PS4 at GDC: New details on PS Eye, PSN, Specs and more

There were a lot of details revealed about the PS4 and IGN’s Greg Miller was there tweeting the hell out of everything. These details have been accumulated fast by Gamingeverything.

The system is targeted to be the central device in the living room and core gamers are the top priority for Sony. The PS4 is built around these gamers and is based on 5 core principles: Simple, Immediate, Social, Integrated, Personalized.

More details on the specs have been revealed as well. It CPU is a 64-bit x86 archi, low power consumption, low heat, 8 cores, 8 HW threads, 2MiB L2 cache per 4 core group, 32kib l1 I/D-cache.

PlayStation Shader Language, very similar to HLSL, allows featured BEYOND Direct X 11 and OpenGL 4.0. The GPU features tesselation as well.

PS4 RAM – 8GB 256 bit GDDR5 (GDDR5 is very high end graphics memory only found on PC graphics cards). Each console will have a large hard drive.

You can check out more information on dev environment, controller and everything else below.

– PS4 Dev Environment – Windows 7-bit, tools are fully integrated into Visual Studio 2010 and 2012
– “Debug your PS4 code as you would your PC code”
– PS4 Controller: Start/Select buttons are now “Options.” New System button is “Share.”
– Speaker, headset hack and “extension port” on the PS4 controller
– PS4 controller buttons are going back to digital over analog because no one used it on PS3
– PS4 controller L2/R2 – Curved design to get rid of the accidental netflix fast forwarding
– PS4 controller: 1920×900 resolution on the analog touchpad
– PS4 controller colors are the Player Numbers: 1-Blue, 2-Red, 3-Green, 4-Pink (Like the buttons)
– PS4 will charge controllers when it’s off. Unlike the PS3.
– PS4 controller light bar can be used for muzzle flashes, health bars, etc
– “The #PS4 Eye will enhance the PS4 user experience.” High sensitivity dual color cameras – 1280×800, 12 bits/pixel, 60Hz
– Dedicated port for the #PS4 camera, exclusive SCE Connector. Means it won’t use a USB port on the console, but won’t plug into your PC.
– Cam suggested uses: walkthrough vids, taunting in killcam, login, speech recognition, etc; possible PS4 Camera Magic – Sees the controller, you guys move, splitscreen moves to be on the right side
– The above is what devs could do (not mandatory)
– Video example shown of PS4 combining the camera and the controller. “AR Menu”
– Zoom into the controller, tilt to shake little dudes inside, push into our world like EyePet
– 2004: XMB, 2011: LiveArea, 2013: New #PS4 one based on the five principles from earlier
– UI is meant to give you at a glance info without loading the game. See what new DLC is out and whatnot. What friends are saying.
– Have to enable people seeing your real name on the #PS4. Auto-enabled if you import from another social network. (Can be turned off)
– PSN friend limit raised
– PS4 Mock-up: Heavy Rain choice with the number of your friends that chose each option.
– All the PS4 streaming and sharing: that’s on the hardware. Devs don’t have to do anything special to their game.
– PS4 Remote Play: Screens are mirrored on PS4/Vita (Both on at same time). Hardware does it/not on devs. Start at any time; no special mode.
– Talking about the PlayStation App. Login, buy game, PS4 starts downloading at home, you get home and start playing the part that’s DWLD.