Sony revealed the price and looks of its much-hyped gaming console - PlayStation 4 (Sony PS4) - at the pre-E3 press conference held in Los Angeles on Monday night. The company put the price of the console at $399 much to the delight of the gamers.
The Japanese electronics giant has not revealed the price of PS4 in India but it would cost approximately ₹23277 if the announced price ($399) is anything to go by. It was earlier reported that the gaming console would be priced between $400 and $500 upon release and would be available in India in the first quarter of 2014 at around ₹25,000.
Sony's E3 press conference caught the attention of the gamers for more reason than one. The three main announcements that appeal gamers to the next-generation gaming console are:
1) Price: Sony announced that PS4 will be priced $399 as the speculated price of $400 and $500. It is $100 cheaper than Microsoft's Xbox One, which will cost $499 when it is launched in the US this November.
2) Online Authentication: Players don't have to sign in online to play unlike most games that requires 24-hour daily online authentication.
3) Trade: Sony will allow owners to trade their PS4 game discs. This will enable gamers to buy cheaper pre-owned games.
Sony PS4 launch will happen in the US this holiday season though the date of release is yet to be made known.
Sony chief executive Andrew House described the next-generation gaming console as "unparalleled power" while unveiling the looks of PS4 at E3, the world's premier trade show for computer and video games which will be held from 11-13 June at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The Japanese electronics giant also revealed the look of the console at the press conference. It is black in colour with sharp angles.
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 Games Developers Conference (GDC) 2013 in San Francisco, California.
The new gaming console is powered by single-chip custom processor and x86-64 AMD "Jaguar" 8 Cores. It features 18 "compute units" capable of cranking out 1.84 TFLOPS and AMD next generation Radeon based graphics engine. The console will also have a memory of 8GB GDDR5 RAM capable of 176GB/sec of bandwidth.
