back to article Sony promises PC-based PlayStation 4 for Christmas

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Sony PlayStation 4 - or, as we say in the trade, a PC. Yes, the PS4 will indeed be based on an octo-core x86-compatible processor, incorporate 8GB of GDDR 5 and will be equipped with a PC-centric GPU. It’ll have a hard drive too, plus the inevitable Blu-ray drive. It will incorporate …

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Well hello there...

        Sure if you play the FPS game for kids like COD then there is heavy auto-aim. But I find the mouse and keyboard suck for FPS games. Movement using binary left/right/up/down controls is so archaic in this day and age, that's what we had decades ago. Analog movement is far superior. While the mouse is more accurate that for me is it's down fall, I don't want a point and click adventure game. Play a real FPS without the autoaim using a joystick, it's more challenging and once you get good at it you won't miss the mouse at all.

        1. MJI Silver badge

          Re: Well hello there... FPS

          Play with Move - great fun

          KZ3 CinC here

      2. Red Bren

        Re: Well hello there...

        So you wouldn't be interested in a second hand copy of Civ II for the psone?

      3. Vic
        Joke

        Re: Well hello there...

        > until direct thought interface comes out.

        It's easy enough, but you have to think in Russian...

        Vic.

    1. Mark .

      Re: Well hello there...

      Was the processor really the reason, given that most people aren't writing in assembly anymore even for games (and even if they were, I thought traditionally x86 was harder...)?

      I thought the issues were more to do with things like graphics APIs - obviously MS have Direct X for X Box. Whilst Open GL does fine, my understanding was that not all consoles have great support (or in some cases use some custom API)?

      "we'll receive PC-like games to a console."

      I'm not sure that matters - I'd have thought things like the available controllers (which most PC owners don't have, restricting them to mouse and keyboard), or apparent buying trends in the people who tend to buy them, would have more effect?

      The original X Box was x86 PC hardware - did that have PC-like games, that the X Box 360 didn't?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well hello there...

      Having a x86 processor doesn't itself mean it will be easier to develop for (look at all those ARM processors flying about these days). In fact personally I'd prefer to deal with PowerPC assembly than x86.

      It's the exotic architecture that includes the cludge that is the Cell multicore arrangement with very specific requirements (in order execution being one of the features) that made it so difficult for developers to grip with.

      Now that we have a octo-core x86 processor in a more conventional setup (with a yet unknown secondary custom chip), yes it'll be much easier with out-of-order processing, but the headache of adapting to more parallel processing still remains (current-gen games still generally make better use of fewer but more powerful processing units). It'll be a leap that every platform will have to contend with, notably as more mobile phones start to move towards quad cores.

      The GDDR5, whilst high bandwidth, will have its own quirks, so along with a different OS, you're not going to be able to simply recompile a PC game and dump it on the PS4.

      Overall though I'm optimistic about the PS4, and I think developers will find it easier to find some fancy tricks to max out the hardware and look forward to some nice shiny bling in the near future.

      (after all, if you're busy trying to juggle 8 flaming cell torches, how are you going to find new fancy tricks on that bike you're trying to ride hands-free at the same time?)

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lightbar

    That thing looks sinister. Like some kind of evil robot staring at you from the top of the telly.

    1. hplasm
      Terminator

      Re: Lightbar

      Cool!

    2. dogged
      Thumb Up

      Re: Lightbar

      It's going to make Barry Shitpeas' head explode. All this time he's been going on about how crap Kinect is and now his beloved Sony have copied it.

      I hope it happens here, live.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lightbar

        Sony really havnt copied Kinect. All they have done is allowed the standard controller to be used as a stand-in for the previously required glow-in-the-dark dildos.

        Kinect is cutting edge, and it remains to be seen if Microsoft move it past it's currently limited implementations in games. Certainly it is clear that Kinect 2 has substantially improved capabilities...

  2. Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik

    Now...

    just need some games and I know what I'm saving my coins for.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Now...

      'Destiny', though it won't be a PS4 exclusive. With the next gen consoles being built upon PC lines, I expect platform exclusives to be rarer- though if you have a fetish for Japanese titles then the PS4 will be the one to go for.

  3. Mage Silver badge

    Sony and Valve should Merge?

    Discuss...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sony and Valve should Merge?

      One wants to infect all of your games with malware, the other wants to infect your music CDs with malware.

      A match made in heaven. They can disappear up each others' arses and I never have to deal with either again.

      1. MJI Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

        Now you have both Playstation AND Steam fans after you.

        I think I will play Portal 2 tonight just to annoy you doubly!

        I will use the Sixense Move patch to make it tripply!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

          "I think I will play Portal 2 tonight just to annoy you doubly!"

          I think I will too, just minus the Steaming shit. As for whether fanbois hate me.. well, I hope they do. I hope they'e crying into their cornflakes at the idea that somebody thinks differently to them, absolutely will not play Valve's "all your base are belong to us" game, and refuses to give Sony an inch.

        2. Mage Silver badge
          Linux

          Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

          How would it annoy me?

          Steam is successful on the PC Platform, but is unhappy with Windows and considering Linux and an x86 console.

          Sony wants to be more involved with Online and has dabbled with Linux on PS2 & PS3

          Both love DRM ... (I don't mean Digital Radio Mondale either!).

          Big screen console style gaming isn't going to go away due to iOS or Andriod. Different market really, the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP type devices more challenged by phone based gaming now that even Primary school kids are getting smart phones.

          A fully open HW platform such as PC with Windows or Linux gets problematic quickly compared to closed HW like PS3, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii / U or even Apple's Mac OSX stuff. The PC based Windows for Gaming has become a high end niche, not mass market.

          Apple curiously has never managed to leverage the stable HW aspect of its computer products as well as iphone and iPad for gaming, A few stunning titles and some ports.

          I'd guess Apple don't like to be reminded of Pippin? Also was the Apple TV (a pretty limited media box and not a TV, not maybe much different from Roku?) a missed opportunity as a gaming console.

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

            If someone wanted the 'it just works out of the box' approach for games, they'd just get a console. Macs offered neither the constant upgrade path of PCs, nor the 'plug and play' big screen experience of consoles.

            I do remember the Pippin, but then I remember the Phillips CDi, the 3DO and the Windows/Sega Terradrive.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

          'Steam' has fans? Fans of a DRM system? Are you sure?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

            That'll be the fans placed all around to try and waft the smell of bullshit away.

  4. MJI Silver badge

    Need to find the money

    One son wants Drivers Club and I NEED Killzone Shadow Fall

    As my wife said, it looks like a PS4 Christmas

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    At risk of offending the fan boys I will wait to see what Microsoft announce before declaring which one I intend to buy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If everyone were like you we'd never

      get a good flamewar going.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: If everyone were like you we'd never

        Sorry, I meant I will never buy a Playstation because they are for losers!

        1. Kimbie

          Connections

          See they mention WiFi but what about hardwired ethernet?

          1. GregC

            Re: Connections

            From the spec sheet...

            Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX,1000BASE-T

            IEEE 802,11 b/g/n

            Bluetooth® 2.1 EDR

        2. Andy 70
          Windows

          x86 playstation?

          wipe it, install windows, install steam, job done.

          media centre machine+gaming in a frontroom friendly unit with no vendor lock-in or tie-downs. nice one.

          playstation ecosystem? huh, whatever...

    2. MJI Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re

      But the PS4 has KZ Shadow Fall!

      Sorry that sold it to me.

    3. DrXym

      The specs of "Durango", Microsoft's hardware are widely leaked and while there is some difference, they are so broadly comparable that regardless of whether you chose MS or Sony you're probably going to get a similar experience, at least as far as games go.

      What happens outside that is open to question - I expect Sony will have the best blu ray and 3D support, but perhaps MS will be better in the online and social media realm. I expect Microsoft are also working on their own cloud offering too - it's been a fairly obvious undercurrent in the last few years so they're hardly likely to pass it by.

      1. jai

        if the specs are similar, and the chipset is very similar, presumably this will make it very easy for developers to write games for both systems? so perhaps no longer any need for a title to be on one device and not another perhaps?

        1. VaalDonkie

          I believe the idea of platform-locked titles is rather to artificially inflate the allure of a particular console as opposed to it being a problem simply because it's hard to do.

          1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

            platform lockin

            As a PC user this does annoy me as there are actually a few games I wanted, but refused to spend a grand for all three consoles.

          2. MJI Silver badge

            Platform locked.

            Something to do with the owners of the studios.

            Sony own rather a lot

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And of course

        Sony will have the GAMES. You know the platform exclusives you can't play anywhere else.

        Microsoft have Halo.....

        Sony studios: 32

        Microsoft studios: 3

        Go figure.

        1. VaalDonkie

          Re: And of course

          As long as I get to play Final Fantasy XV (if it comes out before I turn grey) and either Forza or GT, I don't care what logo is on my console. But then I'm not a fan of FPS titles on any console.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And of course

          Unfortunately for Sony none of their 32 exclusives tempted me into buying a PS3

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: And of course

            Title exclusives on the PS3 seemed conspicuous by their absence. A few tempting games did emerge (WipEout HD, Flower, some of the stranger Japanese titles) but nothing major at launch. On the previous gen, we'd been used to the PlayStation getting first dibs at Grand Theft Auto, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

            When the PS3 came out, many people didn't yet have the HD TVs required to take advantage of BluRay, either.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And of course

          Microsoft SELL the most games. An attach rate of ~ double that of the PS3 - therefore guess who developers will tend to focus on....

    4. Pamplemoose

      I'll be waiting too, but in my case I'll be waiting to see what my friends buy. They all went Xbox last time out whereas I bought a PS3. Sad times.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Sad times... for my friends

        fixed it for you

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice

    8GB of GDDR 5 and 1.84 Teraflops are impressive, especially since there are far fewer layers of API crap between the game and the GPU than you will find on a PC. I expect this to perform better than my PC which has a 2GB video card capable of 4.6 Teraflops.

    Time to upgrade my three year old graphics card, I think. I'm sure I can get something really nice for the price of a PS4.

    1. M Gale

      Re: Nice

      Thre's actually a whole load of "API crap" between the programmer and the hardware on a modern games console, too. In fact, consoles are historically a bugger to program for because they are a whole new bespoke architecture each time. Usually a horrible mash of intermingled subsystems that have changed a few times in development, too.

  7. Joerg
    FAIL

    What a shame! What a fraud!

    A fraud this console really is.

    Cheap, slow AMD hardware. A custom AMD APU it's still going to be a slow product. The A10-5800K was released a few months ago and her it is:

    http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A10-5800K+APU

    AMD A10-5800K APU Average CPU Mark

    Description: Socket: FM2, Clockspeed: 3.8 GHz, Turbo Speed: 4.2 GHz, No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical), Max TDP: 100 W

    Other names: AMD A10-5800K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics

    CPU Launched: Q4 2012

    CPUmark/$Price: 38.28 Overall Rank: 207

    Last Price Change: $123.79 USD (2012-10-06)

    >>>>>> 4739

    Samples: 167

    --

    4739 the benchmark score is. The new AMD custom APU for Sony might get 5500 ? 5800 ? Maybe.

    And an Intel Core i7-3770 instead:

    http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3770+%40+3.40GHz

    Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz Average CPU Mark

    Description: Socket: LGA1155, Clockspeed: 3.4 GHz, Turbo Speed: 3.9 GHz, No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical), Max TDP: 77 W

    Other names: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz

    CPU Launched: Q1 2012

    CPUmark/$Price: 33.04 Overall Rank: 31

    Last Price Change: $286.99 USD (2012-04-30)

    >>>>9481

    Samples: 890

    ---

    At least 2 times faster on synthetic benchmarks.

    And LGA2011 Core i7 with 6-core and Quad-Channel 52GByte/s bandwidth DDR3 are even faster.

    1. JeeBee

      Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

      And your point is?

      The main workload of a games console is graphics rendering. How good will that Intel CPU do that?

      The next main important thing is that the CPU in the console doesn't cost Sony a metric buttload. Intel don't like selling their CPUs for cheap. In addition there's no way to create an Intel based SoC with AMD graphics.

      In short, quit moaning, it can't happen, and in the real world of gaming there isn't a massive difference in CPU performance.

    2. JeeBee

      Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

      I actually have to reply again to what is possibly the stupidest comment I've seen on the internet in at least an hour.

      Do you really think that a games console would use a $286.99 CPU? Which would require a discrete GPU?

      I like that you compare it to a $123.79 APU that gets twice the performance in GPU benchmarks.

      In addition the Playstation APU uses eight Jaguar cores, not 2 Piledriver modules. And to be honest, we don't know how it will perform at all.

      1. Boothy
        WTF?

        Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

        As mentioned, CPU performance in a game system is fairly meaningless for most games, and doubly so for console type games, it's the GPU that does all the real work.

        I've got a 360, but am primarily a PC gamer, I've got an old rig, with an AMD 4 core CPU from several generations back. (was top of the line about 5 years ago), and I can still play every game installed on Ultra (or their highest option). The CPU is generally under utilised, as most games still only run in one, or maybe two threads, so the CPU might max out around 40-50% for a heavy game.

        The only time a faster CPU would be useful would be for strategy games, where there is a lot of processing going on behind the scenes (rather than on screen), but those don't tend to be very common on consoles, so a mute point at the moment (may change in the future with improved console control systems of course).

        If games were made to utilise muti cores better, even my 5 year old CPU would provide more than double the current required processing power for top end games (and that's top end on a PC, not top end on a current console). So a current (or next gen) AMD processor would provide more than enough CPU power for anything likely to be thrown at a next gen console for years to some.

        1. Badvok
          Mushroom

          Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

          "As mentioned, CPU performance in a game system is fairly meaningless for most games, and doubly so for console type games, it's the GPU that does all the real work."

          Not sure if that is true anymore. Most people are unlikely to plug their PS4 into anything more than a Full HD/3D TV for quite a while yet. The PS3 can already do Full HD/3D, not particularly well but it's not far off, so maybe just one or two steps up the graphics architecture ladder would do fine for most people (maybe equivalent to a modern <£75 graphics card). It will be more important to enhance the gaming experience, better AI, better physics, better details, better interaction, and all that comes from the CPU not the GPU.

          As any PC gamer knows when selecting their CPU, AMD is for Office/Productivity, but Intel is for gaming. Add into the equation the lower power demands and better thermal efficiency of Intel line and it is a no-brainer.

          Looks like the PS4 is going to be another George Foreman grill, lots of heat and not much performance.

          (FYI, I'm a long term PlayStation gamer, from the very first days, I've bought every generation on Launch Day - until now.)

          1. Boothy

            Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

            On a modern gaming rig, the physics is done on the GPU, not the CPU. It's all math, so GPU is far more capable than any CPU at delivering good physics affects. After all, a GPU is just basically a glorified multi-core math co-processor.

            1. Badvok

              Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

              Yes the actual maths compute stuff for physics is often offloaded to the GPU but much of the work still requires a decent CPU.

              Also, just seen it confirmed that PS4 will NOT support 4K for games, so it will be only FullHD/3D at best.

      2. Joerg
        Thumb Down

        Re: What a shame! What a fraud!

        Nonsense.

        The Sony PS3 Cell CPU when it was released was beyond anything Intel had to offer at an higher price.

        That was innovating. That was worth paying a premium price for.

        The PS3 is still far from outdated.

        The first pictures and demos of beta PS4 games just show how bad the hardware really is. It's already outdated. It offers nothing better than what an old PS3 can do. And it's worse than any medium-range PC.

        That is the whole point.

        A cheap $100 AMD APU hardware only to rip customers off is just a shame Sony and Microsoft managers deserve paying by going bankrupt!

        Unless too many people will like being sheep wasting money on cheap AMD APU PCs.

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