During a two-hour presentation on Wednesday evening, Sony declared "war against reality" and officially revealed the next-generation PlayStation 4 video game console.
Kind of.
Although Sony talked at length about the PlayStation 4's philosophy, the company managed to leave out details such as specs and price. It didn't even showcase the PS4 system's main body, opting only to reveal the controller.
Still, there was plenty of news broken at the event, including the fact that the console will launch during "Holiday 2013." No specific month or date was given.
As for the system itself, details were vague, but Sony mentioned that the PS4 will feature "supercharged" PC architecture, an X86 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a "massive" hard drive, and an enhanced GPU.
Sony kicked off its presentation by declaring that, "The living room is no longer the center of the PlayStation ecosystem. The player is."
The Japanese gaming giant went on to emphasize the PS4's online, streaming, and social media capabilities. Streaming, in particular, is shaping up to be a key feature. Users will be able to play digital titles even as they're downloading, since the system will instantly download the starting portion of the title while the rest comes as you play. The PS4 will be capable of suspending play mid-game, switching to other functions (even turning off), and resuming play at the exact point where an individual left off.
What's more, Sony also revealed remote play via the PS Vita, which is basically the company's response to the Wii U's GamePad controller. Owners of a PS Vita will be able to stream PS4 games directly to their handheld system and play elsewhere in the home using the full graphical capabilities of the PS4. It's not likely that this will be available for all games out of the gate, but Sony's goal is to make every PS4 game playable on the Vita.
Sony confirmed that the PS4 won't be backwards compatible with physical PS3 discs, but the company did say that its streaming service will be capable of streaming PS3, PS2, and PS1 titles to the PS4 and potentially other devices (Vita?). Whether or not this feature will be available on launch day is questionable, though, as Sony said it hopes to make this possible "some day." It's also unclear if those who already own physical copies of PS3 games will have to re-purchase them in order to access the streaming version.
Sharing information and gameplay experiences was another big idea Sony touched on during its presentation. Players will be able to ask a friend to take control of their game over the Internet if they need help getting past certain obstacles; they'll be able to broadcast their gameplay feed live to anyone interested in watching; most intriguing, however, was that Sony claimed friends would be able to drop items directly into someone's game in order to help them out.
The one piece of hardware Sony did display was the DualShock 4 controller, which lined up very accurately with the leaks published all over the Internet over the past two weeks. The controller features a touch pad (not a screen) in the center of it, but otherwise looks like what you'd expect a PlayStation controller to look like. There's a blue light bar along the top that Sony's Stereo Camera peripheral (presumably packed in with the console) uses to track the controller. It's essentially a DualShock controller with motion-controlled Move integration built in.
As speculated, the DualShock 4 also features a headphone jack, Share button (to post videos online with), and enhanced rumble.
On the software front, industry leaders took the time to announce a number of games without release dates, including Killzone: Shadow Fall, Infamous: Second Son, Drive Club (a racing game focused on team racing and social media integration), The Witness (an indie puzzle game that'll be exclusive for at least a few months), Knack (made by the Ape Escape developers), and Deep Down (a medieval fantasy game by Capcom).
Sony also boasted of widespread third party support for the system. Square Enix confirmed a new Final Fantasy title is in progress and will be shown at the E3 trade show in June. Ubi Soft showed off another demo of a cyber-espionage game based in Chicago called Watch Dogs, and the Halo developer Bungie announced its new project Destiny will hit the PS4 with exclusive content.
Obviously there are still many questions left unanswered. More games, along with the console body itself and the price tag, will be featured at E3.
