FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
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New PS4 picture emerging...
Fri, 14th Dec 2012
FYI, this story is more than a year old

One gaming magazine has assembled every scrap of detail, rumour and speculation about the next-generation of Playstation and compiled what it calls “the most accurate picture of Playstation 4 anywhere in the world."

The article lists 15 “facts” about Sony’s next console, some of which are probably more credible than others.

First is that the next console is unlikely to be given a number; instead of Playstation 4, it’s possible Sony’s next step might be a ‘named’ console.

A rumoured codename for the console is the Orbis – why is this important? Well, if we get linguistic (that’s right, linguistic, on a Friday), Vita is Latin for life, Orbis Vitae therefore meaning circle of life.

PS Orbis, PS Vita, get it? In saying that, we might be reading a little too deeply.

A less believable point is that the console will lock out used games, a point that has been laboured extensively by industry analysts and gamers alike; whether or not used games ever die out remains to be seen, but I don’t think it likely Sony would be among the first to eliminate them.

Backwards compatibility will be a thing of the past, apparently, and that makes fairly clear sense. Sony has just bought Gaikai, a cloud service-provider, so in theory any older games can simply be streamed via the PS4, or Orbis, or whatever.

Other rumoured additions to the console are in-game advertisements, a new-look controller with in-built PS Move augmentations, more than 4 GB of RAM, and an added focus on subscriptions and premium packages.

Take a look at the full list of rumours here and let us know which you think are likely, which you would hate to see, and which you think are ridiculous.