Remember to use the ability to post to Twitter and Facebook to share your best brag-worthy gaming moments and, if you're feeling outgoing, you can stream to Twitch here too.
It's capable of delivering games, movies and TV shows into your home at lightning speeds as well as connecting you to your friends and other online gamers through the PlayStation Network (when it's working).
Oh, and mature programming lovers can get their fix anytime with the new HBO Go app that has been absent up until March 2015.Īll of these features can be found sporadically throughout the new PlayStation Dynamic Menu, the primary GUI of the PS4. Of course there have been myriad minor changes like the ability to turn off HDCP, play games while they're downloading, upload clips to YouTube and set themes and background images for the home screen in that time as well. If that's not good enough, then check out the Sony-exclusive rental streaming service called PlayStation Now, PlayStation Music powered by Spotify, Remote Play, Sharefactory and Share Play. As it is, they roll out monthly (sometimes bi-monthly) updates that drastically change the interface and feature set of the system. If there's a team that works harder than Sony's internal development team, we'd like to meet them.
How does that stack up against the PS4? Overall, Sony claims that the PS4's overall performance is ten times that of the PS3.įor wireless connections, the PlayStation 4 uses 802.11 b/g/n for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 for its wireless DualShock 4 controllers. Sony says these do it yourself upgrades will not void the system's warranty.įor a reference point, the PlayStation 3 packed 256MB of XDR Main RAM and 256MB of GDDR3 VRAM, and managed to support visual feasts like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension during its final days. You can also remove that 500GB drive and replace it with a larger drive, or an SSD for better performance. That's backed by 8GB of mega-fast GDDR5 RAM, and a 500GB mechanical hard drive. It has a custom single-chip processor that combines an eight core x86-64 AMD "Jaguar" CPU with a 1.84 teraflop GPU based on AMD's Radeon tech. Inside, the PlayStation 4 is all business. The remote can sync up to four devices, effectively reducing the amount of plastic pads you need to keep track of.
Sold separately from the system, the $29 PS4 Universal Remote syncs up to the system via Bluetooth and allows you to have a traditional way to control TV shows and movies from PlayStation Vue, HBO Go and Netflix. Spin the system around and you'll be met with an HDMI, Ethernet and a digital optical audio out port, as well as a proprietary auxiliary connection for the PlayStation Camera. On the front-facing side you'll find a slot-loading Blu-ray disc drive and to its right two powered USB 3.0 ports, which can charge your DualShock 4 controllers even when the system is turned off and are used to sync controllers when taking gamepads from one place to another. It's meant to lay flat but, if your media center can only accommodate a vertical machine, Sony has a plastic stand it sells separately for $14/£16.99 that helps the system stand up straight. Its slim, rectangular features brings to mind a PlayStation 2 in form and function, but its sloped, asymmetrical design helps us understand that nothing like this has ever existed before now. The shape of the box is familiar, yet completely unique.
Microsoft's system has held onto its external power adapter - a feature inherited from the Xbox 360 - and weighs in at a slightly heftier 7 lbs.
We'll likely have some confirmation from Microsoft sooner, rather than later, but it's fair to expect that there will be no external power supply brick with the Xbox Series X, keeping your playspace tidy.What's crucial here, though, is that Sony kept the PS4's weight to a manageable 6.1 lbs and tucked the power supply inside the system, leaving no external power brick to trip over. We've confirmed with a few sources that the Xbox Series X does indeed have an internal power supply, as you might expect. In the leaked photographs of the Xbox Series X, we got a glimpse of the ports on the back of the console, and we can see a standard figure-8 style power socket similar to what's offered in the Xbox One S and X, as opposed to the 3-pin socket on the original Xbox One from 2013. The Xbox One S and X both have internal power supplies, which regulates power from your wall socket to your console. This was possibly a reaction to the heat issues that plagued the original Xbox 360, which led to hardware failure.Ĭooling technology has improved generally over the years, with Microsoft itself investing heavily in cooling and power-optimization methods for both its Xbox consoles and its Surface computers.
The original Xbox One from 2013 shipped with a monstrous hulking power brick complete with its own cooling, as Microsoft sought to take as much heat out of the Xbox as possible.