PS4 (Playstation 4) Details and Specification

So the rumors for once turned out to be true and Sony treated the world to a video stream announcing their next gen console, the PS4.  As it turned out they stopped short of actually showing the console itself.  In fact very little new hardware was shown with a new Dual Shock 4 controller with a touch pad being the only notable item.  The biggest news is the decision to move away from the Cell processor to an 8 core x86 type processor was maybe unexpected by some but from a financial point of view it can only help Sony in the next generation.  What that means for the future of PS3 exclusives looks in doubt though as the switch to x86 could mean companies preferring to develop the game on a PC platform before porting it to the PS4. It should be noted though that the difficulties with developing for the Cell processor were blamed for the poor release titles of the PS3 so maybe moving to a more established framework will payoff next Christmas.

And talking of the Christmas 2013 were are told that the following games will accompany the PS4 to launch...

• Knack
• Killzone Shadow Fall
• DriveClub
• Infamous Second Son
• The Witness
• Deep Down
• Agni’s Philosophy
• Final Fantasy title
• Watch Dogs
• Diablo 3
• Destiny

The backward compatibility question is answered in the form of online game streaming which is the only possible way of providing full PS3 compatibility after switching to the x86 platform.  However we would hope that the online streaming capabilities are not reflected in the quality of the stream provided for most people trying to watch.  Buffering problems were wildly reported with many having to give up on the stream entirely.

One thing that was not mentioned at all in the launch presentation was the inbuilt security of the PS4.  With the PS3 taking famously a few years before a working PS3 jailbreak was found expectations of high security on this new console are very high.  However will the news that the PS4 is based on more familiar architecture mean that a PS4 Jailbreak will this time arrive much sooner?