Please Sony dont turn it into another Nissan experience. More American and European cars and no more standards, all cars should have cockpit view and also live editor.
I have plenty of cars that aren't Nissans.
Admittedly, most of mine are Japanese, but keep in mind that in the Premium car lists, the balance is tilted a bit more towards American and European cars this time.
You have to expect Sony is working on something to be considered a new technology (obviously nothing brand new, but something they have taken and built upon). It's clear a general system power increase is the basis, but what else can they do as far as making it unique and make it another multi-purpose machine. Sony will probably opt for the more advanced system (vs. a cheaper spec system, which Microsoft may shoot for), but I wouldn't expect the system to be anything less than $499 at release, most likely $599 for the first year at least. Remember it has to be good enough to be future proof for at least another 6-7 years (that's 2020). So it's gotta be a relatively significant hardware update, which won't come cheap.
You guys expecting an expensive super system are forgetting a few things.
Without a doubt, the form games are going to be delivered on is an optical format. It's cheap and easy to manufacture Blu-ray discs now, and the capacity is immense. The drives are cheap and fast. And SONY isn't going to want to ignore as much as 40% of the world market which doesn't have broadband internet, or the ability to download massive games. On top of that, even with hard drives in the terrabyte range, you can only store so many games and movies, while you can have a huge library of DVDs and Blu-rays.
The drives will most likely be terrabyte hard drives, with possible speeds of 10Krpm, and once again, off the shelf user upgradeable. In 2013, a 4TB drive will probably cost SONY $25 or so.
PS4 won't need 16GB of ram, or an nVidia 800 family GPU. Even if it has one, the GPU won't need to be super powerful. The reason that you need around $800-3000 when you build the latest gaming PC is because to start with, Windoze is a memory and resource hog. And because monitor resolution is getting a bit crazy with the pixel depth. Even in a world with anti-aliasing, a bunch of gamers have become deranged in how much resolution they're demanding at extreme framerates, and any time they see a pixel or a frame hiccup, they throw tantrums on chat boards. Geh.
HDTV resolution is most likely going to remain at or close to 1080p, and 120hz max though most likely 60hz, for the foreseeable future. Experiments with ultra-resolution TV is a mixed bag, with amazing clarity and a near-real image, but also one that causes motion sickness and epileptic-like reactions in many people. Until these issues get worked out satisfactorily, TVs will only have faster framerates, most likely 120hz. A GPU from the nVidia 400 or 500 family should be able to handle this easily, though developers will probably want something in the latest geneaology for the most effective rendering and best effects. But even then, a trimmed down 700 or 800 series GPU will probably only be $50. Assisted with SPE-like co-processors, it will have incredible muscle.
A CPU of whatever family, Cell, Intel or whatever, will most likely just be in the 3.5ghz range, if that, be multicore and perhaps in a dual CPU arrangement, though with a constellation of SPEs tailored for specific tasks, a second multicore CPU may not be necessary. This technology is mature already, and though a custom ASIC CPU and SPEs will still be more expensive to start, perhaps $75-100 per unit, the price will drop dramatically as manufacture gets up to speed, and bad chips become rarer. This new architecture will be tailor-made to chew through the processing of physics, A.I. and laying out of massive playfields, and won't need the latest in nanotechnology to do it.
Because this system won't be made for Windoze or the PC pixel bigots who want ridiculous resolutions running at better than 200hz, the amount of ram won't be astronomical, but around 4-7 gigabytes, 3 or 4GB of system ram and 2-3GB for graphics. Even very fast ram shouldn't cost much to solder into the motherboard.
Connectivity will be basic off the shelf stuff this time. HDMI is mature, as are whatever wireless tech the PS4 will be equipped with, as well as wired for those of us who like fewer microwaves or better connection to the internet. And none of the internal components will be saddled with a PC motherboard with the potential bottlenecks of a PCIe buss structure, made for ease of installation but hampered somewhat in performance.
Because of this, the PS4 isn't going to have to essentially be a $2000 gaming PC in a little black or beige box (I'm betting black again), with the equivalent of a $300 graphics card and a 5ghz multicore CPU cluster fed by dozens of gigabytes of ram. I suspect that PS4 will be $349 to $399 and be in one basic form as the PS1 and 2 were to amortize costs better with one SKU to sell and ease production. Just peek at my previous post mentioning the prices you can get the old tech these days, and then keep in mind how the cost will continue to drop over the next two years.
While GT6 could indeed be made for the PS3, I suspect that PS4 is just over the gaming horizon with a 2013 launch, and within a year, to have GT6 on it. This is what happened with PS2 and GT3, though in the west it took a little longer for us to get our copies. But remember how it went with GT5, and while they intended to have a worldwide release, you guys in Europe had to wait a little longer - we waited a few days, or one, if I recall. But whatever the hold up is in Europe, most likely arranging the licensing and languages for dozens of countries, you can bet that SONY Europe is going to work like mad to keep that delay from happening, or be very long.
And as I said previously, PS4 would get a huge boost from a killer app. Which game would fit that definition best? Ratchet & Clank is a big seller and quite popular, but not quite. Uncharted is too, but no. The same for Killzone. Metal Gear Solid would be on such a pedestal. But remember what was a platinum seller just on pre-orders?
GT5 Prologue.
A GT6 with 500-plus Premium level cars and 50 or more race locations impeccably modeled would sure do it. I know some of you insist that would mean 10 years of development. Not so. The Premium level cars and tracks are already the pinnacle of what we'd expect, as they're just about photo-real in detail, and models will work on any system. The same with artwork. And since developers will be involved in the design of PS4, the OS and development tools, you can bet that one developer in particular is intimately involved with the PS4, so making code for it won't be a huge obstacle.
This all depends on what SONY wants, Kaz will do, and the world holding together, but this is my judgment call on it.
The reason being that they have a ready market with up to 10 million gamers hot for the latest Halo or GEARS! game, and the current Madden or Fifa. And if the XBox3 doesn't measure up to PS4 in prowess, the fans will tell us to STFU and go on playing their games, much as the Wii fans have, though for much shorter periods of time. However, they're sitting on tons of cash and have prestige on the line, so I'm thinking while XBox3 won't be quite as cool or powerful, it'll still be close. Whether or not they jump on the 3D bandwagon is another matter, but I'm not expecting them to make a Virtual Boy dud like Nintendo did.
