PlayStation 4 unveiled but not revealed, games debuted, Blizzard partnership

As part of its live broadcast from New York, Sony has just unveiled – but not revealed – the PlayStation 4; which we now know is also its official name and not PlayStation Orbis, the oft used codename for the development.

The event began with a big showcase of past Sony achievements, including older versions of the PlayStation and some of the platforms most famous games and characters. The speaker then moved onto brief looks into Vita development as well as smartphone integration. The PS4 console was unfortunately not pictured throughout the broadcast, but we did get some more official details.

Internally we've heard so far that it will have an X86 CPU and “PC spec,” GPU on the same APU, combined with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and a new custom chip that works purely with the uploading and downloading of content. Because of this, gamers will be able to begin playing games before they've even finished downloading.

New features include a touch screen on the controller, a share button that lets you share your gameplay, live with friends and fans. They can post comments on your screen while you play, or even take over your control of the game if you get stuck.

Gamers will be able to stream locally to, to their PS Vita to allow for gaming around the home.

The OS' interface looks very Netflix like, with video being used en masse.

One system that seems a bit strange though was the mention of personalisation, where your interests and games that you like are used to map your profile. This idea of what you're into could lead to the PlayStation automatically downloading content that you might like and pre-installing it for you to try.

Newly debuted games include: Killzone Shadowfall (video here): which looked pretty generic shoot-like, despite reasonably pretty visuals, Drive Club: which has nice looking cars, a locked first person view and lets you team up with other gamers to make a race team that can challenge other groups around the world, and Second Son, which looks like a pretty version of Prototype. The Witness – from the developer of Braid – was shown to be a puzzle game on an isolated island that has a quite stunning environment to explore. A new sculpting title from Media Molecule was next, that should allow gamers to input their own digital creations into games and build them using the Move controller. And of course,Watchdogs made an appearance. We saw a demo of that game last year at E3, but the new in-game footage looked very impressive. As pretty as before, but with more of a look at the world around the player.

Capcom's game demo for an in-development title (possibly touched up with CGI) was very impressive graphically:

We also saw an impressive range of technical capabilities for future PS4 games, including this demo of an old man, rendered in real time:

We also heard of how Blizzard and Sony would be working together, bringing Diablo III to the PS4, as well as the PlayStation 3. Control schemes have been optimised to make it work well with the controller instead of on a mouse keyboard setup. Activision will also be bringing Bungie's Destiny to the PS4. New gameplay footage wasn't anything astounding or much beyond what we've already seen.

KitGuru Says: It looks interesting. Nothing particularly surprising, but it's nice to see the PS4 adding much more support for sharing your gaming experience through streaming, locally and worldwide. I'm not sure that I'm that keen on the content installing automatically though.

I loved how Watchdogs looked, but none of the other games – bar Destiny, maybe – really impressed me that much.

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