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Sony reveals new PS4 features
Thu, 28th Mar 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

It’s a Sony-centric news day today as many new details have been revealed about the upcoming PS4 console.

This year’s Game Developers Conference is currently underway, and as such Sony is showing off the new Dualshock 4 controller and giving some new information as to exactly what its features are.

Perhaps the biggest change is that the controller’s buttons are no longer analog but digital, so touch sensitivity is no longer a thing that exists in the world.

The little touch pad on the front that everyone has been wondering about will be able to recognise two touch points at once, allowing you to flick and twist stuff like on an iPhone or other similar device.

Another new feature is the LED light-bar at the top of the controller, which can be manipulated by developer’s to change colour in certain situations.

So, if you’ve taken nine bullets it’ll go red to indicate you’re bleeding out, or flash when there’s enemies nearby in stealth games.

For those of you interested in such things, the specs for the PS4 have also been revealed in greater detail. The CPU will feature a 64-bit x84 arch (uh, cool...?), low power consumption and very little heat. In terms of RAM the console gets 8GB, 265 bit GDDR5 of it.

The amount of HDD space is yet to be specified however everyone at the developers conference keeps saying it will be “very large”. Most speculation suggests it will be 1TB, although whether or not that will come true remains to be seen.

A dedicated port has been added for the PS4 eye, a camera that doesn’t use a USB port. Suggested uses for this camera include walkthrough videos, speech recognition, and being an annoying wanker when you’ve killed someone in Call of Duty.

Some fairly cool new features, but nothing mind-blowing – we’ll have to wait for a full console reveal before we start getting too excited.