MCV : Sony Confirms PlayStation 4

[Lindbergh]

“Work on “a future platform… is already under way” but Sony “cannot discuss” when it will be introduced

With Wii 2 due to be unveiled at E3 and rumours of new Microsoft hardware abound, it was only a matter of time before Sony dropped hints about its plans for the next generation.

Sony’s executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato has confirmed that the company is working on a “future platform” – the almost inevitable PlayStation 4.

He referred to Sony’s next console during a conference call to investors when asked to explain an increase in research and development costs, according to Eurogamer.

Kato said: “For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life but this is platform business, so for the future platform – when we’ll be introducing that product, I cannot discuss that – but our development is already under way, so the costs are incurred there.”

The news contrasts claims made by Sony Computer Entertainment chief Kaz Hirai earlier this year, who said that the firm was “not deliberating” a PS4.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/44514/Sony-co ... ry+news%29

[MrSega]

I'm going to go ahead and post my comment from the other topic on here to reinterate what I've found out about PS3's successor. Oh and Lindbergh, its not called PS4.

Kaz has hinted that Sony has begun development of a PS3 successor. The system is VERY VERY early in development and may launch way later than Nintendo CAFE, Xbox Bulldozer and SEGA's speculated SEGADRIVE variant NEPTUNIA.

SCEI has been toying with the idea of using an Intel HPC. The rumors that they'll once again use a Toshiba based CELL is incorrect. They are heavily interested in Larrabee, more than interested. If the "PS Larrabee" is launched in 2014 it will sell for $400.

Sony seems to have met it PS3 global sales forecast of near 15 million.

Now, THE BAD NEWS:

The successor of the PS3 may likely not be released, and if it is, it could be to little to late for Sony. launched way too late, still steep priced and difficult to program.

The Larrabee would be a pain in the ass to program. Even more confusing than Atari Jaguar, and even more difficult to program than SEGA Saturn and Nintendo 64. Why?Simply because Larrabee contains too many transistors and has a very complex archtecture, up to 50 L2 cores. It also has a built in GPU which makes it even more confusing.

It will likely NOT be called PS4. Sony has yet to file a "Playstation 4" trademark. From what I've heard, the PSN debacle has hurt the Playstation brand pretty badly.

Don't expect to hear ANYTHING about the next Playstation until at least the middle of next year. Like I said, its very very early in development and if Sony annouces another year of annual losses, it may be cancelled.

Sony's forecast earnings for the year looks unimmpressive. They project a net earning of only 80 billion yen( about $890 million) thats on par with SEGASammy's $500 million profit. And people say SEGA can't afford anything.

What worse, finicial anylists and Forecasters are calling Sony's forecast qoute "Too optimistic" and expect Sony to make less that amount.


Sony's full fiscal report is in and guess what? SEGASammy actually EARNED more in profit than Sony's SCEI division!LOL!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6315481/so ... Btitle%3B1

SEGASammy's 2010 operating profit: $850 million. Net: $500 million.

SCEI's 2010 operating profit: $434 million.

[Hiryosuke]

Considering the mistakes that were made with the launch of ps3 and the major issues they've had throughout its life I doubt they'd do anything that would make their console percieved as hard to program for or do anything to price it out of market. It would be much more believeable that they would continue to use the cell and simplify the archetecture (sp?). I dont see them firin out of the gate the exxact same way the ps3 did which was lacklustre. I see them continuing with cell and streamlining the dev process...cell has been out for a while now so the tech is cheaper and will be even cheaper come launch of supposed console and devs will have had more experience with it by this time. Thy could essentially launch 300-350 maybe idk but still have improvements over ps3 visuals...

[MrSega]

Considering the mistakes that were made with the launch of ps3 and the major issues they've had throughout its life I doubt they'd do anything that would make their console percieved as hard to program for or do anything to price it out of market. It would be much more believeable that they would continue to use the cell and simplify the archetecture (sp?). I dont see them firin out of the gate the exxact same way the ps3 did which was lacklustre. I see them continuing with cell and streamlining the dev process...cell has been out for a while now so the tech is cheaper and will be even cheaper come launch of supposed console and devs will have had more experience with it by this time. Thy could essentially launch 300-350 maybe idk but still have improvements over ps3 visuals...

From everything I've heard. Sony is looking at Larrabee and IBM PowerPC. They aren't interested in doing a slight upgrade or configuraton with Toshiba 4 CELL, the closest you would get to a "PS4" with a 4 CELL upgrade is PS3.5.

Also Sony isn't going to take the easy way out. They certainly won't launch a console for low priced, thats a fanboy pipe dream. Sony wants to be sure they still have the most powerful and most expensive CPU. Thier R&D department is willing to pay the price.

Besides that. There may be NO PS3 successor if Sony can't turn things around.

[stu]

I'm going to go ahead and post my comment from the other topic on here to reinterate what I've found out about PS3's successor. Oh and Lindbergh, its not called PS4.

Kaz has hinted that Sony has begun development of a PS3 successor. The system is VERY VERY early in development and may launch way later than Nintendo CAFE, Xbox Bulldozer and SEGA's speculated SEGADRIVE variant NEPTUNIA.

SCEI has been toying with the idea of using an Intel HPC. The rumors that they'll once again use a Toshiba based CELL is incorrect. They are heavily interested in Larrabee, more than interested. If the "PS Larrabee" is launched in 2014 it will sell for $400.

Sony seems to have met it PS3 global sales forecast of near 15 million.

Now, THE BAD NEWS:

The successor of the PS3 may likely not be released, and if it is, it could be to little to late for Sony. launched way too late, still steep priced and difficult to program.

The Larrabee would be a pain in the ass to program. Even more confusing than Atari Jaguar, and even more difficult to program than SEGA Saturn and Nintendo 64. Why?Simply because Larrabee contains too many transistors and has a very complex archtecture, up to 50 L2 cores. It also has a built in GPU which makes it even more confusing.

It will likely NOT be called PS4. Sony has yet to file a "Playstation 4" trademark. From what I've heard, the PSN debacle has hurt the Playstation brand pretty badly.

Don't expect to hear ANYTHING about the next Playstation until at least the middle of next year. Like I said, its very very early in development and if Sony annouces another year of annual losses, it may be cancelled.

Sony's forecast earnings for the year looks unimmpressive. They project a net earning of only 80 billion yen( about $890 million) thats on par with SEGASammy's $500 million profit. And people say SEGA can't afford anything.

What worse, finicial anylists and Forecasters are calling Sony's forecast qoute "Too optimistic" and expect Sony to make less that amount.


Sony's full fiscal report is in and guess what? SEGASammy actually EARNED more in profit than Sony's SCEI division!LOL!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6315481/so ... Btitle%3B1

SEGASammy's 2010 operating profit: $850 million. Net: $500 million.

SCEI's 2010 operating profit: $434 million.

As I've pointed out to you countless times, The Intel Larrabee project was CANCELLED nearly 18 months ago.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2 ... ancelled/1

If the project is cancelled then how is Sony going to use it in PS4?

The most likely way Sony will develop PS4 is to continue developing the Cell, probably increasing the number of Power PC cores to 4 and increasing the number of SPEs up to 32 or more. As for a GPU, I would expect them to continue to use Nvidia GPUs, either the new Kepler architecture or possibly the Maxwell chip

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/21/nvid ... 11-maxwel/

Another possible candidate is Nvidia Project Denver chip, this is going to be combination of multiple customized 64 bit ARM cores, mixed with Nvidia's Stream Processors that make up their GPUs.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/nvid ... e-desktop/

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/20 ... cture.aspx

As for price I am hoping that Sony has learnt some valuable lessons from the PS3 and will price PS4 below $400.00, this should be doable since apparently the high initial cost of PS3 was because of the inclusion of the Blu-Ray drive, which was extremely expensive back in 2006 when PS3 was released.

Thats my take on it anyway.

[Hiryosuke]

@stu agreed. As much as mr sega might argue the fact i dont see sony making the same mistakes with the playstation brand and the cell is still a good platform bcuz as much as ppl wanna say they have they still havent maxxed out the ps3. Everytime someone says they have another in house dev squeezes even more out of it so I see a continued use of the cell proccessor with more understanding of said tech as sony's goal for the next playstation. Idk how all the insodes work but they'll increase the cells and whatever else to improve graphics and framerate and i see them usin the 100 gb blu ray discs... they do make em up to 100 right?...well the higher capacity blu ray discs to be able to layer even more textures and uncompressed audio and overall more game in every experience...thats my opinion anyway...I'm wonderin what ms is gonna do...are they gonna go blu_ray as well?...

[stu]

@stu agreed. As much as mr sega might argue the fact i dont see sony making the same mistakes with the playstation brand and the cell is still a good platform bcuz as much as ppl wanna say they have they still havent maxxed out the ps3. Everytime someone says they have another in house dev squeezes even more out of it so I see a continued use of the cell proccessor with more understanding of said tech as sony's goal for the next playstation. Idk how all the insodes work but they'll increase the cells and whatever else to improve graphics and framerate and i see them usin the 100 gb blu ray discs... they do make em up to 100 right?...well the higher capacity blu ray discs to be able to layer even more textures and uncompressed audio and overall more game in every experience...thats my opinion anyway...I'm wonderin what ms is gonna do...are they gonna go blu_ray as well?...

I quite agree, the development system for CELL has matured greatly and it would be a major mistake in my opinion for Sony to throw that away. Similarly I believe that the Blu-Ray technology has now come down in price and has matured enough that its a dead cert for inclusion in to PS4. There are I believe a number of different options for the BD-ROM drive that Sony could include, the 100GB version is one of them.

As for Microsoft I believe they really have no choice but to include a BD-Rom drive in their next system, modern games are moving WAY beyond the capacities of DVD, hence the reason you are seeing a lot of Xbox360 games coming on multiple DVD's, kinda reminds me of having to swap floppy discs back on the Amiga and PC.

[MrSega]

@stu and Hirosuke. I've got some BAD news. A source from Gamespot is reporting that Sony is NOT only disinterested in the CELL processor, but that they no longer hold the patent on it. The patent belongs to Toshiba who is no longer doing business with Sony. If that's true, your hopes and suggestions reguarding "PS Larrabee" reusing CELL will go up in flames. And the sources I have will be proven correct.

Also, very disspointing news for NGP. Its being downgraded in power and internal memory, the 3G version will be very expensive at $350, the official version is said to retail at $250 or $300. But the worse news is that its American launch has been pushed all the way back to around February 2012.

This could ultimately seal its fate because: 1. The hype will die down by then. 2. It will cause second guessing from 3rd party publishers. 3. Those who were expecting NGP to launch this year will flock to 3DS instead. And 4. Sony's risky gamble to try to make consumers stick to PS3 this year may backfire drasticly.

If SEGA is hearing this news, this is probably fanstasic news for them reguarding KIDSPAD. This will give them the opprotunity to launch the project and be able to sell it as a competitor against 3DS. They now have the chance of being released in advance of NGP.

[stu]

@stu and Hirosuke. I've got some BAD news. A source from Gamespot is reporting that Sony is NOT only disinterested in the CELL processor, but that they no longer hold the patent on it. The patent belongs to Toshiba who is no longer doing business with Sony. If that's true, your hopes and suggestions reguarding "PS Larrabee" reusing CELL will go up in flames. And the sources I have will be proven correct.

I said that reusing the CELL chip was ONE possibility and gave some possible reasons why that might be the case. The CELL BE is jointly owned by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. To say that Toshiba has interest in CELL is also untrue. Sony recently repurchased the factory that churns out the CELL and RSX chips from Toshiba, thus dissolving the partnership between the companies, if anything it is Toshiba that has lost interest in the chip.

http://www.sonyinsider.com/2010/12/29/s ... m-toshiba/

The only one thing that is for sure if that Sony WILL NOT be using a Larrabee chip, either as a CPU or GPU, because as I previously stated the chip was cancelled back in December 2010.

I suspect that if they don't use the Cell then Sony might go for the Project Denver chip that Nvidia is developing, since it uses a customized 64 bit version of the ARM architecture it would be using an industry standard design, that is very well known, it could also open up the possibility of easy ports of PS4 games down to the NGP/PSP2. I imagine a multicore Denver CPU matched with either a Kepler or Maxwell class Nvidia GPU would be quite a competitive system.

[MrSega]

@stu. Didn't you hear what I said?NGP/PSP 2 has been downgraded in power it will have siginificantly low memory, there would be no way a Next gen PS would be ported to the NGP if it has poor RAM resolution.

Also, the Larrabee being postponed last year means very little in Sony's CPU choice. A Japanese SCEI press report from Febraury stated, that Sony was considering Larrabee or Knights Corner, but if they couldn't acquire an Intel HPC, they'd consider OEM R&D options on a IBM "PowerPC".

Sony's only interest in 4 CELL currently is cutting manufacturing costs of PS3 and maintaining SKUs.