Playstation 4

[ODX]

Sony is holding an event in New York in less than 30 minutes (6 PM Eastern US Time). Recently they've been uploading videos in homage to their last 3 platforms so we can only assume it'll be PS4 and they don't fuck us in the ass with something else.

You can view a livestream through my main homies over at Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5985681/watch-sony-announce-the-next-playstation-right-here), as well as a liveblog if you wish. Otherwise, just search up your own liveblog or stream though my main man Google (http://www.google.com) and you'll be all set.

This is everything we know so far (http://kotaku.com/5984538/sony-will-announce-the-playstation-4-tonight-heres-everything-we-know-so-far) (courtesy again, of Kotaku).

Why the hell they're doing this in the middle of February? No idea, but they've got a jump on Microsoft now.
Let's see what the next gen really has in store for us...

[Zeph]

#modacity watching it now.

[Limited]

PS4 wooooo

[Rosco]

the dual shock 4 controller looks like a gay madcatz controller with turbo buttons

[Limited]

Killzone looks fucking awesome, start of it reminded me of Halo reach.

That flying sequence when he was on the rope was fucking intensem

[Zeph]

Killzone had more staged gameplay than e3 2k3 Halo 2.

[ODX]

Killzone looked visually stunning, the next-gen leap is much bigger than I ever thought it would be. Knack looks awesome too, thought of Pixar when I first saw it.

Edit: The only thing that makes me sad is I probably won't play any of these games unless my college roomate(s) gets a PS4 since I'll probably buy the NeXBox for Halo 5...and because I still don't like Sony's control sticks.

[Limited]

Watchdogs, hell yes :D

[BobtheGreatII]

Not all that impressed at the moment. But that could change. Really curious if they're going to show off the console or not.

[Limited]

Bastards they didnt show the console off. I'm impressed with that it has to offer, obviously it will only get better after launch so you cant really judge the complete experience/games.

[Btcc22]

Bastards they didnt show the console off.

Guessing they'll do it after Microsoft make their move, or at least close to.

[Cortexian]

http://www.nvidia.com/titan-graphics-card

Bet that has more processing power than the entire PS4.

[Tnnaas]

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/66954_476645529057370_913075882_n.jpg

Heh.

[DarkHalo003]

Exactly what I was thinking. I'm pretty sure they meant to walk out there like that. That or Craptivision/Sony said something to them.

[Btcc22]

http://www.nvidia.com/titan-graphics-card

Bet that has more processing power than the entire PS4.

Costs several times more too.

[Cortexian]

Costs several times more too.
And two year old GPU's with the same processing power will be the same price or cheaper.

[Btcc22]

And two year old GPU's with the same processing power will be the same price or cheaper.

Too bad you can't run a machine off a GPU then.

I'm a PC gamer too but let's at least be fair. ;)

[Tnnaas]

The PS4 looks like it should hold about a dozen or so doughnuts.

[Amit]

For those of you joining the thread, here is what everyone is talking about.

Watch Dogs :iamafag::


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EtBh4QzZKz4

KillZone 4:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JUZJTjns6Qg

DualShock 4 controller:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_cKgr0JtQFE

[jcap]

Watch Dogs looks incredible. The game looks like modern day Assassin's Creed. I mean, the game is identical to the AC series in so many ways...but it's awesome. Ubisoft Montreal is making the game (the studio that made Assassin's Creed 1 & 2, Brotherhood, [and AC3]). Watch Dogs is also running on AnvilNext, the engine Ubisoft Montreal made for AC3. Ubisoft disclosed two days ago that a new studio is working on AC4, so it seems like Montreal wanted to go a separate way with the AC series (they said they only wanted it to be a trilogy initially), but and this game is what they envisioned.

Seriously though, look at all the ways this game is similar. Eavesdropping, side "save the citizen" missions, "pickpocketing", chase scenes, player "select" highlighting, slow motion air assassinations, tackles, free running, notoriety for high profile actions...even the "glitch" effects and the HUD are SO similar to the Animus!

[ejburke]

I think what keeps me from getting excited about Watch Dogs is that it is so similar to Assassin's Creed -- a series I like but don''t love. Like with AC, I'll probably wait until WD is dirt cheap before picking it up. So, see you in 2015, Watch Dogs.

I have the first Infamous game sitting on my shelf untouched. I really should play it, but I find the thought of tackling an open world game to be exhausting, so I keep putting it off.

[Sanctus]

Deep Down or whatever it's called looked amazing. I'm loving Watch Dogs and Killzone 4 as well.

[Limited]

Similiar to Assassins Creed? The hell you guys on about? The 'effects' are identical to Person of Interest (tv show) here (http://static.tvtome.com/images/genie_images/story/2012_usa/p/personofinterest_computer.jpg) here (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-onFzqjNdqy8/UM9vYWAJhDI/AAAAAAACLJM/mbeG49RfSso/s1600/person_of_interest_poster10.jpg)and here (http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6415/vlcsnap2013022120h46m19.png).

The biggest reason I'm excited about PS4, is because when the next gen becomes current gen, it means the standard of games will increase across the board, it means the guys like us who have powerful pcs will be surrounded by games that have higher fedaility, more demand of graphics. I probably won't get a PS4, but I look forward to when devs focus on developing for PS4, Xbox "720", and PC :D

[Amit]

I'm not interested at all in the AC series. While the movement looks just like AC, this actually looks interesting and awesome. Fuck your old-time conspiracies.

[Cortexian]

What are you talking about, the AC games take place in the present...

[Amit]

Come on. While it "takes place" in the present, the whole point of the AC games are to go back in time and be awesome assassins.

[=sw=warlord]

And there I was thinking that the purpose of AC was to condition air?

[jcap]

As Ubisoft’s spokesperson admitted:

“The Watch Dogs demo was running on a PC with specs close to the PS4.”

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/watch-dogs-was-running-on-a-pc-and-not-on-a-ps4/

[Limited]

Doesnt surprise me one bit.

That said now I've seen the video in higher def, it doesnt really yell out to me of how the graphics have improved from PS3 to PS4. Okay this is running on a pc 'with similar power" to PS4, I was hoping for a bigger improvement.

[p0lar_bear]

I nearly choked on my ramen when I read this.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/dc9916bcb10ed08ef1001853a6d58148/tumblr_miml80ztk31qi0ocso1_400.png

(Apparently that's a projected Australian price, I read somewhere. I have no sources and can't find the post I originally saw that in.)

[Zeph]

Well, at this point in time, raising poly count on a model from 20k to 30k doesn't do nearly as much as raising poly count from 2k to 3k. It's still a 50% increase, but the amount of that increase that can go to visibly altering the silhouette is so much. Shading and interaction are going to be the big parts showing progress now. With the GPU able to take care of the visuals in addition to much of the physical simulation, the CPU is going to push the amount of AI and other such world objects. That mainly leaves the GPU with eye candies like screen space effects to really push the rendering into new territory. But even then, Crytek has been breaking ground on that for years now.

Look at the improvements Bungie made with the AI in Reach over Halo 3. They pretty much quadrupled the amount of active AI in a scene with plenty to spare for those 'background fights'. That was on an ancient three-core CPU in today's standards. Compare that to what we're getting with the PS4 and whatever the new xbox is going to be.

[Zeph]

I nearly choked on my ramen when I read this.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/dc9916bcb10ed08ef1001853a6d58148/tumblr_miml80ztk31qi0ocso1_400.png

(Apparently that's a projected Australian price, I read somewhere. I have no sources and can't find the post I originally saw that in.)
I guessed it was going to be around 800-900 bucks unsubsidized the night of the stream.

cpu: 200 (this doesn't have an equivalent retail so it's a hard guess. It's pretty much 2 or 4 of AMD's next APU modified on the same platter)
gpu: 250 (7850-7870 in terms of compute. I first thought it was an underleveled 6970)
mobo: 50
psu: 30
onboard controllers: 50 (rough guess at what they've suggested in terms of royalties. Sony has bought some of these companies, but they need to recover losses)
hard drive: 60 (oddly enough a 500GB hdd is the same price across all the platforms they can touch right now, lol)
optical: 50 (high estimate considering sony is the liscensor but dont put it past them to push that cost to consumer)
dual shock: 50 (actual hardware cost much lower. they make a shit ton of profit selling spare controllers)
cabling: 10 (this is stupidly high. HDMI cables of 15' in length cost 4 bucks to make. you could suggest this going up to a higher price)
systemOS: 50 (this is one of those things that doesn't have a real price, but the closest thing you can compare it to is other software that runs on the platform.)

That so far comes up to a flat 800. Add in packaging and shipping to storefront for whatever else you want, but that's a rough guess as to the retail value for the stuff that goes into this closed PC. To figure up how much it will cost you on launch day, guess whatever profit would be taken over selling those individual components and subsidize it from that 800 dollar mark. My guess is that it will launch at a 499 USD retail in only one configuration.

[Kornman00]

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/watch-dogs-was-running-on-a-pc-and-not-on-a-ps4/
Not surprising, considering that neither console developer has given devs non-alpha hardware until recently

[Kornman00]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/inside-the-playstation-4-a-balanced-approach-to-building-a-game-console/

[DarkHalo003]

Not sure what to think about the big price. On one hand you might as well buy a decent gaming laptop with that much money. On the other hand, it's a pretty good entertainment system.

[Kornman00]

Won't stop the fact that some games will continue to be console exclusives. On the other hand, it won't stop the fact that some games will continue to be PC only.

However, with both consoles finally stopping to use fucking piece of shit RISC processors and going with more PC-native hardware, it's more likely that lop sided devs (eg, console-only) will start to also branch to the other side to gain more revenue.

Unless you're an indie buff. There's still nothing to suggest that indies will be given any fucking respect on these next gen bricks.

[staticchanger]

I guessed it was going to be around 800-900 bucks unsubsidized the night of the stream.

cpu: 200 (this doesn't have an equivalent retail so it's a hard guess. It's pretty much 2 or 4 of AMD's next APU modified on the same platter)
gpu: 250 (7850-7870 in terms of compute. I first thought it was an underleveled 6970)
mobo: 50
psu: 30
onboard controllers: 50 (rough guess at what they've suggested in terms of royalties. Sony has bought some of these companies, but they need to recover losses)
hard drive: 60 (oddly enough a 500GB hdd is the same price across all the platforms they can touch right now, lol)
optical: 50 (high estimate considering sony is the liscensor but dont put it past them to push that cost to consumer)
dual shock: 50 (actual hardware cost much lower. they make a shit ton of profit selling spare controllers)
cabling: 10 (this is stupidly high. HDMI cables of 15' in length cost 4 bucks to make. you could suggest this going up to a higher price)
systemOS: 50 (this is one of those things that doesn't have a real price, but the closest thing you can compare it to is other software that runs on the platform.)

That so far comes up to a flat 800. Add in packaging and shipping to storefront for whatever else you want, but that's a rough guess as to the retail value for the stuff that goes into this closed PC. To figure up how much it will cost you on launch day, guess whatever profit would be taken over selling those individual components and subsidize it from that 800 dollar mark. My guess is that it will launch at a 499 USD retail in only one configuration.

Yeah you also gotta factor in mass production of components and the fact that everything is engineered to be as cheap and efficient as possible (hopefully). This should bring the price hopefully down to your projected $499.

[Bodzilla]

yeah after 5 years of sales.

[Donut]

companies normally sell consoles at a loss with the hopes of making it up in game sales, dont they?

[Kornman00]

companies normally sell consoles at a loss with the hopes of making it up in game sales, dont they?
That and in development fees. Devkits themselves cost an arm and a leg.

[Ki11a_FTW]

Don't know if you guys saw this, but Crysis 4 is supposedly confirmed for PS4.

http://www.examiner.com/article/playstation-4-s-crysis-4-confirmed-from-crytek

[Zeph]

Only confirmed in the sense that it will get made one day. Pretty sure that the artists in Germany are going to be working on extending content for Warface and maybe remoting some work from satellite studios while engineering they finish up a build that works across PC, PS3, PS4, 360, and durango boxes.

[Kornman00]

What's up all you gays? http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php

[Btcc22]

That lead, naturally, to thoughts about what to do next. Musing on the architecture of Sony's next system, Cerny spent his Thanksgiving holiday reading up on the history of the X86 architecture -- realizing that not only had it evolved dramatically over the years, but that by the time the PlayStation 4 shipped, it would be powerful enough for Sony's needs.
It had evolved into something "that looked broadly usable by even the sort of extreme programmers we find in the games business," he said.


I must be missing something here. x86/x64 CPUs weren't powerful enough for the PS3?



For example, this is his take on its GPU:"It's ATI Radeon."

So, uh, just how old is the GPU exactly? Probably got a good price on clearance stock. ;)

[Amit]

He meant AMD Radeon (curse the name change). What puzzles me is this:


The growth in the system in later years will come more from having the enhanced PC GPU.

But this is an APU. And we've all seen the performance of APU graphics. Dismal. As long as games play, I guess. Their magic unified RAM pool isn't going to suddenly surge ahead of PCs like they keep pushing, though.

[Zeph]

I must be missing something here. x86/x64 CPUs weren't powerful enough for the PS3?

Well, we were nearing the peak of the gigahertz war back then. I'm not even sure if quad core was on Intel's roadmap when Sony/Microsoft were doing their RnD for the 360/PS3. Really explains why PowerPC was picked up for that generation. While Intel was pushing their chips towards 4GHz and AMD was, well, wasting money and buying ATI thinking APUs would become mainstream really quickly, places like IBM were looking to make their servers a helluva lot better with multi-threading. The jump from 1 core to three/seven on the 360/PS3 was enough for the journalists on computer hardware to predict we'd be on 100 core CPUs as the norm in 2015.

[Kornman00]

Their magic unified RAM pool isn't going to suddenly surge ahead of PCs like they keep pushing, though.
Except on top of unified memory (which the Xbox has always had) the games won't be having to compete for resources with a myriad of other processes. So yeah, PC's can take it up the butt.

[Warsaw]

At the peak of the gigahertz war, AMD was soundly thrashing Intel's 3+ GHz P4 Netburst monsters with the Athlon XP and 64 lines of CPUs in performance, power consumption, and price. My, how the times have changed.

Fake E: fuckin' ninja'd.

Real E:
Consoles are going to be doing more than playing games. They are going to be running messaging, voice, other "social" features, active DRM, and lord knows what else. Not quite so straight-forward any more.

[Zeph]

But this is an APU. And we've all seen the performance of APU graphics. Dismal. As long as games play, I guess. Their magic unified RAM pool isn't going to suddenly surge ahead of PCs like they keep pushing, though.
APU doesn't mean shitty GPU, it means GPU on the same die as the CPU. It simply avoids the bottlenecks of things like the PCIe bus should you design it that way. The reason current APUs suck is because AMD hasn't built a socket on a motherboard to take advantage of this. The price of a high end APU, mobo of it, and high speed memory (GDDR5 or better for now) would be far higher than simply buying a discreet GPU, CPU, and the rest of a computer. That in account, they don't see a profit margin on it. So in effect, considering nVidia's dominance in the mobile market (something AMD wanted as a side bonus to the APU) the acquisition of ATI was relatively worthless. Yeah, it got them the 8th generation of consoles but that's not going to give the dividends they want. The consumer line of APUs is nothing more than to provide a competitor to Intel Integrated Graphics.

[Warsaw]

Nvidia's dominance in the mobile market? Compared to AMD, sure. But they are getting their clocks cleaned by competitors, one of which is descended from the division sold off by AMD (Imageon, now known as the Adreno. AMD is probably kicking themselves now, d'oh!).

[Zeph]

Hmm, I guess I should rephrase that. When I say dominance, I'm thinking capability over the next five years declared by a roadmap and the likely capacity to follow through on it. Something like Snapdragon is making a lot of sales right now, but we're pushing closer and closer to DX11-esque titles showing up on mobile products.

[Warsaw]

But Tegra also historically hasn't been the best performing SoC, either. Really, it boils down to certain publishers signing exclusivity deals with Nvidia. There is no real performance-related reason why some of the Tegra Zone titles aren't available to the rest of the Android crowd, because Adreno has been handing Nvidia its arse on a silver platter in all of its various incarnations. If Nvidia would actually launch their platform when they announced it, they'd be in a better position. Instead, by the time we start seeing next-gen Tegra devices, the competition has moved on. It's ridiculous.

[Kornman00]

PS4 launches Nov 15th