Looks like Sony is preparing a "Major Playstation Announcement" for February 20th.
This one has some different specs, including a single 500gb sku: http://t.co/25A1YLVNAccording to the specs, the kit has 8 GB of RAM and 2.2 GB of video memory. The CPU is listed as 4x dual-core AMD64 "Bulldozer" – indicating that there will be eight cores total – and the GPU is listed as an AMD R10xx. Also included is a 160 GB HDD, a Blu-ray drive, four USB 3.0 ports, two Ethernet ports, HDMI and optical output, and 2.0, 5.1 and 7.1 audio channels.
The Gaikai acquisition will likely be two-fold, allowing access to previous generation console games (PS3, PS2, PSOne) as well as an option to purchase PS4 games either as virtual copies (accessed and stored in the cloud) or as a download stored locally on the hard drive.Originally Posted by Morgan Jolley
I like the idea of announcing hardware less than 12 months before it comes out. Nintendo NEEDED to announce the Wii U when it did but it's annoying to wait 18 months for stuff.
I'm curious to see how the purchase of Gaikai factors into their plans.
Pretty much all of these will guarantee a non-purchase from me.Originally Posted by Toddwrtr
It will be interesting to see which rumors have been true or not:
[*] UltraHD support
[*] No optical drive (hence no Blu-ray support and no local backwards compatibility)
[*] Backwards compatibility via cloud services only
[*] No more physical media (this may anger some retailers, especially those that thrive on used games)
[/list] I've been hearing the same rumors about the next-gen XBOX as well.
I don't believe that amount even a little. Movie on disc, game on disc is the same and I doubt it even costs $4 per unit for manufacture and ship to retail. Now if that cost includes the royalties paid to Sony to be allowed to make a game for the PS and the margins that retailers require to put it on the shelf, then fine but those costs don't disappear just because it was downloaded. This reminds me of book publishers. In the past "Why are your books so expensive, especially hard cover?" "It costs a lot of money to print a book." After the advent of e-books "Why are your e-books just as expensive as the hard cover?" "Well... you see the actual cost of printing a hard cover book is only about $4 so there really isn't any savings in e-books."Morgan Jolley said:I don't think they'll abandon physical media. Didn't Satoru Iwata, Pres. of Nintendo, just say that internet bandwidth will never replace the desire to own physical media? If Sony does drop physical discs, then they better be willing to cut prices for new games from $60 to, at most, $40. About 1/4 to 1/3 of a game's price is solely the cost to make the disc and case then put it in a store, so if that cost is removed then the final price better reflect it.
I am quite willing to bet that the $20 is broken down like: $2.50 Manufacture game, case, booklet, shipping to retailer $17.50 Retailer So when they go to download only they will argue that they only saved $2.50 versus physical copy and the $20 has to go to the download service provider to pay for the server, bandwidth and profit. Don't think it is that cheap? Blu-ray cases 25 for $14 so about $0.60 each retail Blu-ray recordable disc ~$1.50 Printing my own cover artMorgan Jolley said:Chuck - About $20 of a game's cost is due to the manufacturing process, shipping the disc/case/booklet, and money going to the retailer for putting it on the shelf. Only about $35 or so is profit to the publisher/developer and console-owner royalties. When a brand new PS3/360 game is available to download for $60 then that just means they're making more money off of you than if you had bought a physical copy. Further, I think the price should go down because you can't trade in or return a physical copy, so the money they make from a digital sale is purely money for them so only you can play that 1 copy of the game. That's part of the reason PS Vita games for download are usually about 10% cheaper than physical copies.