We haven’t seen too many PS4 design concepts just yet apart from a few silly ideas and a few PS3 concept ideas with a scribbled out logo saying PS4. These images represent a rather cool looking PS4 games console and are the work of Tai Chiel.

The PS4 3D model was created to show that gamers already have an interest in what the future console will look like. Looking at this concept it is partly transparent and the transparent section also houses what appears to be an OLED style screen that shows the various menus, picture, saved games etc…

Although still unclear when the PS4 will be revealed we can expect to see a very nice looking games machine that will use a lot of advanced technology. If you know of any other concepts, post them in the comments below.

Via: Walyou

Electronic Arts suggest that rather than Sony and Microsoft releasing a PS4 and XBox 720 that they will actually release in-between models such as a Playstation 3.5 and an XBox 560. The reason for this is that Sony and Microsoft didn’t get the ball rolling as well as previous generations and that 2011 is just too quick for next-gen consoles to be launched.

For that reason it is expected that Sony and Microsoft will launch these mid updates to the hardware to extract more out of them.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you like to see another PS3/XBox 360 being created as a stepping stone to the real next-gen consoles? I do think there is a lot that can be done with the current generation of consoles, but 2 – 3 years is quite a while away still and a lot of advancements in technology will happen in this time period. It will be great seeing what path the 2 console makers are going to travel.

Via: CVG

Upon reading more about the new improved slim PS3 it became apparent to us that Sony appear to have “overcooked” the PS3. When the PS3 was released it had full backwards compatibility, 4 USB Ports, Linux Capabilities, fancy touch sensitive on/off and eject buttons (clutching at straws here with that one), a 60GB HDD and a Card Reader. This has steadily all been removed. So, the PS3 price has dropped which is great news, but so has the feature list, and quite extensively. Sure the Slim PS3 HDD is 120GB, but it did temporarily drop to 40GB, which sucked. I don’t seem to remember any features being dropped from either the PS1 or PS2, even with the slim-line models they released.

Don’t think I am in any way Sony-Bashing here, just stating a point. It appears to me that Sony are admitting that the PS3 doesn’t need to do all that it does/ did. Gamers just want a good console which plays great games. Had Sony not added all the extra features, maybe they would have been sooner to market with the PS3 at a cheaper price, and then not had such a gap to catch up on with Microsoft.

There are still so many features that I love about my PS3. A standard HDMI output, ability to use nearly any bluetooth headset, included wifi, batteries built into the controllers (and not just AA ones), free online gaming, game sharing, and many more.

However, with all this in mind, are Sony currently over-cooking the PS4? Are we going to see a PS4 which retails at $1000, does everything we need, and then slowly over the years all the fancy extras are lost until it gets to a price point where the masses decide they can now afford to buy it. The hardcore gamers will always buy the latest and greatest, but a massive percentage of users will, and have, proved that more often than not the cheapest consoles get purchased more.

I am very interested to see what news we get of the Sony PS4 over the coming months/ years, and how the new console is shaping up.

Back in 2005 when I first got my PSP the big game that was going to be released along side it was Gran Turismo PSP. Only a brief 4 years later the game now has an official release date of October 1 – hopefully they mean 2009 with that date.

PSP Gran Turismo will be compatible with both the regular PSP and new PSPgo from what I can see over on the official Sony site. It will be launched on UMD and as well as a download. If you are thinking of getting a new PSPgo then first check out this post over on Electric Pig here in the UK that tells you how you can get the game for free.

The game looks huge from reading over the details. It will have over 800 cars to choose from and 35 tracks to drive (it’s not clear how many of those are the same but in reverse). As for the 800+ cars, it’s also not clear how many of those are simple variations of other available cars. Either way, who cares as the screen shots make it look like a top game.

The game can be played over an Ad-Hoc network allowing up to 4 players to race against each other. It really does look like it will be a big hit in the Gran Turismo series of games. Via: Playstation

Sony have now made an official announcement that they are launching a slim Playstation 3. The new slim PS3 will go on sale costing £249.99 in the UK, $299.99 in the US and €299.99 in Europe and will be released on September 1st.

The new PS3 will have a new streamlined form factor making it slimmer, lighter and also use about 1/3 of the power of the regular PS3. The original PS3 (80GB version) has been reduced to £249.99. By using new components and a complete re-design inside, the slim PlayStation 3 achieves a loss of 2/3rds from it’s original size and weight.

The new PS3 still has the curved look that the original model had but rather than a shiny glossy surface the design is now textured which is inline with the leaked shots of a few months back. PLAYSTATION 3 used to be the official name and has now been put in to lowercase of PlayStation 3 which will be engraved on to the surface of the casing. A new logo has also been designed for the PS3 slim.

The new PS3 has a capacity of 120GB allowing for storage of more games, videos and other various bits of content that get downloaded while using the system.

Slim PS3 Specs and Details

Product Outline: PlayStation®3 (CECH-2000)

Product name: PlayStation®3
Product code: CECH-2000 (Charcoal Black)
CPU: Cell Broadband Engine™
GPU: RSX®
Audio output: LPCM 7.1ch, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC.
Memory: 256MB XDR Main RAM, 256MB GDDR3 VRAM
Hard disk: 2.5” Serial ATA 120GB *1
Inputs / Outputs *2 Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0): 2
Networking: Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) × 1; IEEE 802.11 b/g; Bluetooth® 2.0 (EDR)
Controller: Wireless Controller （Bluetooth®）
AV output Resolution: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i　(for PAL 576p, 576i)
AV output HDMI OUT connector *3: 1
AV output AV MULTI OUT connector: 1
AV output Digital out (optical) connector: 1
BD／DVD／CD drive (read only) Maximum read rate: BD × 2 (BD-ROM); DVD × 8 (DVD-ROM); CD × 24 (CD-ROM)
Power: AC 220 – 240, 50/60Hz *4
Power consumption: Approx. 250W
External dimensions (excluding maximum projecting part): Approx. 290 × 65 × 290 mm (width × height × length)
Mass: Approx. 3.2kg
Included *5: PlayStation®3 system × 1; Wireless Controller (DUALSHOCK®3) × 1; AC power cord × 1; AV cable × 1; USB cable × 1

*1. Hard disk capacity calculated using base 10 mathematics (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes). System software versions 1.10 and later calculate capacity using binary mathematics (1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes), which will display lower capacity and free space. A portion of hard disk capacity is reserved for system administration, which varies depending upon system software version, and is not available for use.
*2. Usability of all connected devices is not guaranteed.
*3. “Deep Colour” and “x.v.Colour (xvYCC)” defined by HDMI ver.1.3a are supported.
*4. Power changes depending on countries or regions.
*5. For certain regions, Euro-AV cable will be included.
Note: This product is not compatible with PlayStation 2 games.

Product Outline: Vertical Stand (CECH-ZS1)

Product name: Vertical Stand
Product code: CECH-ZS1
Included: Vertical Stand （CECH-ZS1） × 1
External dimension: Approx. 88 mm x 18 mm x 260 mm (width × height × length)
Mass: Approx. 115g
Supports: CECH-2000 series*
* The Vertical Stand is for the new PS3 system (CECH-2000 series) and cannot be used on the current model.

Via: BBC and Playstation

Last week we wrote about rumours of a PS3 price cut as well as a PS3 Slim being launched. Of course Sony denied this, as expected, but now Kmart have uploaded a banner to their website that talks about a “new low price and a new exciting Playstation 3″. Right now the banner takes you through to the regular page with no discount, so it’s unclear what the discount will be and if the exciting new playstation 3 will be a playstion 3 slim.

The banner does show a current PC though so it does lead us on to thinking it might just be another version of the regular PS3, maybe something like a bundle or maybe a new SKU with a larger hard drive or something. But, there has been a lot of speculation the last few months as well as a few leaked pictures that do show a new PS3 slim is on the way, so lets hope for the latter.

Details might be revealed as soon as today over in Germany where a conference is currently being held. We’ll keep you updated. Via: SlashGear

News has been leaked ahead of the Sony press conference that will be held in Cologne next week. The news that has been leaked is about the games that will be available for download on the PSN (PlayStation Network). Games will be priced at €1, €2 and €5 which brings them in to line with Apple’s app store game pricing.

The highest price game on the App Store is currently $9.99 which makes the top end of Sony games cheaper then iPhone games.

It’s an interesting move if the rumour turns out to be true as it could lead to a lot more impulse buying for those who just want to play a quick game and don’t mind forking out a few dollars here and there for the privilege.

In addition, Pocket Gamer has learned that Sony has been actively sourcing iPhone developers to bring existing titles to PSN.

Obviously some rework is required due to different screen size – 480 x 272 versus 480 x 320 – not to mention transposing touch controls to joypad, D-pad and buttons – but the bulk of game logic and artwork is likely to remain the same.

We’ll keep our eye on this one and let you know if the rumours are confirmed next week.

Via: Pocket Gamer

John Carmack (co-founder of id Software) was recently speaking about the future of games with CD-Action. In the half hour long interview they got speaking about next-gen consoles and his thoughts are that Sony could be jumping the gun and bringing out the PS 4 first.

“Whether Sony wants to jump the gun to prevent the same sort of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely. As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible. We’d like to see it be quite a few more years before the next gen console comes out, but I suspect one will end up shipping something earlier rather than later.”

This wasn’t an official prediction though as his thoughts are that it will likely be Sony, but either of the 3 main competitors could jump the gun.

Another interesting section in the video discusses cloud computing and the future potential of that technology. More on cloud computing can be found later on in this article.

A while back we also wrote an article called Will the PS4 have an Optical disk drive? which gained a number of comments of people both agreeing and disagreeing. Carmack’s thoughts on this question is that at least one of the major players will be dropping the optical drive to follow the paths of the mobile “app stores” that have been doing very well this last year. We have no idea if that will be the PS4, the XBox 720 or the Wii 2 and I suspect if anybody will do it then it will be Nintendo as they like to do different things.

Other predictions are that the next-gen of consoles will require at least 2GB of internal RAM to cope with the demands of how much data will be shifting round the console to achieve the gameplay, graphics etc…

Back to cloud computing…

“Certainly the easier aspect of that is ‘net as storage’ where it’s all digital distribution and you could wind up doing an idTech 5-like thing… and blow it up to World of Warcraft size so you need a hundred petabytes of storage in your central game system. We can do that now! It’s not an absurd thing to talk about. Games are already in the tens of millions of dollars in terms of budget size and that’s probably going to continue to climb there. The idea of putting millions of dollars into higher-sized storage… it’s not unreasonable to at least consider.”

Finally there was some talk over cross-generational gaming which could fall in line with what we spoke about on forward compatibility a few months back.

What the video as it’s full of great information about where next-gen consoles could be heading.

Details via GamesIndustry and Guardian

The Slim Sony PS3 rumour has been moving around for a few months now. The latest we hear comes from an anonymous French retailer who claims there is a low-profile slim PS3 and that the said console will be launched in September around Europe for 300 Euros. This will drop the price by 100 Euros that you pay now for a regular PS3.

The new slim PS3 is being touted as a “limited edition” version of the original PS3. If that’s true then is appears that both the slim/limited edition model will retail side by side with the fatter older console.

The French anonymous guy who spilled the beans on all this also has said that Sony are offering no price protection for retailers, meaning that if they sell stock at a lower price then Sony will not refund those discounts. Via: SlashGear

A few days ago NVIDIA launced a new interactive ray tracing engine called OptiX. This also happens to be a worlds first which caught my attention.

The NVIDIA OptiX engine can be programmed by engineers to bring a new level of realism to applications by using the C programming language. By using the engine more photo realistic images and rendering can be achieved. If Sony want to improve the level of graphics for the PS4 then OptiX could be the way forwards.

In total, four new engines were announced by NVIDIA which includes the already mentioned OptiX, SceniX for managing 3D data and scenes, CompleX for using multiple GPU’s and PhysX that is capable of hyper-realistic physical and environmental effects and runs at 64 bits.

NVIDIA have made a great step forwards and this kind of technology could sit well in the PS4 when launched.

Via: expreview and gizmowatch

We’ve spoken in the past about different screens that the PS4 will use such as will the PS4 use 3D or will the PS4 be ready for Super High Vision. One we haven’t touched on yet is the possibility of virtual reality which would allow the games player to completely be immersed in to the PS4 with both sound and audio. By tracking the users head movements, a head mounted display could allow the user to freely look around any 3D world which would cover many types of games from car racing to first person shooting.

With technology advancing and the Playstation 4 being more powerful than the Playstation 3 it could bring VR technology closer to realism allowing those who play the games to almost be immersed fully in the virtual world.

It’s certainly a possibility although if Sony were to take this route then you’d hope that the games cater for both VR glasses and normal viewing as there may be many who would not or could not use a VR headset comfortably. What are your thoughts?

Image Credit

Back in June last year we mentioned about Sony looking to hire a new games developer. That’s not really anything too exciting unless you read quite close exactly why they were hiring a developer. In the job listing it was mentioned that Sony are looking for a software developer who could develop backward compatibility for the Sony Playstation 3 and an “unspecified next-gen console”. Since then it has always made me wonder if the next-gen console was to be the PS4 and if they were looking more in to playstation 4 development rather than backwards compatibility.

It’s been way over a year since that job listing was first mentioned and yet all we still have is rumours and speculation. PS4forums earlier this year listed some information of a PS4 roadmap and had some quite interesting information on processors to be used etc… but again, it’s not official information.

With Sony giving no official word yet (which is understandable as they wouldn’t want to kill off sales of the PS3 by announcing a PS4) all we can do is speculate right now and hope that playstation 4 development for both hardware and software is under way.