Our Daily Beard – 21/02/13
Well, well, the PS4.
The fact that I’ve left it until this time of night displays my lack of enthusiasm!
So, what will it do? SUMMARIS’D!
- Single APU chip with an ‘enhanced PC GPU’ and 8-core(mmm) CPU, 32 bit for some reason. As usual it’s vague info for a console but it’s certainly in the next-gen range.
- 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, which sounds low- it’s unclear if that’s just the video card, or for everything. Mind you, consoles don’t have to multitask much so the speed factor (GDDR5) is the main boon. Local hard drive size is unknown as yet.
- Blu-ray obviously and USB 3.0 (2.0 would just be too embarrassing in 2013).
- Funky Dual Shock 4 control pad still very much in their established style. The addition of a touchpad could be very handy especially for menu navigation.
- 3D Stereo Camera That Isn’t A Kinect At All Honest. Actually, this will be able to track the controller by a ‘light bar’ on the pad. That sounds great, so (pending a future update about what new things they plan to do with them) you can hopefully chuck away your weird Playstation Move dick-wands.
- Fancy social interface with clip recording and live game feed sharing– because these days gamers have friends. I don’t approve.
- An interesting cloud gaming reinforcement to the Network, with demo games and so on.
- Suspend and resume power buttons for when you’re miles away from a save point but have to go to work or go to bed or mop up your urine. Background downloading is part of this- yay, instant ways to spend, spend, spend!
- The PS4 will learn your likes and dislikes and pre-download things it thinks you’ll like. Yay, a ‘service’ (that isn’t big brother market research at all), that makes it so much easier to spend, spend, spend!
- More interestingly, potential for shared functionality between the PS4, tablets, phones and the Vita. Who needs the Wii U?
- Oh yeah, no backwards compatibility. Fail. Maybe there will be some ports to the Network, if you fancy buying your games again.
So far, only a few games have been revealed. The flagship must be Killzone, of course. In further summary:
It’s a snazzy looking console (figuratively, no shots yet!). However, there is a very thin line between finding innovative ways to play (camera tracking a-la Kinect, handheld/console hybrid games) and gimmicks that clutter your life with shiny black toys.
Not-A-Surprise-At-All-Verdict: Wait and see.
[sociable]
