Sony confirm PlayStation 4 Development

Leon    Gaming, Sony PlayStation, Technology     Microsoft, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation, PlayStation 4, Project Cafe, PS3, PS4, Sony, Xbox 360

Sony’s CFO, Masaru Kato, today confirmed the development of Sony’s next generation home console that will most likely be named the PlayStation 4.

The announcement came during a conference call to investors whereby Masaru Kato was asked to explain a recent increase in Research & Development (R&D) costs. He explained “For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform – when we’ll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that – but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there.”

We currently know nothing about the actual console but a 2012 reveal and a 2013 release is likely. Analysts are predicting that the console will use a new and improved version of the cell processor that is found in the PS3 as well as a Blu-Ray drive.

The PlayStation 3 has currently sold around 50 million consoles worldwide and has the second largest active install base with the Nintendo Wii being the first.

Nintendo have already announced their next generation console, codenamed Project Cafe, and will be detailing and showing the console for the first time at E3 in June. Project Cafe will be launching worldwide in 2012.

Microsoft are yet to mention anything about their next generation console but it is expected that they too are currently developing it and are likely to release it around the same time as the PlayStation 4.

Next-Gen PlayStation in Development

Leon    Gaming, Sony PlayStation, Technology     PlayStation 4, SCE, Sony

Sony Worldwide Studios boss, Shuhei Yoshida, has confirmed that Sony are working on a next generation PlayStation console.

Shuhei Yoshida said that after Ken Kutaragi left Sony, Kaz Hirai’s first order as the new boss of Sony Computer Entertainment was to begin hardware development.

Yoshida stated that “When Ken Kutaragi moved on and Kaz Harai became the president of SCE, the first thing Kaz said was, ‘get Worldwide Studios in on hardware development’. So he wanted developers in meetings at the very beginning of concepting new hardware, and he demanded SCE people talk to us developers.”