Sony PlayStation 4 India Price Revealed; to Hit Stores on 6 January 2014

Japanese consumer giant Sony officially launched the company's eighth-generation gaming console PlayStation 4 in India today.

PlayStation 4 is the successor of Sony's best selling console PlayStation 3, which was launched almost seven years ago. The new device boasts Semi-custom 8-core AMD x86-64 CPU architecture (packs two quad-core Jaguar modules) backed by Semi-custom AMD Radeon GPU, containing 18 computing units which can top 1.84 TFLOPS (Tera-Floating-point Operations Per Second) speed.

It also ships with DualShock 4 controllers with two built-in capacitive touch pads with light-bar which includes a number of colours to signal the player's health.

Sony PS4 also features a 500 GB hard drive with expansion options and an advanced 8GB GDDR5 RAM, which its rival Microsoft Xbox One lacks.

Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox One got released in select global markets last month, and since then have sold more than 2 million units each (as of 3 December). Now with the launch in India, Sony is set to gain an upper hand over rival Microsoft, who has so far remained non-committal about releasing its new -generation Xbox One in the subcontinent any time soon. Rumour has it that the American company may launch Xbox One only in late 2014.

The new Sony entertainment device will be commercially available in brick-and-mortar stores from 6 January 2014. Enthusiastic gamers can jump the queue by booking device at online store Snapdeal which is also offering flexible EMI schemes. Another e-retailer, Flipkart too has listed the new Sony gaming console but the sale is yet to commence.

Sony PS4 comes with a price-tag of whopping ₹39,990, almost ₹15,000 more than the American market price ($399.99: around ₹25,000 INR). The huge price margin can be attributed to the depreciating value of the Indian Rupee, as well as the import duty taxes.

[Note:  PlayStation 4 also comes with an optional accessory - Eye, a device with two HD 1280x800p cameras with motion sensors, aperture f/2.0 and 85-degree field of view, costs ₹4990/-]

Key Specifications of Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One: