Sony sends invite for Feb 20 NYC event; speculated to launch the PS4
Sony has sent out invites to journalists for an event scheduled for February 20. Speculations are rife that the event will be about the next generation PlayStation home console.
Sony has sent out an invite to journalists inviting them to an event that will be held in NYC on February 20 2013. Sony has also updated this information on social networking websites, which means that the announcement is a big deal for the company.
Sony has also released a video to coincide with the invite. The video doesn’t show much except the traditional PS symbols – triangle, box, x, and circle, floating across the screen with some sharp edged designs in the background.
Speculation on the Internet once again is pointing towards the event being the unveiling of the next PlayStation.
The Wall Street Journal claims to have sources close to the matter who says that the device will be unveiled and will go on sale later this year. The WSJ goes on to say, “The Journal’s sources also said Sony will add more social gaming features to the new PlayStation and will focus not on juicing up the gadget’s hardware but on how players interact with the device. Sony had thought about dumping the PlayStation’s optical disk drive in favor of making gamers download new games over the Internet, the Journal reported, but it’s decided against that because of concerns over download times. Finally, the Journal said Sony will “likely” go with chips from AMD, rather than the Sony-IBM-Toshiba-developed Cell chip that’s in the PS3, a move that could cause compatibility issues with current games and would end Sony’s partnership with graphics-chip maker Nvidia.”
Rumours about the next generation console have been circulating the Internet for years now. Originally, it was expected that Microsoft would launch their console first. Sony CEO, Kaz Hirai has said in an interview, ‘Why go first, when your competitors can look at your specifications and come up with something better?’ Keeping this strategy in mind, Sony planed to launch the next generation PlayStation, the PS4 after the competition Microsoft launches the next generation Xbox. You can read this story in detail here. But that however doesn’t seem to be the case as of now.
There have also been rumours flying all over the Internet which suggest that the PS4 may not be able to play used games. This will be a big negative for the gaming industry as the used games market is one that drives the circulation of games in the hands of gamers.
Since the PS4 is rumoured to be based on a different CPU GPU architecture than the PS3, we are also concerned about the backward compatibility issues. We don’t want a repeat of what happened with the backward compatibility of the PS3 with PS2 games.
All speculations and rumours will be put to rest once Sony unveils whatever it has planned for gamers on February 20.
Source: PlayStaion Official website