With some really interesting ideas, Sony looks to be an even bigger player in the next generation.
It was only a matter of time before Sony and Microsoft would put an end to the circle of rumors surrounding their supposed new consoles and actually give people their first glimpse into the next generation. Instead of waiting for E3 to unveil their new console, Sony tried to be clever in titling the event the "Playstation Meeting," but we all knew this was in fact the announcement of the PS4. From what Sony had to show at the meeting last week, the PS4 could be quite an impressive system and be an even stronger contender in the forthcoming generation.
Let's be clear about one thing before I continue. A lot of what Sony had to show and discuss at the meeting was conceptual. Yes, they did show some tech demos and gameplay, but the biggest ideas propelling the system aren't exactly in place, or were just a bit too difficult to show on stage. So everything about the system will be assumed to actually be in the box and ready to go once it does ship out to stores.
With that in mind, let's talk about what I think makes the PS4 impressive. The first and most obvious change to the PS4 is the system architecture itself. Rather than going with proprietary technology in an attempt to being cutting edge from a technical standpoint, they are going with some familiar pieces of hardware with a PC architecture, featuring an X86 CPU and 8 GB of memory. There were a few asides made during the presentation, apologizing to developers for the difficulty in programming on the PS3, and so they crafted the PS4 to be much easier to work with. If the next XBox will feature similar hardware, then the disparity between PS4 and XBox versions of games will be practically wiped out, which was a pretty big issue with several third-party titles, most notably Skyrim. And with the improved architecture, it is to be expected that the graphics will also improve. From what we saw, games already are looking quite nice on the system, and it would be interesting to see how that evolves as we go further into the generation.
