What Sony PlayStation 4 Brings to Your Home Theater System

The DualShock 4 controller weighs in at 7.4 ounces compared to the DualShock 3 which only weighs 6.77 ounces. The controller features an integrated touch pad that we got to see used in a demo of the upcoming Unreal 4. The touchpad was used to shift the camera view in-game, but we don’t know much else about its potential application to gaming.

The controller features a headphone jack and a quick-access share button used for some of the PS4’s built-in sharing functions. An LED light bar across the front of the controller can be used to track and identify a player and provide motion control as we’ve seen with PlayStation Move.

Accompanying the DualShock 4 system is the PlayStation 4 Eye. A pair of 1280x800 cameras flank the Eye unit which can capture video at 60 frames-per-second and includes four microphones. The PlayStation Eye has an 85-degree field of view and can be used to triangulate objects in 3D space for gesture recognition and motion gaming (just like Microsoft’s Kinect). But the PS4 Eye claims a significant gain over Kinect which only has a 640x480 30 frames-per-second sensor.

Sony bought Gaikai last year for $380 million to take advantage of its cloud-gaming technology, and it plans to use the Gaikai for “social” and remote gaming. For social gaming, Sony envisions broadcasting games in real time to your friends, capturing and sharing video on Facebook and Ustream. Friends won’t just be passive viewers. They’ll be able to trash talk you while you’re in game. Great! One would have to venture all the way to a local bowling alley to get that kind of over-the-shoulder in-game trash-talk experience.

You’ll also be able to let friends join in and even take control of your game in progress. A smartphone bridge to PSN will let the social interactivity with your friends travel with you on mobile devices.

Since PS4 won’t natively support PS3 games, Sony is working a solution involving Gaikai cloud gaming technology to give PS4-users access to the complete library of legacy PlayStation titles. It’s not clear on how this will work, or even if it will work. If you have any PS3 games you’re absolutely in love with, don't be too quick to toss them out when you get your hands on PS4. We don't know exactly how cloud gaming your PS3 games on PS4 will perform, especially in competitive multiplayer shooters.

Speaking of backward compatibility, one sour rumor that has been floating around about the next generation of game consoles pertains to their ability to play used games. There is talk about security measures preventing you from trading, lending or even buying used games. Although this wasn’t covered specifically at the event, just prior to the event getting started, Shuhei Yoshida (Sony’s head of Worldwide Studios) confirmed there would be no ban on used games for PlayStation 4. The PlayStation faithful can breathe a sigh of relief.

This would have been a step in the wrong direction for gaming. Pulling the rug out from the used games would piss off the core fan-base and there is no reason for it.

Don’t expect a senses-shattering array of PS4 exclusives—although there were a few nice surprises.

Announced exclusive titles mostly included the usual franchises—Killzone: Shadow Fall and Infamous: Second Son. There was also DriveClub, a team driving game and a cutesy alien game called Knack that looks like you’re playing scenes from Monsters Inc.

A few of the most anticipated games coming to PS4 (and other platforms) include Unreal 4. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen an installment of the great-uncle of shooters from Epic Games and the next iteration of the Unreal Engine looks amazing on PS4.

Blizzard was on hand to talk about the integration of Diablo III on PlayStation 4. While response to D3 since its launch last summer has been underwhelming, it’s great to see Blizzard finally working with a console. Diablo III on PS4 promises dungeon crawl action in a 4-way gaming experience that doesn’t resort to split screens.

Bungie, the makers of the Halo franchise are building their next franchise that will be another launch title for PS4: Destiny. This science fiction first-person-shooter will have role-playing elements and allow you to explore a deeply immersive universe with characters that will grow as you learn more about the game. The graphics on this game look phenomenal. 

There are many questions left after Sony’s presentation—mostly about the details. But to be sure, it’s likely many of these details haven’t yet been ironed out. If our past experience with major product launches and their tight timelines are any indication, it’s likely some of these details won’t be resolved until after the system is launched. But a few important things weren’t revealed.

Namely the launch date and price.

We were told that it would be launched in time for Christmas with no exact date. We heard nothing from Sony about the price, but rumors have it priced in the $430 - $530 range. However, Inside Network analyst Billy Pidgeon told Gamesindustry International that there's a "magic price point" for Sony. It should be $299 - $399 to achieve the uptake necessary in its critical first year (ahead of Microsoft). 

A Q4 2013 timeline is an obvious shot at Microsoft after getting the leg-up on Sony back in 2005 when it launched Xbox 360 a full year ahead of PS3. Let’s hope there is no Sony equivalent to Xbox’s red ring of death issue which hurt many early Xbox adopters (and many feel was the result of the system being pushed out the door too soon).

The PlayStation 4 looks like it will deliver exactly what the gaming public expects in a big-screen media experience: More power, more connectivity, smoother frame rates and better all-around graphics for the future generation of games. For home theater owners the PS4 looks like it will (again) make an excellent media center, gaming system and Blu-ray player in one system. Hopefully soon we'll get more information about audio/video performance.

As for computational performance there’s not likely to be much difference between PS4 and the upcoming Microsoft Xbox 720. Console game systems, like everything else in consumer electronics, are moving toward homogeneity with fewer features that set competing platforms apart. 

Sony’s move to the x86-64 architecture will have developers more at home creating games for PS4 than they were with the idiosyncratic API of the PS3 Cell Processor. The next Xbox will likely use DirectX API. Both are conspicuously familiar to PC game developers. With both systems effectively gaming PCs, hardware differences between the two are a mute source of argument among fanboys.

Sadly, the faithful on either side of the Xbox/PS3 divide are still fighting it out on the Internet, convinced of the eminent superiority of one system over the other.

But we should be looking for cross-platform unification brothers and sisters! Competition is inherently good for consumers—but add cross-platform compatibility and it's even better.

So, I’d like to humbly suggest Sony and Microsoft getting together and really getting serious about cloud gaming with a true cross-platform multiplayer experience, a unified online gaming network. I'm skeptical of the real in-game performance of multiplayer games being served up remotely, I fear lag will ruin the experience and most competition will come down to the best ping. But if it can be pulled off... "PlayStation Xbox Network Live" makes sense.

XBL and PSN members would be automatically in and PC gamers can join independently.

If Sony can use Gaikai technology for cloud-based PS3 backward compatibility that delivers a multiplayer experience that isn’t a lag-ridden nightmare, rendering consoles into dumb-terminals the individual architecture of games becomes irrelevant—the technical hurdles are mute. A unified multiplayer gaming experience, even if it only worked with certain titles, would take platform wars to new heights. But first I’d like to see for myself how Gaikai pulls off the multiplayer Black Ops 2 cloud experience.

With three new consoles expected to be fully launched or announced by the end of the year, the next gen console war is in full effect. It looks like 2013 is shaping up to be a great year for gamers.