PlayStation 4 likely to land on 20 February (video)

1 Feb 2013

A video posted to PlayStation’s YouTube channel has sparked a wave of excitement, hinting at the arrival of the PlayStation 4 on 20 February.

The teaser video gives little away other than to say something big is about to be announced regarding the PlayStation’s future.

Reports of Sony’s work on a new games console code named Orbis have been circulating for some time now, and a developer kit released late last year hinted at specs for the possible PS4. Perhaps the most significant change is Sony’s decision to move away from the Cell architecture developed with Toshiba and IBM in favour of an AMD processor.

What’s expected is a 3.2GHz AMD x86 quad-core processor and a console powerful enough to run 1080p games at 60fps in 3D with no trouble at all. The PS4 is also rumoured to have a reworked UI and feature a Blu-ray drive, 320GB storage as standard and 2GB RAM. It’s also said to be an ‘always-on’ system, connected to the internet via either Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

 

PlayStation’s announcement coming so early in the year will come as a surprise to some who expected a reveal to happen around E3 this summer. However, in this scenario Sony would have been pitting its new console against that of its competitor: Microsoft’s new Xbox 720.

While PlayStation’s worldwide sales reached 70m in 2012 to become level with the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s console wrapped up the year with a bang, as the 360 was named the best-selling console in the US. Microsoft is now expected to unveil an Xbox 720 at E3 in June.

At the beginning of this year, PlayStation halted production of the PlayStation 2, the best-selling games console of all time with more than 150m manufactured since its launch in 2000. It seems Sony is readying itself for a new era, and all will be revealed at an event scheduled to take place at 6pm EST (11pm GMT) on 20 February in New York City.

Curious gamers can sign up to be notified of what’s coming next from PlayStation via this link.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com