WSJ: Sony Playstation 4 (PS4) unveil on Feb. 20th. Holiday release in late 2013.

[w_km]

I know most of us PC gamers may not care, but the new consoles are very relevant and intriguing, especially from a hardware/developing perspective...supposedly the PS4 will rock AMD's CPU and GPU, and/or APU. Possibly multiple APUs? Initial reports suggest the A10,16gb RAM, 256gb SSD, BluRay support. Sounds a bit underpowered but if developers make significant improvements in graphics quality it could setback steam box/PC gaming...maybe it's too early to tell but i think the PS4/Xbox720 will get some things right but won't be as advanced as the PS3 when it was released like 6+ years ago.

Any thoughts?

[Emkryan]

I heard 8GB RAM, underclocked A10 (1.8 Ghz) and 500GB HDD

[fishymamba]

16GB RAM? What's the point of that? And I bet that with those specs the console will be at least $600.

I'm guessing that there will be a dedicated GPU, there is no way an APU will have enough power for games.

[fishymamba]

These look like more realistic specs:

The CPU will have eight Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz, arranged as two "clusters," each cluster contains 4 cores and a shared 2MB L2 cache.

Its GPU will contain AMD's "R10XX" (Southern Islands) architecture, DirectX 11.1+ feature set, liverpool is an enhanced version of the architecture, 4 GB unified system memory and 176 GB/s with 3.5GB available to games.

The PlayStation 4 will have an internal mass storage at 500 GB HDD and a RAM speed of 4GB.

Other features include a high-speed Blu-Ray optical drive, network capabilities with 1 Gb/s Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WIFI, Bluetooth Peripherals.

Source: http://www.enstarz.com/articles/1250...laystation.htm

The GPU is supposed to be based on the AMD 7000 series.

[Konn]

256GB SSD? Not to sure about that, will make the system to expensive.

[MrCrazyJesus]

I am hoping that the next generation of consoles is as powerful as possible, because that means that consoles will finally be able to push graphics and physics technologies. This in turn will make PC enthusiasts/gamers happy, because games will finally utilize more from their PCs hardware e.g. several CPU cores.

[Night]

256GB SSD? Not to sure about that, will make the system to expensive.

Yea, Theres no way in hell it would be using an SSD unless Sony had developed some uber way to manufacture SSD's on the fly for super crazy cheap.

[Night]

Those specs you listed seem very unbelievable. SSD's and 16GB of RAM. I would asume the next gen of Xbox and PS will both use Blu-Ray. If MS didnt they would have to either sit back in the dark ages with limited space or release all their games on multiple disks, and if thats not the case then why are we even bothering to upgrade.

I like how every one calls it the Xbox 720. Remember project Natal, we all thought that was a cool name aswell and then MS was like Kinect...Kinectimals. Wouldnt mind seeing Sony add a sub name to the PS4 but if they dont then props to them for just carrying on with the standard naming convention that we can all understand. 1,2,3,4...Easy.

[MsTrMind]

The PS3 in Belgium (when it was just released) was about 890 USD ...

For that amount of money, you could build a decent PC, so why not a PS4 with ssd, 16gb ram, ...

I think there will be somekind of optical disk reader, but it wouldn't be used for the games, just like the PS Vita.

[REDNINJA2012]

YAY! i actually hope they unveil the ps4 and not some vita 2 or something

[Night]

The PS3 in Belgium (when it was just released) was about 890 USD ...

For that amount of money, you could build a decent PC, so why not a PS4 with ssd, 16gb ram, ...

I think there will be somekind of optical disk reader, but it wouldn't be used for the games, just like the PS Vita.

SSD's are expensive, to the point where giving everyone a 256GB SSD would probably just lose them money or make the price of the console crazy high and no one buys it.

I can see them getting away with 16GB of RAM but what is the system actually going to do with 16GB of RAM? My computer only has 8GB and everything runs fine, most of our PC games dont even use more than 4GB.

[MsTrMind]

The PS3 in Belgium (when it was just released) was about 890 USD ...

For that amount of money, you could build a decent PC, so why not a PS4 with ssd, 16gb ram, ...

I think there will be somekind of optical disk reader, but it wouldn't be used for the games, just like the PS Vita.

I agree on the SSD part,

but I can see them actually putting more than 16GB of ram in it, RAM is verry inexpensive.

Picture this: 32 GB ram, the game you are playing can be loaded on some kind of a ramdisk, and by doing this, you decrease loading times to about nothing.

890$ for a console is a huge amount of money, an still very much people bought it...

[Dimensionz]

The PS3 in Belgium (when it was just released) was about 890 USD ...

For that amount of money, you could build a decent PC, so why not a PS4 with ssd, 16gb ram, ...

I think there will be somekind of optical disk reader, but it wouldn't be used for the games, just like the PS Vita.

Yeah I remember paying $999 for my PS3 in Australia

[TechFan@ic]

From Rory Read's (CEO of AMD) statements about how they managed to successfully snag huge deals in the "embedded" market and that 20% of AMDs revenue will be coming from custom "embedded" solutions by 2013 (this year), drove me to believe that both the new XBOX & the PS4 will have custom heterogeneous CPU/GPU chips similar to exisitng APUs but not quite the same .

They're supposed to be custom APUs with a multi CPU in each chip & a highish-end GPU unlike the low range iGPUs we now see on current trinity APUs .

The whole idea of the new consoles is supposed to be affordability, so don't expect super uber hardware for around 400-500$ .

You can build a pretty decent gaming PCs now for 500$ something with a Vishera quadcore and an HD 7770, expect performance to be better than that though, due to the low level hardware access given to game developers on consoles allowing them to get creative with the development .

I expect at least 6 gigs of ram (probably 8). I also doubt that we'll see SSDs on all systems, there might be a sort of high-end more expensive option that might come with large SSDs otherwise we might see small SSD + large HDD combos something like a cheap 32/64gb SSD + a 512 GB HDD .

Blue ray support is a given.

Can't think of much else now .

[Venum]

Does it support back read compatibility with our ps3 game titles?

[Bramm17]

Dunno, but the first PS3 that came out supported PS2 games but newer PS3s (Slim and now the ultraslim it is i think) dont, so prob something along those lines?

Think sony is pushing these to his stores around the holidays... Prob no cheap, $500+... And as I heard its gonna have an A10 APU with a AMD 79XX GPU as specs.... a small SSD is possible, prices are dropping and maybe combined with an larger HDD?!

[tacticalpanic]

The PS3 in Belgium (when it was just released) was about 890 USD ...

For that amount of money, you could build a decent PC, so why not a PS4 with ssd, 16gb ram, ...

I think there will be somekind of optical disk reader, but it wouldn't be used for the games, just like the PS Vita.

The economy was different at that time , the ps3 brought alot of media features previous consoles didn't have and people didn't have, people are not gonna pay that amount of money for a gaming system , the ps4 has to be feature heavy to sell well , the majority of people buying game consoles are not gonna be looking at a stats sheet like enthusiasts would , your avarage person is going to be asking , why should I buy your new console for $500 or whatever when I allready have Bluray/steaming media device.

[Salmiakbal]

I don't think the consoles will feature a x86 architecture, so no PC specs.

Also I don't think the Xbox 720 is a realistic name. There are a few theories, one of them being that the 360 was called the 360 because it was a revolution. A revolution is 360 degrees see?

So 720 would be a bit weird in that case.

[tacticalpanic]

I don't think the consoles will feature a x86 architecture' date=' so no PC specs. Also I don't think the Xbox 720 is a realistic name. There are a few theories, one of them being that the 360 was called the 360 because it was a revolution. A revolution is 360 degrees see? So 720 would be a bit weird in that case.[/quote']

with the way movie titles are going , i wouldn't be surprised if they called it the Xbox.

[Huskie]

I don't think the consoles will feature a x86 architecture, so no PC specs.

Also I don't think the Xbox 720 is a realistic name. There are a few theories, one of them being that the 360 was called the 360 because it was a revolution. A revolution is 360 degrees see?

So 720 would be a bit weird in that case.

How about + n x 2Ï€ ?

[TechFan@ic]

I don't think the consoles will feature a x86 architecture, so no PC specs.

Also I don't think the Xbox 720 is a realistic name. There are a few theories, one of them being that the 360 was called the 360 because it was a revolution. A revolution is 360 degrees see?

So 720 would be a bit weird in that case.

ROFL @ Huskie !!!!

[w_km]

I agree with most of you, it wasn't my rumor. 8gb RAM and 128gb ssd or 500gb HDD/small SSD combo sound more reasonable to me. The true value to a system like this is the integration of its hardware with its game developing platform.

I'm most curious to see the actual graphics improvements because at the moment we can pretty well imagine that the PS4 won't support 4K gaming (it technically could, but i highly doubt it). If not 4K, then what? 3D? Don't care. Maye 4K video content in the future...will it's hardware support H.265? Maybe future upgrades if not at release? The only other actual improvement would be superior support for more realistic game development engines to take advantage of performance gains, otherwise it just doesn't make sense.

[Bob]

I heard that MS said they were going to call it Xbox, If i was going to buy a console(i am not) I would get a PS4.

[dgtL]

as long as steambox has the right price point they will be the one cutting in to the market and will not be setback. imo.

[Night]

Does it support back read compatibility with our ps3 game titles?

Doubt it. The only PS3's to actually support real backwards compatibilty were the original 60GB models release in the bigger countries. I know one of those countries was America. The PS3 that we got in New Zealand that had "backwards compatibilty" only emulated the PS2 which meant some games wouldnt run. The only game I wanted to play from PS2 on my PS3 was Shinobido and it runs exactly the same on my PC as it did on my "backwards compatible" PS3.

And when Sony dropped install other OS, from older models... To me that says they dont want you to be able to use their console for more than the current gen of games and media and doing everything their way. Id love it if they made the PS4 backwards compatible with PS1,2 and 3 though. That would be amazing.