Sony executive hints the PlayStation 4 may surface before E3

Sony's vice president of home entertainment has revealed that we could see the introduction of the PlayStation 4 sooner rather than later. Hiroshi Sakamoto recently told Chilean website Emol that Sony is hard at work on the next generation PlayStation...

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So...? no secondhand games = no ps4. why the hell would I waste so much money on new games when I can buy a used one literally a week later for $20?

long time PS > M$ here, but this might turn me if it really goes through

If the PS4 features game locking then they can forget about me buying one; I don't care how impressive it is. I'm a long time Playstation fan, but the disrespect that Sony have shown towards the first-sale doctrine is tantamount to a slap in the face. The reactions of others tell me I'm not alone, and if they implement this then they're making a serious mistake.

@first 2 posters....

while on the other hand developers keep complaining that they do not get any profit from non first hand sales and therefore in order to cover the development cost they drive up the cost of new games (70$ per new PS4/XBOX720 game, anyone?)

we'll never find love

Meh I'll stick with PC gaming which my rig by far surpasses anything the consoles can churn out. Even the next gen is already outdated by my standards. i7 @ 4.8, 16gb ram, GTX 680 4GB, 2560 x 1600 30" IPS display. No thanks I'll keep using my PS3 for just a media player and game on a real platform.

Console game makers have yet to jump on the Pay-to-Play bandwagon like PC game makers have, which essentially does away with the 2nd-hand market. If the harddrives on the new consoles are large enough, this would allow people to download the games rather than have the game producers market them out to Bestbuy or Gamestop. This is just one step further than the free-to-play demos already available on the online-console stores.

Yes not all console users are online, but a lot of gamers buy specifically for online play. Allow a $15 monthly subscription for revenue rather than a massive initial cost ($60-70)and no "resale".

The hard part is making a game worthy of more than 1 month worth of gameplay, but I leave that up to the game designers.

I like the Playstation, but I'm not really looking forward to the PS4. Based on leaked specs it sounds very underwhelming. Developers will have to use a lot of trickery to get their games to look good on these new consoles and that's never a good thing. If Sony does go through with game locking it could be a good thing for consumers if prices go down as is on Steam. Developers wont have the excuse that used game sales are cutting into their revenues and they'll have to compromise with lower prices.

Meanwhile my Steam library is growing and they all look better on a PC. I can easily upgrade my GPU for less than the cost of a new console if I want better performance. Now that PC gaming is becoming more mainstream I hope developers will support them more. Other than the dreaded Games for Windows - Live, there is no drawback to PC gaming.

Independent games are gaining more ground, they require less system resources, and they tend to have more innovative gameplay than big blockbuster games. In this new gaming age with the bad economy and casual gaming, I can see Indie games and smaller systems taking over.

I can't wait for another 10 years of consoles holding back PC games.

Three things here confuse me:

1. A10 APU? What? Since when is that enough power for a desktop, let alone a console. The Cell processor in PS3 dominates traditional desktop CPUs in FLOPS I believe?

2. X720 and PS4 will both feature blu-ray, meaning there is no excuse now to not use higher-res textures on both platforms. 8GB+ of RAM seems to support this. However, what's going on with the low HDD storage? Not including 1TB is simply stupid, as the blu-ray drive will most likely still not have the bandwidth to transfer the large data on-the-fly.

3. Everyone is making an assumption that locked down games will equal lower purchase prices, as developers have a lot more revenue going to them. Wrong, prices will stay the same and go up as per normal inflation. Case in point: Australia has games starting at $100 AUD - back in the day of bad exchange rate, $60USD was close to $90-100AUD, however now our dollar is higher and we still pay $100.

Everyone complaining about the "No Second Hand Games" BS Needs to get a clue. Second Hand games are a multi BILLION dollar industry. Do you really thing GameFly and GameStop are going to let that go? Dont be Stupid. Second hand games will play just fine in the PS4.

Good points. However, this is one multi-billion dollar industry competing against another. Just because Gamefly et al. have a stake in the secondhand market does not mean the devs and publishers won't still go after used games. Outright banishment of used games is out of the question, but activation fees and the like are a highly probable reaction to increasing used game sales.

Sony has been blunder machine as if late, anyways. Shooting themselves in the foot with some type of half-baked content control scheme wouldn't be a big surprise.

You are assuming that GameStop and GameFly have anything at all to do with Sony's corporate decisions on whether to support legacy games. Maybe take a hard look at Sony's policies of late, like only early (and then select model later) PS3s being able to play PS2 titles. Or removing the UMD drives on the PSP Go and Vita and requiring you to repurchase any of your old titles digitally to play on the new hardware. Their track record suggests your assumptions are in no way guaranteed.

Just because we want a PS4 to play PS3 games, that doesn't mean it WILL. It's all a corporate decision. Companies like GameFly and GameStop only give Sony a tiny margin of their revenue - just the initial licensing fee on the first sale of their games, basically. The multi-billions those companies make is not Sony's money, so I'd guess the welfare of those trading and rental stores will only be a minor factor in the ultimate decision on backwards compatibility...

No it won't, Sony filed a patent that will lock games according to the user's account - you can't buy used games anymore. Microsoft will do the same at the urging of the game companies.

Worst thing a company can do is start blaming its customers for their woes.

Well then, I guess I can expect to pay $120.00 per new release for that console then. YayAustralia.

the a10 is very capable for budget PCs, and on the static hardware for consoles should be more than capable of running modern games for several years, especially seeing what components the xbox 360 uses...

Here are few solutions for the developers:
1. Make good quality games = no one gonna sell it because they are going to play it like crazy
2. Lower the price of games = people with tighter budget will buy it
3. Profit $$$

I truly believe MS and Sony will try to limit second hand games on their consoles, how will that play out when your at your friends house playing on their machine? Log in's perhaps? I do not know but either way limiting used games or asking for money to activate them is surely going to start a big damn fight.

I just purchased a used Audi A7 and Audi wants a 1,000 dollars to activate it....er um put it into their dealer maintenance data base. That would never fly.

With the new patent, Sony will use an electronic content processing system that will check the game's ID to see if it's used or new. If it's new, a piece of data will be stored on the console only once which means if you bring the game to your friend's place it won't work.

Of course a PC will always outperform a console. Look at the money spent. It's like comparing a Bugatti to a Fiat 500. What matters are the games and whether the person playing is having fun or not. Real gamers play games that they enjoy regardless if it's on a computer, console, or handheld.