Playstation 4 Meeting (20FEB13)Last night I gave the PS4 meeting some thought and this time considered what it meant for Microsoft and their response.

Sony has essentially made the statement; its console will be the most technologically capable, of the coming generation of consoles.

8GB GDDR5 really is a home run hitter because from a technical perspective, it's a gargantuan undertaking. Sony doesn't fabricate these chips, it buys them from suppliers and GDDR5 modules come in at a maximum of 512MB per module. Unless they have gotten a hold of a larger chip that no one knows about, that would mean cramming in 16 of these chips onto the PS4 motherboard. For perspective, Nvidias GeForce Titan graphics card (coming ...

Playstation 4 Meeting (20FEB13)Last night I gave the PS4 meeting some thought and this time considered what it meant for Microsoft and their response.

Sony has essentially made the statement; its console will be the most technologically capable, of the coming generation of consoles.

8GB GDDR5 really is a home run hitter because from a technical perspective, it's a gargantuan undertaking. Sony doesn't fabricate these chips, it buys them from suppliers and GDDR5 modules come in at a maximum of 512MB per module. Unless they have gotten a hold of a larger chip that no one knows about, that would mean cramming in 16 of these chips onto the PS4 motherboard. For perspective, Nvidias GeForce Titan graphics card (coming in at a whopping $1000) offers "just" 6GB of onboard GDDR5. Those chips are pricy and they're mass ordering them. That is a huge financial investment on Sony's part.

Microsoft's "Durango/720" in comparison has 8GB DDR3. Unless they've done what Sony have done and made an equally large financial backing for in advance, and have released nerfed final dev kits for some reason (before the final final one), then it seems as if Sony will, spec wise, have a far more capable machine than Microsoft will have.

But we've been here before right?

This is Sony's MO. They did it with the cell processor and split memory pool with the PS3 but that all just made it a nightmare for developers to work with. Well Sony have admitted to having made mistakes with their last console launch and an underlying theme at this meeting was a vow they weren't going to do the same again. They've reached out to help out developers as much as they can and make sure that all the big ones will have a hand in creating a platform that works for them. It's a humble nod to the mistakes they made in the past and I'm sure it's one reason why at the meeting, so many developers were quite happy to rock up on stage and pledge their support.

Now getting to the games those devs are pushing out. For the most part they were pretty but they weren't colossally mind blowing besides Watch Dogs, and that's due to gameplay. The most exciting presentations were the tech demos. For perspective, the gameplay demos like KillZone and InFamous: Second Son was impressive enough but nothing to create a fanfare about (although the real-time rendering truly was superb). I hope these are analogous to what PS3 launch titles were like. Think back to Resistance Fall of Man and Heavenly Sword. Look at a trailer of those and see how far we've come. I imagine the tech demos where they really flexed their muscles are what we can expect for the majority of the lifespan. I'm personally psyched about Quantic Dream's next big game because Heavy Rain kicked ass and is still a gaming experience I won't soon forget as readily as I have countless other titles.

Other than the games and the system architecture, the other interesting part of the meeting was the "social technology" part of it. I despise the use of that phrase but it seems apt here. Being able to upload videos to a community, just like we do with screenshots is actually quite cool in my view, ESPECIALLY if I can do it in the background. I think it'd be something awesome if I were browsing my friends' profiles to see their videos and uber moments and know they were viewing my kickass moments too.

The background operations, multi-tasking and immediate power-resume features, all seem great steps in the right direction. I believe Sony is playing catch up in this arena and could potentially have done enough to level out the playing field a bit. Then again, it's more than likely they haven't if Microsoft bring out something new.

Gaikai was by far the most interesting of the social tech (urgh) features announced. The ability to stream and demo before buy and stream while downloading is truly next-gen. I'm not sure if Microsoft can pull a one-up here. Microsoft may well be working on a similar technology but we haven't heard much about it so far. Again Gaikai also alluded to tech which means that the entire Playstation back catalogue can be played on the PS4 in some form or another and that you could stream PS4 games to laptops, smartphones and tablets around the house. The former sounds cool but surely isn't a launch feature and the latter...sounds like fantasy, but if it comes to fruition, would be crazy and something which I'm sure no one can see into the future and judge how successful it would be.

Now no console, no price tag and no firm release date. These things should not have been expected. This is currently a two horse race and both Microsoft and Sony can throw switches that change their launch strategy. We're still about 10 months away from "Holiday 2013" and so Sony needs to keep some cards close to its chest. Those that expected those big three key details at the meeting (which unfortunately [and alarmingly] include a lot of publications) surely expected too much and are perhaps too naive about how big businesses play "the game".

Sony have pretty much announced everything they could have, which Microsoft can't really intervene with at this point.
Sony gave a Holiday 2013 deadline - something Microsoft MUST hit as well
Sony threw down its tech specs - something Microsoft is unlikely to be able to match this late in development cycle
Sony revealed its design ethos and what it did with its acquisitions - something which I'm sure will barely affect Microsoft's own strategy.

As it stands, Sony has stolen a march on Microsoft. The Xbox juggernaut is probably not going to roll over though and will probably lean on its unique technologies like Kinect to push itself forward. More to come!