PS4 details leak – Based on PS3 technology and out by 2011?
The Playstation 3 is only just over two years old, a mere teenager if the 10-year strategy Sony is committed to pans out. But hardware developers are always planning their next move, which for Sony is likely to be the PS4. The details of the next Sony console are rumored to have leaked, and they make for some interesting reading.
While we’re all enjoying our current-gen games consoles, the PS3 and Xbox 360, and the last-gen console masquerading as current-gen, the Wii, some of us already have one eye on the future of the industry. Which is why articles about the PS4, Xbox 720, and Wii 2 are some of our most-read of all time.
Gaming Front has translated an article from PC Watch, a Japanese Web site we’ve rather unsurprisingly never heard of before. It’s claimed the article contains leaked details of the hardware being planned for the PS4, as well as Sony’s strategy for making the console a success. This obviously needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
The translated text is a jumble of bad English and technobabble that in its original form will only be intelligible to Japanese otaku. But there are some interesting points to take out and extrapolate from it.
First off, the PS4 could be the first Playstation console to be built using the same basic hardware structure as the previous console. The original Playstation was just that, and for the the PS2 and PS3, Sony consequently scrapped the hardware and started again from scratch. The PS4, on the other hand is rumored to be being developed around the existing CELL architecture.
If true, this would be a huge development. For starters, it would lower development costs by a huge margin, meaning the PS4 could launch at a low price right from the off. More importantly, Sony could make rather than lose money on every console sold.
It would also mean developers wouldn’t have to struggle to get to grips with the new hardware, as they seem to have done in the previous two generations. This, in turn, would mean smaller developers could make games for the system without the need for huge budgets, making the PS4 more casual-friendly than its older brother.
Making the PS4 more of a souped up version of the PS3 rather than a whole new console could also mean an earlier launch, with 2011 being mentioned in the article. That’s only two years away and would seem a little early, especially as for there to be any launch games available, developers would have to begin making games this year in order to hit that street date.
Read the original article and see what you think. There is some in-depth discussion of the internal hardware of the PS3 and PS4 for those who are interested in that kind of thing. As to whether these really are official leaked details on the PS4, I’m not convinced, and Sony is already denying it. Having said that, the strategy looks good so maybe Sony should adopt it anyway.
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48 Responses to “PS4 details leak – Based on PS3 technology and out by 2011?”
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January 30th, 2009
Three cheers for Sony!!! Copying the same concept as the Gamecube -> Wii.
PS3.5 anyone?
Come to think of it, didnt -you- guys hang piles of sh*t on Nintendo for doing exactly this with Wii?
Judging by Sony’s woeful 4th quarter decline, I see a stack of low-level employees out of work pretty soon…
chilly, brrrr!
January 30th, 2009
So when Nintendo released a suped up version of their previous console they single-handedly destroyed the industry. When Sony re-release the same console and call it the PS4 it’s “a good strategy”. I think I see a bit of a pattern here.
btw I love my NeoGeo controller for the Wii. Best peripheral ever!
January 30th, 2009
I’ve heard of this rumor while ago. It sounds like a good idea to me, my only hesitation is that Sony will try to follow Nintendo’s lead by releasing a cheaply made, last gen console. I’ve been a longtime fan of Sony, mainly because there consoles have pushed technological limits.
If Sony can make the PS4 exponentially better than the PS3 using the cell technology – I’m all for it. If the PS4 ends up being a marginal increase than the PS3 – I will curse Nintendo forever.
January 30th, 2009
Whatever it is, it needs to be compatible with PS1, PS2 and PS3 games both via disc and an online games store, which will need thousands of games to be properly enticing.
January 30th, 2009
…like the PS3 was supposed to have this gen.
January 30th, 2009
Oh so they’re bringing it up to specs with the 360. Great!!!! Probably a better GPU and Graphics card. Hopefully they learned something about ignoring the customers who supported their PS1 & 2. Games first Sony!!! Remember That!!
January 30th, 2009
CAD – The first Uncharted (2007) looks better than Gears 2 (2009), so I don’t follow your argument.
January 30th, 2009
Gears came out in 2008 actually… but still Epic should have been able to catch up to what Naughty Dog did years earlier. If the 360 is so much better than the PS3 spec wise, why weren’t the able to do this CAD? Instead Gears has a murky color pallet, pixilated graphics, and texture pop in.
January 30th, 2009
@Carlb
like the ps3 can still have this gen.
@CAD.
how can you say bullshit like that when the 360 had a hddvd addon, downloadable movies, Netflix, and is a media hub. errrrr. games first.
How about you say some recent intelligent stuff, like the ps3 has no games….
anyway, Barnabe said it right. Nintendo fucked the next gen up, and they are all going to go the cheaper way.
Hopefully since the architecture is similar the games could have seting like PC games do where the same game works on different video card with different performance (higher rex…etc)
January 30th, 2009
now THIS is the sony we all know.
use out dated technology (ps3), cram it into a shiny new box, and put a “4″ on it and claim it’s the “next generation”….
not suprising since the ps3 is ousing a vastly outdated graphics processing unit….
oh well… the ps3 fanboys will eat it up and swear to it’s “hidden potential” once again…lmao…
January 30th, 2009
Aww and we all thought you weren’t going to ‘bless’ Blorge with ‘your’ hits for a while…
January 30th, 2009
Nice kev. You amazes me how you always figure out a way of consecutively posting something more retarded than your previous one.
January 30th, 2009
“…like the PS3 was supposed to have this gen.”
Oh, I must have missed that pledge from Sony.
“Oh so they’re bringing it up to specs with the 360.”
The 360 has 3 cores at 3.2Ghz. The PS3 has 7.
The 360 Graphics chip is clocked at 500MHz. The PS3 is clocked at 550MHz.
“ps3 is housing a vastly outdated graphics processing unit”
If any console is housing vastly outdated units, it is the 360; which is housing the same (loud) DVD drive by that was in the first Xbox.
January 30th, 2009
*by Hitachi
January 30th, 2009
Hey kev… Kind of sound like Windows.
January 30th, 2009
Xbox 1 DVD drives were garbage.
January 30th, 2009
Sonys idea was to use one or two of the cores to help out the graphics card, there for making a high end graphics card useless and reducing the cost to make the ps3. naughty dog and insomniac have tapped into this potential, other studios are lazy…..
also the memory on the system is relatively low because with 7 cores it should be able to complete its instructions before the memory is filled.. lazy studios….
the ps3 technology is a fine achievement, the problem is people can’t think outside the (x)box of a standard desktop
January 30th, 2009
phranctoast,
“like the ps3 can still have this gen.”
sometime soon I hope.
January 30th, 2009
lockdown,
“needs to be compatible with PS1, PS2 and PS3 games”…
“Oh, I must have missed that pledge from Sony.”
really?
January 30th, 2009
Can anybody tell me when a higher priced, higher spec console beat it’s competition?
January 30th, 2009
“Can anybody tell me when a higher priced, higher spec console beat it’s competition?”
Didn’t the SNES sell more than the Genesis?
January 30th, 2009
WHAT THE FUCK!!!
ok first off all… you guys are getting a little impatient… this is just like the PSP2 rumor from IGN which was denied by Sony a coupla days ago… Im not done with my PS3 they come up with a game that blows up the PS3 cus its so fucking awesome…
also… I guess for kev… “never coming here again” means… “Ill be here same time tommorow”
ohh yeah… why do I feel so turned on when I see his stupid comments??
January 30th, 2009
phranctoast,
Good example, except the Genesis was designed to compete with the NES (technologically superior, though it still didn’t beat it) and Sega was supporting five different consoles and two add-ons at the time of it’s demise.
January 30th, 2009
Hmmm, interesting – *if true*.
So, not only will the PS3 be well and truly left behind by the next XBox but the competitor PS4 when it comes will really only be a souped up PS3, a PS3.5 really.
That’s pretty ironic considering all those gen 1.5 and last gen jokes aimed at the Wii & even the XBox 360.
That’s hardly impressive from the big-talking Sony corp.
How the mighty are fallen, huh?
January 30th, 2009
Happy,
This is obviously a rumour and nothing more. If it takes Sony 3 years to get a game out the door there is no way even a souped up PS3 would be ready for a 2011 release. I won’t believe anything about a new console until Sony releases some info. And then I will still be questioning it somewhat.
January 30th, 2009
The fact that SEGA released a console every few years and would cut and run from the previous console was the reason for the company’s demise. Consumer’s lost all faith that SEGA’s new console would last/be supported for more than two years.
Sony is still supporting three consoles rather well. Not like M$ who couldn’t wait to be rid the original Xbox. I can imagine they can’t wait to get out of paying for all of the warranties on the 360s.
January 30th, 2009
@Happyhockum: They haven’t fallen yet. Although I was getting worried and waited to get one.
This is pure rumour so don’t take it as fact.
January 30th, 2009
Barnabe Jones
If you;’re going to discuss these things then at least talk about them from the stand-point of the facts and the truth.
The truth about XBox mk1 is that Microsoft did not own the tech and so could not upgrade and refine to cut costs (as is usual and normal and happening with the 360).
The prime reason behind the XBox mk1’s demise was that Nvidia wanted to stop making the GPU, this caused an almighty row but fundamentally there was nothing Microsoft could do about it.
But the lesson was learned.
January 30th, 2009
“But the lesson was learned.”
It sure was; Microsoft managed to produce a console that was plagued with technical problems.
Lesson learned.
January 30th, 2009
Very good points indeed, but if sales were more robust, I’m sure an agreement would have been reached.
January 30th, 2009
Off Topic – Who saw the new Final Fantasy XIII trailer? It gave me chills seeing the battle system in action! It looks like it’s essentially turn based but ultra stylized animations.
January 30th, 2009
lock_down
Yeah, great comment.
That was really relevant to XBox mk1 & the situation regarding ownership of the component tech.
In fact the XBox 360s reliability is a case of a lesson learned too.
The early Xenon mobo units might have caused people problems but it is undeniable that they have got steadily better with each version.
January 30th, 2009
barnabe jones,
“the fact that sega released a console every few years and would cut and run from the previous console”… actually that didn’t happen until Saturn and after, and I was only talking about the Genesis, not Sega.
January 30th, 2009
“Yeah, great comment.”
Yeah, it was, wasn’t it.
“That was really relevant to XBox mk1 & the situation regarding ownership of the component tech.”
Are you saying that MS has learned the lesson from the ownership of tech…because if you are, that hasn’t changed has it with the 360?
Don’t ATI make the GPU and IBM make the CPU?
January 30th, 2009
Carl – Maybe, but even the Genesis saw an add on every few years. That coupled with the Dreamcast, helped to tarnish there image as a company that would support a format for more than a few years.
Genesis – 1988
Sega CD – 1991
Sega 32X – 1994
January 30th, 2009
“Sonys idea was to use one or two of the cores to help out the graphics card”
You know the RSX in the PS3 has 24 shader cores don’t you? The GPUs in the consoles are a lot more powerful and getter suited to graphics. That’s why the CELL doesn’t make games look any better.
If Sony made a PS4 with a modern GPU (that have 240 shader cores) then it would eat the Xbox 360 alive from day one in terms of graphics.
January 30th, 2009
lock_down
I think you’ll find it was a collaborative venture and Microsoft hold all the rights that matter (which was not the case with the GPU, the RAM or the HDD on XBox mk1).
That’s why they have produced differing versions of XBox 360 but never did (in any meaningful way) with XBox mk1.
January 30th, 2009
hahahaha PS3.5. I love it!
January 30th, 2009
“While we’re all enjoying our current-gen games consoles, the PS3 and Xbox 360, and the last-gen console masquerading as current-gen, the Wii,”
haha and this is why I like Dave Parrack’s articles a lot more than the other guy!
January 30th, 2009
Barnabe,
That was my original point: “Sega was supporting five different consoles and two add-ons at the time of it’s (Genesis) demise.” Specs had little to do with it, as they were not focused on one product.
February 1st, 2009
Barnaby?
*crickets*
February 1st, 2009
My bad. It serves me right for trying to do 20 things at once… Still Sega didn’t continue to support the older format/add on once they released the new one.
Back on the topic at hand; I still stand by my comment about how the first Uncharted looks better than Gears 2. *crickets*
February 2nd, 2009
No problem. But the Genesis was supported by Sega until 1998, four years after the release of Saturn, seven years after the release of Sega CD, and four years after the release of 32x.
As far as Uncharted and Gears 2, I have only seen one, Gears 2, being played by my Marines here in multiplayer on an old CRT flatscreen (the scan lines from the CRT made it fugly, but they were still having a blast…). Personally, I could care less about minor graphical differences if there is much more fun to be had with one game vice the other. Now, these two are different genres, so the higher review scores for Gears2 make little difference if you favor the action adventure genre. If that is the case, then there is nothing as yet on the 360 that comes close to Uncharted in the action adventure genre as far as aggregate reviews go. If I had a choice between an action adventure genre title and a shooter that were rated similarly, I would go with the action adventure first.
*haven’t seen or heard any crickets here yet, mole or otherwise*
February 2nd, 2009
you cant really objectively compare Uncharted and Gears… because they both look the way they are supposed to… Gears is supposed to look muddy and brown… and uncharted is supposed to look like the long lost cousin of crysis…
Sure Uncharted may seem to have better graphics… but we need kev kilojoulebytes to find the hexa decimal difference…
boobs…
February 2nd, 2009
Boobs make all of the difference.
CD, 32X, and the Dreamcast all had extremely short life spans.
I do actually agree with both of you. Comparing Gears to Uncharted is not really comparing apples to apples. Just don’t tell Harry or Kev that I said that. I’ll compare KillZone 2 to Gears once it’s released. *wink*
February 2nd, 2009
Real ones that is.
No disagreement on the short lifespans there, yet there was no real precedent (outside of Japan) I can think of either, so other console makers learned from them without having to go to the school of hard knocks.
Sega CD… I loved it, even though the affair lasted only 3 years, they were good ones for me… the Sega CD, harbinger of the beginning of the end of Sega hardware and while not completely paving the way for the success of PS1, it provided more than a few cobblestones… Some truly great games came out for it too: Shining Force, Lunar, Snatcher, Sonic CD… now I look back on the Sega Classics Collection CD and think about it’s 4 games compared to the 40+ coming out on Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection in about eight days… how technology advances so fast.
32X I could care less for, but the Dreamcast (let alone Saturn), that system rocked the house with Soul Calibur, RE: Code Veronica, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, Skies of Arcadia… I even enjoyed Blue Stinger and Slave Zero amongst several others… Dreamcast went on to last 5 more years in Japan compared to the US, with one of it’s last titles being Trigger Heart Excelica in 2007.
But it’s a new era now, and thankfully one without any more 32x’s.
February 3rd, 2009
Yes the Saturn had great games… but I think it may hold the record for worse controller design. Even the big, clunky, original Xbox controller was slightly better. Right?
February 4th, 2009
Wrong. The Jaguar holds the record (ahh… Tempest 2000, Cannon Fodder, Doom, Alien vs Predator… even Iron Soldier)… now that was a short lived console (still some good times though).