SCE working on new hardware, says Yoshida

Cue Bat-sound …

The likes of Cambridge studios, ND could contribute some amazing ideas to a console.

Whatever you are going to announce should have been announced in E3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rSchSyYdH4

Hopefully Sony will not create a completely new CPU/GPU architecture this time. Every console cycle up to now was a paradigm shift on Sony’s behalf.

My uninformed advice:
Keep the CELL-architecture, add some more SPEs (synergistic processing elements), throw in massive amounts of RAM and do some overall tweaks but DO NOT change the whole architecture again for PS4®.

In a partnership with Sega and an Iranian Billionaire they are going to create the Dreamcast 2

Believe!

@4

Haha, that rocks. Genuine advert to promote PS2 I see.

Oh shit. I’m sooooooooo excited. new PlayStation hardware always excites me!

Quiick I agree 1000% cell needs to stay now. really devs are starting to unleash its power….only took 4 years but WTH right!

WOOOT!!! News of Sony hardware always gets my nerdrection on

News of new hardware generally means a sudden drop in great games for the next two years while everyone buggers about with new tech.

@ Blerk
Your milage my vary, but IIRC quite a few great games still hit the PS2 after rumors/news of the PS3 emerged.

Sony are in a hard position with developers and the Cell chip.

Multiplatform devs dont like it and dont want it. They will want a multicore approach.

First party devs will now be up to speed on Cell development and most likely won’t want the switch to another architecture, flushing 4-5 years of hard learning down the drain.

An upgraded Cell will have the best chance of allowing backward compatibility, but less chance of early lifecycle multiplatform title support/parity.

In fact, BC is going to be a very thorny issue for the PS4 as many devs have been forced to bypass libraries and hit the hardware directly to reach target performance.

The PS3′s launch will still be fresh in a lot of gamers minds. Sony cannot afford another software wasteland that was the PS3′s first year or so.

Good BC and an infinitely stronger launch lineup than last time is required, that means a lot of devs being proficient with the hardware at launch.

Another round of obstructive hardware and steep learning curves will quite simply sink Sony.

hope the psp2 has full BC, well i don’t expect it to play ps3 games, though would be increibly awesome & a day one purchase from me if it did, but i hope it’ll be capable of this current gen(home console) games, imagine playing Red Dead Redemption on the go XD

Sounds like a very interesting interview from develop coming later on this week. The talk of saving world wide studios, and hiring the best minds in the industry to create one super engine. Should make for very interesting reading.

I can imagine the PSP2 being BC. But I can’t imagine the PSP2 having a UMD drive.

maybe Sony will invent a BUMD (Blu Ray Universal Media Disk)so it’ll be compatible of regular UMD playback & larger games

then again it’ll be cheaper for them & us consumer to just cut it out all together & go all out digital

@13
There were strong rumours they were going to ditch the Cell processor for the IBM Power7 chip a little while back. Dependent on costs I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried including a cell processor for b/c and general stream processing (something it’s very good at).

It wasn’t just the cell processor they got wrong this time round though – there are some tricky barriers to development in memory management and bandwidth within the system too. Hopefully greater input from devs will address some of those too.

Launch period line-up they really need to concentrate more on established franchises this time. Too many chances on new IP which didn’t work last time too.

The impression I get is that multiformat games running worse on PS3 isn’t down to the CELL so much as the split RAM setup and RSX graphics chip. At this point I don’t think updating the existing CPU would be that troublesome from a development point of view, whereas retaining it would likely be near essential if backwards compatibility is to be maintained; not to say that’s necessarily important in Sony’s eyes.

I can’t see the PSP2 having a mechanical disk drive, but at the same time I’m not sure Sony are ready to make it download only. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of compromise they decide on.

There were rumours on CVG of the Playview being the successor to the Psp.

@13 shut your trap. You know nothing. SONY will carry this industry for Centuries with the tech and games they make. if it weren’t for SONY we’d all be enjoying another hobby.

Stupid kid still dreaming in denial.

I’m sure Nintendo fans were saying that in 1995 too. You’re only as good as your last device in this industry.

To be fair Tea i cant see anyone beating Nintendo, they are just too good when it comes to selling machines.

The same holds for Nintendo. In the Super Nintendo days they totally ruled the roost. Then along comes Sony and pulls the carpet from under them. Your previous successes mean very little when it comes to games consoles – all you need is to capture public imagination and be reasonably priced and you’re off.

None of today’s players should sit on their laurels, because someone’s just around the corner waiting to kick them off their perches regardless of how safe they think they are. Sony are making all the right noises here, let’s hope they learned some lessons this time out.

Think how many years Nintendo have never had any decent games out, 2008 being an example nothing new at all yet they still sold millions of hardware on nothing. This is why i cant see anyone stopping them or how many bad E3 conferences they have had again still sold millions.

Nintendo’s biggest problem next time around will be convincing their new audience that they need their new machine at all. If they can crack that then they’ll hit the ground running again, I’ve no doubt. But they’re not beyond serious missteps – look at how they handled the original Playstation. They totally underestimated their competition, thought that because they were number one people would be happy to wait and pay more for the privilege, and Sony wiped the floor with them.

Fast forward to the PS3 launch and Sony are lucky they didn’t end up in exactly the same boat because they made almost the exact same mistakes. If the Wii had been more powerful and gamer-focussed from the start, both Sony and Microsoft would probably be crying into their Babychams by this point.

The entire industry’s balanced on a knife-edge, and any one thing can tip it one way or the other. Who’d have thought just a few years back that Nintendo would have the biggest selling home console this generation? They were practically dead in the water with the Gamecube compared to the PS2. And yet here we are.

Aye, arrogance basically is what costs companies more then anything and you only have to look at Iwata dismissing Sony compleatly so you may have a point there. The question is can Microsoft be industery leaders next generation?

Samsung will be the next console market leaders. You can quote me on that when you are bowing down to them in honour of their outstanding achievements.

@22

Stop acting the stroppy child. It’s a tired routine.

@29 Except that they don’t have 1st party support. It’s a dead play with Sony Computer Entertainment or even with Microsoft.

Microsoft have Halo, without it, consoles won’t move for example.

Samsung is strictly a TV manufacturer and Korean company is happy with that, not to mention that they are working together with Sony in TV market. They share a lot.

@13 Except that Sony can afford any risks, after making tons of money after PS1 and PS2 era.
They started in this gen with Blu ray and now with 3D + new hardware is coming.

Samsung have new IP’s under wraps from the biggest publishing houses that you just don’t know about yet man. That’s what’s Samsung are good at, secrecy! You don;t see any TV models leaked early from the TV expo’s do you? no. Exactly.

You’ll see.

Oh and Samsung makes loads of things other than TV’s!

“Except that Sony can afford any risks, after making tons of money after PS1 and PS2 era.”

Actually Sony themselves made comment that all the profit from the PS1 and PS2 had been spent on PS3 R&D and losses from hardware sales, and that they would never see that profit returned during the PS3′s lifetime.

The PS3 has literally only just now stopped being sold at a loss.

@32 They are not in that market. Other subsidiaries is shipbuilder and Samsung Life Insurance. They are not in that market.

You don’t know about them nothing. If Samsung had something up their sleeve there would be a major leak around it. Not to mention they don’t need that. It’s not their vision.

Samsung is like LG. Sony in it’s big history did a lot of stuff always since 2nd world war.

@33 “Actually Sony themselves made comment that all the profit from the PS1 and PS2 had been spent on PS3″

Prooflink please.

They make phones, radios, camcorders, cameras, PC’s, PC peripherals, Blu Rays, Ovens, Microwaves, Memory Cards, Projectors, Home Cinema Systems, MP3 players…what makes you think they couldn’t move into consoles?

History means nothing in multinational business, it’s all about the moolah init.

If Samsung had something up their sleeves you wouldn’t know about it, purely because you don’t expect it man. Yeah manz.

Samsung will rules you like totally own you and stuff man.

You’ll see, you know nothing.

and you know nothing too.

I think you just like Samsung very much. For me all their Tech’s are always mediocre and cheap like LG’s TV’s.
They are even sharing Sony’s tech in makking TV sets.

Sony and Nintendo are long in that business and it’s not like they started making new IP’s. Making best first parties you need a lot of work and a lot of time.

Then we are agreed, we both know nothing. This is a momentous day that should be celebrated

This is the equivalent of writing ‘First!!!’ on a comment section.

Well done Sony… You plebs.

I think your all mistaken.

The furture of the console is a PC. Well, a laptop anyways. Plug it into a TV via HDMI. Take it with you on the go or just into the other room. USB controlers. Plays like a portable home console.

Always BC. Open OS. One simplified platform. Upgradable power. Cost effective. Wide variety of games.

Possibly lead by Steam, cloud, or something like that. Games tied into your account, no more dust collecting boxes for your wife to nag you to get rid of.

I think that is the future of the home console, small, powerful laptop/notebook sized PCs.

Won’t happen this gen or the next one. But I think eventualy. MS, Sony, Nintendo either need to listen to game devs/pubs and lossen their death grips or … they risk those same companies(that they are dependant on) curcumventing them and doing something that doesn’t include high microtransaction fees, insane dev kits, content filters, over the top royalties and fees.

Leave the Console market to Nintendo, Grown ups play on a PC anyway!

I actually think not having Ken there now is a good thing. Yes he is a legend and what not, but he pushed too much on the hardware front, and left the software developers without a pot to piss in.

Since he’s been gone, Sony have focused much more on the software side of things, and even seem to have pushed the social/community bits of PlayStation with the blog’s, and better PSN stuff.

I think SCE needed to westernize a tad, and listen much more to their software developers and partners. Maybe next time round, they’ll have this straight off.

@39
You were doing quite well right up until “one simplified platform” … At that point I fell about laughing. Good one.

@40 who said that Ken Kutaragi left Sony computer Entertainment division?

he is currently a CEO of Cellius that is Subsidiary of Sony.

@42 He’s Honorary Chairman of SCE. He doesn’t pull the strings there anymore.

@43 We actually don’t know if he is pulling the strings or not.
Sure he is not in the position of Kaz Hirai, but i’m sure that Playstation 4 or whatever this thing will be, he is going to work with it.

@44 Well, seeing as he has retired from SCE, is only in a honorary role, and has his own stuff going on as you pointed out, I think its fairly safe to say he isn’t pulling the strings. Kaz Hirai is now the CEO, and works differently from how his predecessor did.

Im sure he still knows whats going on, but I doubt he’s got much say in it. Why would he?

@45 I pointed out on Cellius, it’s a subsidiary of Sony that is working with Cell technology for Sony (With PS3). + he also founded a new internet company.

I think he is not retired for 100%. But who knows really…

Hopefully the psp2 will finally have a second analog stick and touch screen.

As for the ps4, hopefully they’ll abandon the cell like IBM has and go with an Intel processor that’s more pc-like. They can just tell the SDF whatever hyperbolic gobbledygook they want to hear since they’ll blindly accept it.

i imagine, not next gen, but the one after it, there will be ps wars wehn Somy decides to make theior own OS & they combine the Playstation with their VAIO computers, sounds stupid i know, but it’s all possible

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get this current system right you jackasses!