R3 button, Pad Button

Touch Pad


  • 2 Point Touch Pad, Click Mechanism, Capacitive Type

Motion Sensor


  • Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, threeaxis accelerometer)

Other Features


  • Light Bar, Vibration, Built-in Mono Speaker

Ports


  • USB (Micro B), Extention Port, Stereo Headset Jack

Wireless Communication


  • Bluetooth Ver2.1+EDR

Battery


  • Type: Built-in Lithium-ion Rechargeable Battery
  • Voltage: DC3.7V (tentative)
  • Capacity: 1000mAh (tentative)

*Specifications are subject to change without notice.

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PlayStation 4 Eye

External Dimension


  • Approx. 186mm x 27mm x 27mm (width x height x depth) (tentative)

Weight


  • Approx. 183g (tentative)

Video Pixel


  • (Maximum) 1280 x 800 pixel x 2

Video Frame Rate


  • 1280x800 pixel @ 60fps
  • 640x400 pixel @ 120fps
  • 320x192 pixel @ 240fps

Video Format


  • RAW, YUV (uncompressed)

Lens


  • Dual Lenses, F value/F2.0 fixed focus

Capture Range


  • 30cm～∞

Field-of-View


  • 85°

Microphone


  • 4 Channel Microphone Array

Connection Type


  • PS4 dedicated connector (AUX connector)

Cable Length


  • Approx. 2m (tentative)

*Specifications are subject to change without notice

PS4 Reaction pieces


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The PlayStation 4 console hardware


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PlayStation 4 games


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Memorable PS4 quotes


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  • "Our most powerful platform ever [will allow] "worlds to come alive with greater fidelity and intensity than ever before." - SCE President and CEO Andrew House
  • "We wanted to make sure nothing would come between the player, the platform and play. Our main goal was to architect the system so as to support a breadth of experiences." - Mark Cerny, lead PS4 analyst
  • "Our goal is to make the sharing of video on PS4 as popular as the sharing of screenshots is today." - Mark Cerny
  • "The power and capability of the PS4 allows the Watch Dogs team to further push the boundaries of what was previously thought possible in interactive entertainment." - Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft CEO
  • "We are going to marry [the Move controller] with the power of the PlayStation 4, we are going to revolutionise 'making'." - Alex Evans of Media Molecule
  • "This is the quality that we will get in our future games and we know we can go even further. But more important than these technical features, we start to reach a point where you can see very subtle emotions on the face of a character, where you can feel his emotions just from looking at his face, or you can see his soul just from looking into his eyes." - David Cage of Quantic Dream
  • "The story draws parallels to Cold War Berlin, with two factions living side by side divided by a vast wall. This is a story about the loss of home, the search of new home, and the lengths to which people go to defend it." - Guerrilla Games managing director Hermen Hulst on Killzone: Shadow Fall
  • "What we're creating is the fastest, most powerful gaming network in the world." - Dave Perry, Gaikai founder and CEO
  • "At its core it's a game about epiphany, that instantaneous transition of the mind that takes you from confusion to understand. One minute your situation seems impossible, you have no idea what the solution to your problem looks like, the next it's all very clear and you wonder how you couldn't have seen this solution before." - Jonathan Blow on The Witness
  • "Diablo III looks and plays great on the PlayStation. We put a lot of care and thought into the PlayStation version to make sure it would deliver an authentic Diablo gaming experience, and we're really pleased with the results." - Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard, on Diablo III
Tom Ivan

News Editor

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