PlayStation 4 officially announced; arriving Holiday 2013

The PlayStation Meeting 2013 just wrapped, and as expected, Sony has announced the PlayStation 4. No price point has been identified yet, but the final slide of the show revealed a release window of “Holiday 2013.”

So what is the PlayStation 4 capable of? Here’s the breakdown…

Hardware:

• PS4 is centered around a powerful custom chip that contains eight x86-64 cores and a state of the art graphics processor
• The GPU generates 1.84 Teraflops of processing power that can freely be applied to graphics, simulation tasks, or some mixture of the two
• Equipped with 8 GB of unified system memory

Dualshock 4 controller:

• Features the same basic design as the familiar Dualshock 3 controller.
• Incorporates a touch pad located on the front of the controller.
• Features a light bar on the top with three color LEDs that illuminate in various colors. This is used to identify players using similar controlled character colors, or provide useful information such as when a character is critically low on health or has taken major damage.
• Comes with a built-in speaker and stereo headset jack. Combined with the Mono Headset that will be bundled with PS4, gamers will also be able to chat with friends playing online, while hearing sound effects from the controller in hand.
• SELECT and START buttons replaced by one OPTIONS button
• SHARE button for social integration options (detailed below)

PlayStation 4 Eye:

• Incorporates two high-sensitive cameras that have wide-angle lenses with 85-degree diagonal angle views which can recognize the depth of space precisely.
• Incorporated four microphones are capable of accurate sound detection and source origination.
• Users will be able to login to their PS4 with face recognition.
• Senses the color of Dualshock 4’s light bar to judge the positions of multiple players.
• Supports current PlayStation Move controllers.

Social integration:

• Provides dedicated, “always on” video compression and decompression systems that enables seamless uploading of gameplay to social networks with a press of the SHARE button on the new Dualshock 4 controller.
• Enhances social spectating by enabling gamers to broadcast their gameplay in real-time to friends using live internet streaming services, such as Ustream.
• During live broadcasts, friends can make comments on the streamed gameplay and, if a gamer gets stuck on a challenging level, friends can also join the game in completely new ways.  For example, friends can offer health potions or special weapons when a player needs them most during actual gameplay.

Second Screens / Remote Play:

• Integrates second screens, including PlayStation Vita (PS Vita), smartphones, and tablets
• With “Remote Play”, gamers can use PS Vita to seamlessly pull most PS4 titles from their living room TVs and play them on PS Vita’s screen over Wi-Fi networks
• New “PlayStation App” will enable iPhone, iPad, and  Android-based smartphones and tablets to become second screens.  Once installed on these devices, users can, for example, see maps on their second screens when playing an adventure game, purchase PS4 games while away from home and download it directly to the console at home, or remotely watch other gamers playing on their devices.

Immediate Gameplay:

• Features a “suspend mode” which keeps the system in a low power state while preserving the game session.  The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past.  Gamers just hit the power button again and are promptly back playing the game at the exact point where they left off.
• Enables games to be downloaded or updated in the background, or even in stand-by mode.  The system takes it one step further by making digital titles playable as they are being downloaded.

Cloud Gaming:

• Combining PlayStation Network with Gaikai Inc’s cloud technology, it is SCE’s goal to make free exploration possible for various games. In the future, when a gamer sees a title of interest in PlayStation Store, they can immediately start playing a portion of the actual game — not a stripped down version of the game. With Gaikai and PlayStation Store, gamers will be able to experience appealing games and only pay for the games they actually love.
• The “PlayStation Cloud” supports the SCE’s long-term vision of making PlayStation libraries including an incredible catalog of more than 3000 PS3 titles available, in addition to titles from PS2 and PS1.