• The Witcher 3
• Destiny (with some exclusive content)
• Diablo 3 (also coming to PS3)
• Killzone: Shadow Fall
• Watch Dogs
• New Final Fantasy
• Deep Down (by Capcom, using a new engine built for PS4)
• The Witness (by Braid developer Johnathan Blow)
• Infamous: Second Son
• Drive Club (by WRC-famed studio Evolution)

Interestingly, Sony let everyone know that PS3 games won’t be compatible with PS4, but they are working on something to keep people happy. Most likely, this will involve some sort of tie-in with the Gaikai technology they acquired last year.

Gamer Focused, Developer Inspired

Sony detailed the fact that PS4 was designed from the ground up to ensure that the very best games and the most immersive experiences reach PlayStation gamers. PS4 accomplishes this by enabling the greatest game developers in the world to unlock their creativity and push the boundaries of play through a system that is tuned specifically to their needs.

PS4 also fluidly connects players to the larger world of experiences offered by PlayStation, across the console and mobile spaces, and PSN.

The PS4 system architecture is distinguished by its high performance and ease of development. PS4 is centered around a powerful custom chip that contains eight x86-64 cores and a state of the art graphics processor. This, interestingly, means the PS4 has off-the-shelf components that should be easier to develop on top of compared to the PS3′s complex, but powerful, Cell Broadband processor.

The GPU has been enhanced in a number of ways, principally to allow for easier use of the GPU for general purpose computing (GPGPU) such as physics simulation. The GPU contains a unified array of 18 compute units, which collectively generate 1.84 Teraflops of processing power that can freely be applied to graphics, simulation tasks, or some mixture of the two.

PS4 is equipped with 8 GB of unified system memory, easing game creation and increasing the richness of content achievable on the platform. GDDR5 is used for this memory, giving the system 176 GB/second of bandwidth and providing a further boost to graphics performance.

Shared Game Experiences

Social interaction is central to PS4 experiences, so new features were built into the actual foundation of the system’s hardware architecture. PS4 provides dedicated, “always on” video compression and decompression systems that enables seamless uploading of gameplay. For the first time ever, gamers can share their epic triumphs with the press of a button. Gamers simply hit the “SHARE button” on the controller, scan through the last few minutes of gameplay, tag it and return to the game—the video uploads as the gamer plays. Gamers can share their images and videos to their friends on social networking services such as Facebook.

PS4 also enhances social spectating by enabling gamers to broadcast their gameplay in real-time to friends using live internet streaming services such as Ustream. During live broadcasts, friends can make comments on the streamed gameplay and, if a gamer gets stuck on a challenging level, friends can also join the game in completely new ways. For example, friends can offer health potions or special weapons when a player needs them most during actual gameplay.

PS4 Second Screens

PS4 integrates second screens, including PS Vita, phones and tablets, to wrap gamers in their favorite content wherever they are. A key feature enabled by second screens is “Remote Play” and PS4 fully unlocks its potential by making PS Vita the ultimate companion device. With PS Vita, gamers will be able to seamlessly pull PS4 titles from their living room TVs and play them on PS Vita’s 5-inch display and dual analog sticks over Wi-Fi networks.

Immediate Gameplay

PS4 radically reduces the lag time between players and their content. PS4 features “suspend mode” which keeps the system in a low power state while preserving the game session. The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past. With PS4, gamers just hit the power button again and are promptly back playing the game at the exact point where they left off. Additionally, users can boot a variety of applications including a web browser when playing a game on PS4.

PS4 also enables games to be downloaded or updated in the background, or even in stand-by mode. The system takes it one step further by making digital titles playable as they are being downloaded. When a player purchases a game, PS4 downloads just a fraction of the data so gamers can start playing immediately, and the rest is downloaded in the background during actual gameplay.

Personalized, Curated Content

On the newly designed PS4 menu screen, players can look over game-related information shared by friends, view friends’ gameplay with ease, or obtain information of recommended content, including games, TV shows and movies. The long-term goal of PS4 is to reduce download times of digital titles to zero: if the system knows enough about a player to predict the next game they will purchase, then that game can be loaded and ready to go before they even click the “buy” button.

Gaming in the Cloud

Launched in November 2006, PlayStation Network now operates in 67 countries and regions around the world with the total number of downloaded content of more than 2.8 billion. In addition to a variety of games available in Store, PS4 users will be able to enjoy a variety of services offered by PSN, such as Music Unlimited, a cloud-based music subscription service and Video Unlimited, a premium video service, as well as various content distribution services.

By combining PSN with Gaikai’s cloud technology, it is SCE’s goal to make free exploration possible for various games. In the future, when a gamer sees a title of interest in PlayStation Store, they can immediately start playing a portion of the actual game — not a stripped down version of the game. With Gaikai and PlayStation Store, gamers will be able to experience appealing games and only pay for the games they actually love. PlayStation Network and the cloud will offer additional value to PlayStation gamers. SCE is exploring unique opportunities enabled by cloud technology with the long-term vision of making PlayStation libraries including an incredible catalog of more than 3000 PS3 titles*6 that is unmatched in the industry, mostly ubiquitous on PS4.

SCE will announce new details of PS4 and its robust lineup of games from 3rd party developers and publishers, the independent gaming community and SCE Worldwide Studios, as well as further enhancements to the entire PlayStation ecosystem between now and the holiday 2013 launch.

Don’t forget to check out their website. Release date is a very vague “Spring”.

Got to see Battlefield 4 today and all I can say is WOW! Thanks @ea for the sneak peek. Can’t wait for you all to see it. ^CEO #BF4

— GameStop, Inc. (@GameStop) February 19, 2013

“Can’t wait for you all to see it,” EA’s official account later said as it reposted the tweet. Allo of this sounds very much like a planned PR campaign from EA & GameStop.

We are now on the day where Sony’s PlayStation Meeting in New York City takes place, which may be telling of EA’s plans to officially unveil the game to a wide audience. Origin service is currently offering discounts on a number of Battlefield games and expansions.

EA confirmed the existence of Battlefield 4 last year, revealing plans to release a beta of the game sometime late this year.

Meanwhile, End Game, the fifth & final DLC pack for Battlefield 3 will be released in March.

“Over the last four years we have built a truly state of the art engine,” senior graphics architect Hao Chen told OXM during a presentation to the magazine. “It’s by design multiplatform; it’s highly multithreaded, scales very well to the current generation and the future generation of hardware. We have a ton of new features, from our multi resolution terrain systems, to our forests and trees, to rivers and likes, to real time lighting, visibility, lots of cool technology and I could go on and on about them. Maybe one day I can give you an in depth review of all this cool technology.”

Of course another side of Destiny is that it is a pure console shooter. It won’t be coming to PC, not initially at least. Such a move is prompting reactions like this and this.

Either way, the engine technology looks & sounds cool. However, Unreal Engine looks & sounds cool but some terrible crap has been made with it!

The odd thing is having 40 different apps sounds horrifying. Why can’t a TV department have a unified app to handle everything? Sounds like typical TV exec. bickering & lack of understanding of how technology works & how people use technology.

But what will it mean 5 years from now?

Ideally, the acquisition of Gaikai will push forward a new era of streaming games. Already, rumours suggest that this will come into fruition early with PS2 & PS3 game streaming. While I’m dubious it will come at launch, it could roll out slowly. Sony proved with PSN and PS+ that they can do great work with online content, and Gaikai have a proven track record. This could mark a match made in heaven that defines the future of consoles. Imagine if a PS4 Slim model in 3 years time was just a router with no powerful hardware that simply streamed all the content.

The next big wave could be cloud-based. Not game streaming per se, but more the ability to login to any console and have your data there. Save files, games, preferences, etc. Just like Apple’s iCloud. It could really revolutionise the way we play with each other, especially if, on one console, two accounts could login to play two-player games. This would be especially useful for users who are left-handed and reverse the control mechanisms on the analog sticks (or similar).

Either way, we’ll find out more tomorrow!