Even as game lovers are eagerly waiting for the release of Sony's next-generation gaming console - Sony PlayStation 4 (Sony PS4) - the Japanese company has been creating more curiosity by revealing its features from time to time.
Clearing the doubt around one of its features - 'Share' button - Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Japanese game news site 4Gamer.net that live streaming video has become a trend. He however said that developers will have control over the feature with the option to disable it.
"We were trying to think of a way to make it easier for users to upload video, and one day a member of our in-house production team just said, 'How about a Share button?' We called out in unison, 'That's it!'" Yoshida told 4Gamer.net (translated by Edge)
"I wanted to play Dark Souls all day long, but I couldn't do that because I was too busy. So instead I would watch people playing it live on Niconico whenever I had some spare time. By doing that, you can find other ways to play the game and read comments by other users. I felt that sharing videos is a really important part of enjoying games," he added, explaining why the 'Share' button feature was added.
He however said that 'Share' button has its limitations.
"There will be parts of a game that the maker does not want people to be able to see. For example, on Vita, developers can in certain scenes disable the feature that lets users take a screenshot, and (the Share function) will have a similar mechanism. The creator may not want to make video of the final boss sharable, for instance," he told 4Gamer.net .
Sony Worldwide president Shuhei Yoshida had earlier told 4gamer.net that the next-generation console would be user-friendly.
"We need to make sure users consider the PS4 version to be the best and the one they want to play. That might mean that the graphics are better, the controller is more comfortable, or the console is more user-friendly, like you don't have to turn the power on and off or you can switch between your game and Netflix at will. Those things will become key," Yoshida told 4gamer.net (and translated by Escapist Magazine).
"Even we had a hard time developing for PS3 [at first]. But third parties had real trouble developing or porting games, because [the system] was so different," he added, expressing how challenging it was to make the machine friendlier for third-party developers.
Meanwhile, speculations on the release date of Sony PlayStation 4 have been doing the rounds for quite a while now even as the Japanese company is tight-lipped about it.
Sony PS4 is likely to be released in May ahead of the E3 event in June, reported Tech Hunter, quoting a source. PCMag also quoted a source claiming that Sony's next-generation gaming console would be announced either in April or early May.
Newtechnology.co.in had earlier reported that Sony PS4 would be available in India in the first quarter of 2014 and would be priced around ₹25,000.
Sony had earlier revealed some specifications of the new console at an event in February, followed by revelation of the 'mock-up' designs of the PlayStation 4 (Sony PS4) controller and eye at the recently concluded Games Developers Conference (GDC) 2013 in San Francisco, California.
Here are specifications of Sony PS4:
CPU: single-chip custom processor, x86-64 AMD "Jaguar" 8 Cores
GPU: 18 "compute units" capable of cranking out 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next generation Radeon based graphics engine
Memory: 8GB GDDR5 RAM capable of 176GB/sec of bandwidth
Connectivity: 802.11n WiFi, USB 3.0, Bluetooth 2.1, Auxillary ports, Analog AV, and digital optical outputs and HDMI
It is reported that Sony PS4 DualShock 4 controller has been remodeled and cloud gaming technology would be introduced. It is expected to be priced between $400 and $500 upon release.
