PS4 Needs Significant Graphics Leap

Let's put aside our fears of a nonsensical (read: evil) block on used video games coming to the PlayStation 3 successor and look towards the brighter side of next-gen consoles. They're coming soon, and PlayStation gamers may be able to rejoice sooner than expected. No, not next month at Destination PlayStation! Microsoft is teasing an E3 2013 unveiling of the next-gen Xbox but Sony may beat them to the punch.

A presentation about the PlayStation 4 will likely take place at the E3 conference in June, but its first reveal may be as early as May. Hiroshi Sakamoto, Sony's Home Entertainment VP who delivered the rumor, hinted at the possibility which had the media abuzz last week, and thanks to CES, rumor has it that it may be substantially more powerful than the Xbox 720.

In an interview with Chilean website El Mercurio, Sakamoto teased:

"That's still a big secret. But our friends are preparing PlayStation. I can only say that we are focused on the E3 gaming event, scheduled for June. Announcement may be in that minute or even earlier in May."

More detailed information provided by VGleaks last week offers a potentially more precise look at Sony's possible "roadmap" for the lead-up to the PlayStation 4's release.

2011 June/July — PC with Win7 64-bit and a “jailbroken” ATI r9 graphics card

2011 Sept/Oct — PC with Win7 64-bit and a “jailbroken” ATI r10 graphics card

2012 Q1 — disclosure to more developers

2012 E3 — potential unveiling window start

2012 Jul — devkits for engineers writing OS

2012 Q3 — first true hardware prototype devkits

2013 E3 — potential unveiling window end

2013 Q4 — launch

As for today's rumors on the specs of the PS4 vs. the Xbox 720/Xbox Next, VG24/7 learned through their sources (developers) that "the next PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, will have a run-capability of 1.84 teraflops. Conversely, the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, will be able to achieve 1.23 teraflops."

Teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second) are in essence, a measure of a computer system's speed and the PS4 has a substantially higher capacity by these numbers. However, the next Xbox could be supporting twice the RAM as the PS4 (8GB vs. 4GB). With both systems pushing emphasis on non-gaming entertainment, both supporting updated motion control systems and both likely coming with Blu-ray support, it's going to be quite a battle to see which system is the strongest from a technical perspective (especially if both are priced at $400). For us, it comes down to the software each supports.

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Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes.

Sources: EMOLVG24/7, VGleaks