Playstation 4, release date, specs and features

At GDC 2013 at the end of March, a room full of would-be PS4 developers and press got some new details about the hardware, controller, online and social functions of the forthcoming PlayStation 4.

Senior Staff Developer Support Engineer Chris Norden unveiled the news under an overarching theme of a "frictionless and seamless" gaming experience.

We've known that the PS4 will track both the controller in a gamer's hand, as well as their face, since the console's launch in Feb. But during his GDC talk Norden revealed some interesting ways that this technology will be implemented in games.

Here's what i know about it...

PS 4 release date

The Ps 4 release day is "holiday 2013. that's the only official date that Sony gave in February so we won't know for sure when it's out.

However, latest rumours regarding the PS4 release date are that the console will in fact launch globally in 2013, not just in the USA or Japan. This comes from GameStop's Michael Hogan who said the only question is whether the Xbox 720 will also launch this year.

Officially, Sony has said it wants the PS4 release date in Europe to be as soon as possible but makes no promises on whether the UK and other European countries will get a release date in time for Christmas this year or whether it'll be an uncomfortable wait until sometime in 2014.

Stock issues might be the reason for this, and that's exactly what happened back in 2006/2007 when the PS3 launched. It went on sale in the US and Japan in time for Christmas and Europe and the rest of the world had to wait for March the next year.

PS 4 Specs

AMD, as we guessed all along, is coursing through this new system's veins.

Post-event, Sony revealed the system runs on a single-chip custom processor and utilizes eight x86-64 AMD Jaguar CPU cores, with a next-gen AMD Radeon based graphics engine powering the way.

So it's very much a PC-based system then, which is great news for developers who will find it much easier to code games for the next gen consoles and for PCs. However, that CPU is hardly next-gen - it may have been modified for this system but the AMD Jaguar platform is by no means the fastest of its kind - indeed it's slower than Intel's fastest by orders of magnitude.

However, with fewer redundancies than a PC has, the PS4 will certainly be able to make use of every single Watt of power it draws.

Memory

The PS4 will ship packing 8GB of GDDR5 memory. That's some super-fast stuff right there and should enable lightning fast performance.

Indeed, Sony has revealed that you will be able to power down the PS4 mid-game and then switch it on again in seconds and pick up right where you left off. That's the sort of loading power that this memory enables.

other specs

We're also looking at Blu-ray disk support plus good ol' DVD, plus HDMI output support as well as Analog-AV out and an optical digital output.

Pre-order

I don't yet know what the PS4 price is going to be in any territory, but in the UK at least, retailers are clambering all over each other to take £20 deposits in return for guaranteed PS4 consoles on release date.

you can pre-order it here at Game and ShopTo.

That's all i've got so far but remember to follow Your Tech Feed and i'll keep you up to date!