Sony announced the new PS4 this week, and here at Ars we calculated the size of its DualShock 4 touchpad, reported on its horsepower, found out whether it will block used games, and we even learned that Jimmy Fallon is pretty special. So, as the PS4 approaches, it’s fair to say the new console is under our editors’ microscopes, but also those of our readers.
What kind of impact is the Playstation 4 going to have on console, social, mobile, and PC gaming? The console won’t be arriving until the holidays, but in the meantime, the confirmed details give us lots to speculate about. Ars OpenForum readers are discussing these details in the thread “The Next Generation: Playstation 4 and XBox Next.”
About that processing power
The Playstation 4 is going to feature eight cores, a “highly enhanced CPU,” GDDR5, among other new upgrades (full list in our report).
Matrices is not particularly impressed: “What is it that can actually be expected from this memory speed and size specification? Because based on what we know of the rest of the hardware—namely, that the GPU is pretty anemic on its own terms—there will be plenty of hardware bottlenecks long before those memory specs are even relevant when it comes to rendering power.”
Members in the thread have speculated what all this hardware will mean for the cost of the console. Wwen says, “it needs to be $400 or lower. The gaming industry doesn’t exist outside the rest of the economy, which is mostly down around the world…I expect this generation’s life span to be the norm for the next as well, but in my opinion, the library of games is going to make more of a difference than extra radical shaders or polycounts or bifuricated motion blur with multithreaded steam valves or whatever those game makers are into today.”
When it comes to the cost speculation, Throatwobbler Mangrove also joins in and draws some comparisons to Nintendo’s newly released Wii U, a next-gen console that many OpenForum members feel is underpowered: “Again though, rumours (cough) are that Nintendo is not making a profit on the WiiU. Sure the controller is an expense, but it’s only 1 resistive-touch screen with the processing done at the WiiU. The anemic hardware specs, and Nintendo is still selling it at a loss at ~$300? So how in the heck the PS4 cost will be reasonable without Sony taking a bath (when they’re already pretty wet) is just beyond me.”
How will social play out?
The new social elements of the PS4 have been covered in some of our previous reports, but OpenForum member Draxlith has some thoughts about them: “How come no one mentioned the “watch friends’ playing” bit yet? I think that’s one of the coolest bits. For those that didn’t catch it, you can invite friends to watch you playing, and can even pass control to them all via PSN. That’s nuts, and yes, gimmicky, but friggin cool. They also said it has built in support for uStream to stream gameplay, if you’re into that.”
HappyBunny agrees: “I think the video sharing and live streaming stuff is going to be a big deal. Streaming gameplay or sharing videos of games is becoming pretty popular, and having that integrated as a core system feature is going to be really nice.”
Wwen adds that part of the appeal of the social features is not just the ability to watch others’ gameplay, but also to record. “I thought it was interesting, because I watch a lot of Lets Play while playing Skyrim or something. IIRC, it currently takes some expensive kit to record gameplay from consoles for an LP. Unless you’re set on becoming an LP Superstar (Mortus?), not many do that. Cam LPs are awful. That’s a niche category of people though.”
Full Story: Let’s talk PS4: will it take console gaming to the next level? | Ars Technica.