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The next generation of PlayStation may finally be coming soon, and rumors are starting to go from a trickle to a flood. Here's your definitive timeline on the PlayStation 4, Orbis, or whatever Sony is putting forward to compete with the Wii U and Microsoft's next Xbox.
12 updates and 2558 comments below.
6:18p
Sony has announced the DualShock 4, a new controller with a touchpad and headphone jack. The controller will come with a dedicated share button and a light bar that identifies players or changes color during play, and it essentially looks like a sleeker version of the classic DualShock. The light bar, which rotates between three different colors, can actually be used to provide feedback during gameplay — to notify a player if their health is running low, for example.
The DualShock 4...
Feb 19 5:09p
Tomorrow evening, Sony is widely expected to unveil its fourth-generation PlayStation, which could become Sony's biggest product launch of the year. In fact, it could be Sony's biggest launch for the next half decade.
That's thanks largely to the PlayStation brand's proud lineage: the original PlayStation put arcade-quality gaming into homes around the world, the PlayStation 2 drove DVD adoption and amassed the most comprehensive video game library of all time, and the ambitious PlayStation...
Feb 18 3:19p
Mere days before the successor to the PlayStation 3 is rumored to be announced, The Wall Street Journal has published a few more tidbits on what we might see. According to anonymous sources, Sony will be expanding on the console's current social features, allowing users to share achievements through Facebook and Twitter and upload gameplay footage to YouTube. These features were already present to some extent on the PlayStation 3, but we could be seeing a better experience in the future, in...
Feb 15 7:38p
Last June, Sony purchased Gaikai, a company that can stream games — delivering them over the internet in real time from remote servers, by sending compressed video frames. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports what many have suspected for months: Sony will use the service to stream games to the next PlayStation game console, which the company is widely expected to reveal on February 20th. However, according to the publication, Sony won't necessarily use Gaikai to deliver brand-new games....
11:40a
It was only yesterday that Destructoid gave the world its first glimpse at a purported controller for Sony's next-gen PlayStation console. Since then, other publications including IGN and Kotaku have confirmed the image as legitimate while being careful to emphasize we're likely seeing a prototype design that could differ substantially with what Sony is expected to unveil next week. Yet the same controller has turned up in a second photo, this time from another angle. Thankfully the handles...
Feb 14 4:05p
Sony already announced that we'd "see the future" of the PlayStation at its event next week, and now a photo has emerged that may be our first look at a prototype controller for its new console. Destructoid has the image, which shows a DualShock-style controller with what appears to be a touchpad on top, and a blue light on its back. The addition of a touchpad lines up with previous reports about the PlayStation 4 controller, while the blue light bears a strong resemblance to that found on...
Feb 06 7:23p
The PlayStation 4 will launch this year for over 40,000 yen (about $428), according to a report in major Japanese daily the Asahi Shimbun. That's the first clear indication we've gotten on how much the new system might cost, and suggests that while Sony isn't pricing the PS4 too aggressively next to the likes of the Wii U, it may have learned its lesson from the shaky PlayStation 3 launch.
For comparison, upon release in 2006 the PS3 cost around 60,000 yen in its more expensive...
Feb 01 12:17p
Following Sony's announcement of its February 20th event — at which the company is expected to unveil the next PlayStation — more details about the next-generation console have surfaced. According to Edge, the next PlayStation, reportedly codenamed Orbis, will be more powerful than Microsoft's new Xbox and feature a redesigned controller.
Jan 31 9:46p
Sony said we'd 'see the future' of PlayStation on February 20th, and it appears to be true: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company will not only reveal the next PlayStation at the event, but actually put the new video game console on sale later this year. According to the publication's anonymous sources, both the next PlayStation and Microsoft's next game system will compete head to head going into the holiday season.
Though Sony CEO Kaz Hirai and others had originally...
6:14p
Sony has just announced a PlayStation-related event for February 20th at 6pm, and it looks like we'll get our first look at the company's next-generation home console. In a tweet, Sony says that the PlayStation Meeting 2013 will allow us to "see the future" and an attached video teaser may even have given us a glimpse of the hardware. The video is mostly abstract renderings of the classic PlayStation button symbols, but there are brief flashes where it looks like something else could be going...
Apr 04 1:59p
The only thing we actually know about Sony's PlayStation 4 is that we shouldn't expect it anytime soon, but rumors are starting to pop: one week ago, Kotaku heard that a "PlayStation Orbis" might include both an AMD processor and AMD graphics, and now IGN's trusted sources say that's absolutely correct. According to the rumor, the next PlayStation will include AMD's A8-3850 APU and Radeon HD 7670 discrete graphics — both of which are included in PCs that you can buy today.
If you're...
Mar 28 1:11p
Though Nintendo has been strangely forthcoming with details on its next-generation consoles — the Wii U is launching this holiday season, about 18 months after it was first unveiled — both Sony and Microsoft have been more characteristically quiet on future plans. That hasn't stopped a number of unconfirmed reports from trickling out about the next Xbox "Durango," and now Kotaku has what it claims to be details on the PlayStation 3 successor, Orbis, coming in time for holidays 2013.
That...
Feb 20 6:40p
Sony adds instant 'remote play' of PlayStation 4 games on PS Vita
Sony has announced a new "remote play" feature for the PS Vita, which will allow PlayStation 4 games to be played directly on the Vita. "Our long term goal is to make every PS4 title playable on the Vita," the company says. It's a strategy similar to what we've seen on the Nintendo Wii U and Nvidia's Project Shield, where home console or PC games can be streamed to a smaller second screen. Though we're not sure exactly how it works yet, Sony says it's integrated Gaikai technology that...
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