Sony unveiled their PlayStation 3 to the world seven years ago, and today they are ready to give the world the first glimpse at the Sony PlayStation 4 at a special PlayStation 2013 event. The new PlayStation alongside a newly design DualShock 4 controller is getting set to take on the next era of gaming.Sony plans to achieve this by giving the PlayStation 4 an all-new Supercharged PC architecture, for a more immersive experience. For this the device will be powered by an enhanced PC GPU, 8GB of unified memory and an X86 CPU.
If you are following the live video stream, you would have been able to enjoy some of the game demos which are absolutely breathtaking. Keep in mind that the demos were projected onto a screen and doesn’t translate to the real world experience of playing games on our TV sets at home, but still doesn’t fail to impress.
The PS4 wont offer PS3 disc backward compatibility, however users can get access to old titles through a service called PlayStation Cloud. This service will allow you to stream you favorite old title games without the need for discs, but the company didn’t disclose much information on how this service will work.
The PS4 will also feature a new DualShock 4 controller, which shares the general design of its predecessor but includes a few new features. The DualShock 4 controller additionally features a touchpad in the middle, a share button, a headphone jack, and a light bar that'll track movement with a PlayStation Move-style controller. This means that the movement gestures doesn’t require a separate wand and can be recognized by your hand movements.
Some additional features include the ability to boot games up instantly from sleep, a secondary processor which handles downloading games in the background allowing you to play games while they're being transferred from Sony's servers to your PS4.
The PS4 has a dedicated video processing chip which will allow you to stream video of your gaming session without having to leave the session. These streams can be shared from a social button on your controller and you friends will be able to remotely watch your game-play and offer tips from their homes. You can even ask your friend to take over using their own controller and help you beat and unbeatable level.
Remote Play is one of the more interesting features of the PS4, and will let you continue playing where you left off on a different screen. For example you can even stream your PS4 titles to the 5 inch display of your PlayStation Vita and continue enjoying it. Unfortunately, it looks like it'll have to be wired, but Sony says the "goal" will be every single PS4 title playable on Vita.
The PS4 will also continue to offer streaming video apps like your PS3 and will include apps like Hulu, Netflix, Vudu etc.
Social gaming will also be a big part of the PS4 and will let you link your Facebook account with your PlayStation Network.
Are you excited about the PlayStation 4 or do you prefer waiting for the next gen Xbox? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section below.