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We’re through the first hour of presentations. How much longer?
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They’re talking up the detail of the cars. The “suede and carpet have a fiber direction map, causing them to reflect light differently when they’ve been brushed or touched.”
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“Next generation no longer just means more powerful hardware.” That’s clear. Driveclub is about teaming up with friends and battling other clubs “all around the world.” It’s about challenges, not just races.
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A racing game from “Evolution Studios.” It’s called Driveclub.
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I… this… really? We’re watching a long demo of a first-person shooter that looks like a PS3 game and seems like it plays like every other videogame of the last 5 years?
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This looks like every videogame ever.
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Co-founder of Guerrilla Games (Killzone devs) here to show us an early look at a new game… oh, he’s talking about the Helghast. So, Killzone.
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Michael Denny, from Sony WW Studios, takes the stage. One would hope this means games.
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Lots of developers talking about how they, too, are on board with the things Sony is doing with PS4. Would really like to hear some game announcements soon! I think we all get the philosophical framework by now…
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First bad news. No backward compatibility on PS4. David Perry says Sony’s “goal” is to enable you to play old games via Gaikai, but that this stuff will be rolled out in phases and will only happen some day in the future, maybe.
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Remote Play has been built into the architecture of PS4, Perry says. PS Vita is the “ultimate companion device” for PS4 — you can play your PS4 games on Vita’s screen.
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Spectating has become very popular, Perry says. Yes. Sony asked itself how it could improve the experience. You can push the Share button to broadcast your game in real time to your friends. Your friends can “look over your shoulder virtually.”
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“With Gaikai in PlayStation Store, you’ll be able to instantly experience anything you want.” - David Perry. Seems like they’re using streaming for demos rather than full games? At least for now?
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David Perry is here to talk about Gaikai, the Sony-owned streaming service, on PS4. So basically the first two people telling us about PS4 are the guys who made awesome Sega Genesis games.
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Social features: Most importantly, you can stream your own gameplay automagically with PS4. That looks really great.
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Cerny says the hardware supports “suspending and resuming” of play sessions: game will save your progress at the exact spot you left off when you power it off. That’s cool. Can download updates in the background with the main power off. You can start playing a digital game while it’s still downloading.
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Showing a trailer of a new game from Japan Studio, featuring a little robot called Knack. Looks like fun, looks like a PS3 game.
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Shows a couple of tech demos from Unreal Engine and Havok. Cerny says he’s also working on a game, and shows a trailer.
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The Dual Shock 4 will work in tandem with a “stereo camera” that scans the room in 3-D. So the Kinect. Not sure if it’s bundled with the hardware or not.
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AHAHAHAHAHAHA. SONY KINECT.
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The controller is called the Dual Shock 4. Wow. Everything is named the same with one more number.
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The architecture is “like a PC in many ways.” X86 CPU, allowing Sony to “tap into three decades of programming expertise.” An “enhanced PC GPU.” 8 GB of high speed unified RAM. This was the #1 developer request, Cerny says. Hard drive in every box, no size given.
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Sony is spending a LOT of time laying the rhetorical groundwork here, lots of talking about the philosophy behind PlayStation 4. Note: Very interesting that the lead architect of the hardware is not Japanese, no?
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House intro’s Mark Cerny, a game industry veteran who is the Lead System Architect of the PlayStation 4.
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“Over the next couple of hours…” Uh, how long is this going to be, Andrew?
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Oh man, it’s called PlayStation 4.
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House just talking about things Sony has done so far on every facet of PlayStation, from Plus to Mobile etc.
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Andrew House of Sony is the first to take the stage. “Today marks a moment of truth and a bold step forward for Sony as a company.”
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It’s beginning with an inspiration video. “PlayStation Wants to Win the War Against Reality.” Sony and reality have definitely been at odds for a while now.
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Holy crap, did a Sony event just start on time?! Maybe they are really changing things.
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I want to believe that The Last Guardian’s MIA status is related to the fact that it shifted platforms to PS4.
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Watch this space for Wired’s live blog of Sony’s big announcement, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern. If it’s not PlayStation 4, New York City had better get the riot cops ready.
At 6 p.m. Eastern time in New York City, Sony will unveil the future of the PlayStation brand, widely expected to be its latest home console.
“Can the PS3 Save Sony?” asked a Wired story in 2006, as Sony launched its last home console. As it turned out, the answer was “not really” — PlayStation 3 came in third in the hardware race, bled money for years and led to the ignominious departure of “father of the PlayStation” Ken Kutaragi. Now Sony as a whole is in crisis mode, having lost money for the past three years. CEO Howard Stringer stepped down a year ago to be replaced by Kazuo Hirai, the executive who led Sony and PlayStation during its decade of industry dominance. Hirai, as one might imagine, believes that gaming is one of the key products that Sony can leverage to turn the ship around.
Follow our live blog feed of the announcements, which will be livestreamed in the embedded video above when the show starts. Later, Wired contributor Stu Horvath will weigh in with any hands-on gameplay impressions and interviews with Sony executives that are offered at the event.
Liveblog: Sony's Big PlayStation Reveal
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Liveblog: Sony's Big PlayStation Reveal
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Liveblog: Sony's Big PlayStation Reveal
