On February 20th Sony Formerly announced its next console PS4

Sony confirmed the system would be ready by the holiday season this year but did not show the actual system itself or discuss retail pricing (Rumor has it that it will be cheaper than PS3 was at its launch in 2006)

The controller was shown and specs were divulged:





In addition to the game pad, a new version of "Move" a motion based contoller will be developed and sold.

Specs

Main Processor
Single-chip custom processor
CPU : x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores
GPU : 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon™ based
graphics engine

This is more conventional set up than the PS3s propreitory "Cell" chip, which will make life easier for developers and result in better titles earlier in the cycle.

Memory
GDDR5 8GB

This represents a major jump from PS3, and will provide a much more expansive visual experiance.

Hard Disk Drive
Built-in

Bet on at least 500 Gigs standard, most likely more.

Optical Drive
(read only)
BD 6xCAV
DVD 8xCAV
I/O
Super-Speed USB (USB 3.0) 、AUX

The Disk format will be Blu Ray once more

Communication
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)
IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth® 2.1 (EDR)

AV output
HDMI
Analog-AV out
Digital Output (optical

Will PS4 be backwards compatible?

The hardware, no. However Sony's recent acquistion of streaming service, Gaikai will eventually allow any game from Sony's history to be played from the cloud and ported to any device (PS Vita, tablet, smart phone, etc)

Will PS4 allow for used games?

Yes, PS4 will allow a player to play used games., contrary to earlier rumor

Some Cool Features?

"Sleep" this allows a player to stop their ongoing game without powering down completely, the player can return to their game later, pic up exactly where they left off with out powering back up and rebooting the machine.

"Share" allows a player to share his or her ongoing game with another on or offline and allows a player to post both screenshots and video footage of his or her ongoing game on line and in real time.

What about the new 4K ultra high def?

PS4 will support the new forthcoming 4K for video (movies and TV0 but there are no plans to use this format for games.

Games shown?

During the conference David Cage of Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls) gave this incredible tech demo of facial animation, what are seeing is computer generated, not film of an actual person:



Can we say "Uncanny Valley"?

Watch Dogs, a long anticipated game was shown:



Announced also Killzone Shadowfall, an AAA shooter right at launch, good move Sony:





Infamous Second Son, a super hero action game with an all new character and powers:



Destiny, a shooter from Bungie, the folks who created the Halo series




It all looks very exciting, Sony will reveal more in months to come.