Sony Announces the PS4 587
As many expected, Sony has officially announced the PS4 at the Sony PlayStation Meeting today. The new PlayStation will have an X86 processor, "state of the art" GPU, 8 GB of high-speed unified memory, and a hard drive for local storage. The PS4 will allow gamers to share their gameplay stream and even remotely take control of friend's games. Along with the PS4, Sony has unveiled a new DualShock 4 controller which features a built-in touchpad at the center of the controller, and a built-in microphone jack.
Obvious question (Score:1, Interesting)
How does it compare as a general-purpose desktop PC?
Re:Obvious question (Score:5, Interesting)
How long until the PS4 is irrelevant? (Score:5, Interesting)
The one thing that has kept consoles alive today was the fact that they weren't x86. You want to play Halo 4? Buy a '360, because the binaries are not only encoded but compiled for a completely different architecture (PowerPC). You want to play Killzone 2 or 3 or MGS4? Buy a PS3, because it's the same thing.
Now that they're pushing "supercharged PC architectures" (what the hell does that even mean?)- how long until we see a hypervisor or bootloader that fires up the next-gen console OS on a bog standard PC that otherwise has similar specifications to the equivalent console?
Sony must have some insane dedicated hardware security in that system, because if they don't and it's just a tiny little 8-pin TPM chip- someone is going to blow that thing wide open, and then there won't be any point to buying a PS4 at all. Just partition your existing PC or buy a spare $59 hard drive, stick the PS4 GameOS on that, and play all the PS3 "exclusives" without even owning a PS4.
I'm sure they were worried about piracy before, but man- I can't see how they're *not* shitting bricks over that right now with the switch to x86, unless they've got some killer hardware TPM coprocessor that is handling encryption and decryption on a SOC, completely self-contained and relatively unbreakable (until someone decaps the thing and reads out the bits under a microscope).
Re:"Uses an X86 Processor" (Score:5, Interesting)
The scuttlebutt I heard is it's an AMD Jaguar architecture APU with 8 cores, enhanced GCN architecture GPU, with 8GB of unified GDDR5.
Which would make for a console with mid-level to high-end gaming rig frame rates at resolutions PC gamers expect which we haven't had up till now.
Any optical drive at all? (Score:3, Interesting)
Profit (Score:4, Interesting)
Set up an easily hackable system
Cry to the gov "they're hacking us dry"
Ger new draconian copyright/drm laws passed
????
Profit
Move than Apple and Microsoft Absolutely (Score:5, Interesting)
Why exactly would I give money to Sony?
* Rootkit fiasco
* Stripping Linux from the PS3
* Hotz Lawsuit
These and many many more.
Except there are not many more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal [wikipedia.org] have a look its 7 years old, and recalling all the affected CDs. I'd rather give my money to Sony over Microsoft every time. In fact people seem to forget that Sony did this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc [wikipedia.org]. As for the whole Linux thing, they should have been rewarded for doing so, and got the tax breaks associated with it. They didn't it got removed. The fact that we a licensing our devices rather than buying them is interesting considering how Microsoft & Apple are doing with *general purpose* devices.
The reality is Sony is by mega-corporations standards pretty good. Personally though I bought an OUYA as I believe in supporting companies, who release hardware that you *own*
Re:"Uses an X86 Processor" (Score:5, Interesting)
And the same machine code as a PC. I'll just wait till someone writes an emulator.
Re:Sony on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
"The minority with a burning hatred for Sony may be vocal, but they don't represent us all."
LOL. Hatred is reserved for things that still matter. Like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook maybe even Google. Sony is quite simply irrelevant.
Re:Trust Sony? HA! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not the point. The point is I paid for it and they removed it. It is not unlike a car owner taking his car in for an oil change and the manufacturer removing the radio... It's not the radio... it's the principle of Sony being jerks.
You can keep your PS4 and XBox 720. I am not interested. Save your fanboy slobbering for the Sony forums.
Re:"Uses an X86 Processor" (Score:5, Interesting)
So what exactly is gonna differentiate this from a mid-level to high-end gaming rig?
Using unified GDDR5 memory is going to be really interesting. They quote 176GB/s -- the DDR3 in your high-end gaming rig is pushing maybe 50GB/s. It's not going to excel at purely GPU-bound stuff compared to a PC, but for things which require the GPU and CPU to work together (like, say, games), it should be incredibly fast.
There's also the thing about OS overhead -- Windows/Linux do a lot to ensure the kernel won't be brought down by a driver/GPU failure. John Carmack and others have lamented about how terribly inefficient it is, and that it allows console games to look remarkably close to much higher-speced PCs.
Re:Sony on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
Echo chamber for people like me? Nope. It's an echo chamber for people piling on to say "This thing that a subsidiary caused happened 10 years ago! NEVER FORGIVE!!!"
PS4 = a whole new PC design (Score:5, Interesting)
Gaming PCs have a stonking great discrete GPU that plugs into the motherboard, and requires its own connection(s) to the PSU. Now what if this graphics card, with fantastically massive RAM bandwidths that Intel can only dream about, suddenly had EIGHT x86 CPU cores inserted into the GPU chip? What if this graphic card was given a 'Southbridge' chip for all the usual inputs and outputs found on the motherboard? Obviously, the graphics card would become the entire PC, with no need for the motherboard at all.
This is what AMD has created. NOT a CPU with inbuilt graphics that need to share a horrendously slow CPU bus (2x64 bits), but a GPU with inbuilt CPU cores, sharing an insanely fast GPU RAM bus, and using a common memory addressing model (HSA).
AMDs designs are light-years beyond those from Intel. Intel's great plan is to build a CPU with a massive companion RAM chip die for the GPU, just like the PlayStation 2 (yes TWO- you know that long obsolete console from many years ago). This Intel CPU is so mega-expensive, only ultra pricey laptops can afford to use it, but none will because ultra pricey laptops need graphics from ATI or Nvidia in order to sell. In other words, Intel's new Haswell GPU initiative is a bust before the first chip even hits the market.
Now the market awaits AMD to become really sane, and sell complete single board PC solutions that follow the design philosophy of the PS4- in other words a single board designed around the GPU, with 8GB of GPU memory soldered on, and the CPU cores contained within the GPU, leeching of the unified HSA GPU bus. Obviously these single-board PC systems can use far more powerful GPU designs than the PS4 because they will need far more power and cooling.
Now that the CPU no longer has to render graphics or decode video, the CPU is left with less and less to do on the PCs used by 99.9% of people, driving Intel's advantage into the ground. Metrics like GPU performance and memory bandwidth are increasingly important, even outside of games. The collapse of the price of DRAM means that memory should have been provided soldered to the motherboard years back, allowing much better quality of data signal = bigger possible bandwidth. Simple computer science 'cache' theory shows that very few people will benefit from more than 8GB, and this 8GB of DRAM should be acting as a level-4 cache to the SSD drive anyway.
Expect the new consoles to cause a massive re-think of the design of the desktop PC, to Intel's extreme disadvantage. Sony and MS are not mugs, and went to AMD for an entire PC-based solution for a very good reason. And both are building products designed to have a 7+ year lifetime.
Re:Will it run Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that it is x86, it may even run Windows this time :-). Think about it... budget gaming PCs... from a modded console.
Good for PC gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
PC ports: Should be less expensive to develop and optimize now. :-). The irony would be sweet.
PC mods?: If only these can be turned into full desktops. Sony... largest, accidental maker of gaming PCs
Or perhaps PS4 OS on commodity PC hardware, ala Hackintosh. Better forced GPU features for your PS4 games.
Emulation should also be more efficient when PS4 emulators emerge years later.
Re:How long until the PS4 is irrelevant? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sony going x86 makes a very strong argument for Valve building their Steam Box. I'm surprised nobody else has pointed this out here yet. Assuming Unreal and iDTech5/6 have linux support (Unity already does) most developers will only need a recompile if their code is relatively clean. I'm curious which direction Microsoft will choose for their CPU. Right now Valve's Steam Box offering is sounded pretty level headed.
Re:"Uses an X86 Processor" (Score:5, Interesting)
The resolution for TVs will still be 1080p so its not like theres going to be much need for more GPU horsepower and anything more than 30fps is wasted on a TV anyway. Games haven't significantly increased CPU requirements in the past few years and I cant see it changing any time soon.
Games companies don't need anything more than this to churn out CoD14 & Sims7. They're content to throw out one disappointment after another because they know that ultimately the public will buy it.
This is going to be the current level of "console port" for the foreseeable future. To be honest i'm pleasantly surprised. If anything it increases the chances that more console games will make their way to the PC given the similar architecture. I'm just glad they didn't go the other way and use ARM to make ports to mobile platforms easier (or consoles getting the karmic "mobile ports")
I'd also be glad if graphics stagnated in games for the next 6 years. It might force one or two games companies to improve other parts of the games instead like gameplay.
Re:It's not all about power....differentiators are (Score:5, Interesting)
Price. It will probably cost $500. A similarly equipped Windows PC would be $1,000+
No, no it would not. Jaguar isn't actually out yet, but it's replacing Bobcat so let's take a look at the cost of that. I can get a top of the line Bobcat CPU with 4GB of RAM *in a laptop* for $350 - that's $350 for the complete laptop. Now, granted, it doesn't have the same video card. But if we look at the 1.8 TFLOP number Sony provided, we see that lines up with about the Radeon 7770 - that costs $100. Remove the laptop stuff you don't need (battery, screen, etc...) and add the video card and as a desktop unit you'd probably be looking at about $300-400. In fact you can buy a desktop with 3ghz A-10 APU and 8GB of RAM which will *destroy* the PS4 on the CPU front for $550.
In other words, the random $1,000+ you pulled out your ass is completely made up and has no basis whatsoever in reality. And if the PS4 is priced at $500, that would be a ripoff.
Re:It's not all about power....differentiators are (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do people, especially here, keep saying that you save money with a console? .... A gaming desktop is cheaper than a non-gaming desktop PLUS a console.
The traditional counterpoint to this is that because the console has known fixed hardware, it is easier for developers to code closer to the hardware because they don't need to worry about being compatible with thousands of variations in hardware, and thus the console gains a performance benefit over similarly specced general purpose PCs.
Whether that's true any longer is another question entirely. I don't know anyone who's really hitting the hardware any more in the way we used to.
Re:Is it an Illegal-to-export Supercomputer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony is a Japanese company and PS4 will be manufactured in China. (which is, by the way, country ruled by communist party)
So the only way US could prevent exporting anything, would be by preventing AMD from selling their APUs (manufactured in Taiwan) to Sony.