The PlayStation 4 debuted today in the US, seven years after its predecessor the PS3 made its debut, as gamers queued up across the country for a midnight launch.
Priced from $399, the PS4 is $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, and has beaten the Microsoft game console to market by one week.
Consumers eager to get their hands on the new Sony console began queuing a day before it went on sale, with some fans waiting patiently since 4am for the midnight launch.
Although the PS4 does not go on sale in the UK until 29 November, Sony has already got to work on marketing the next-generation game console. The Japanese company took over the iconic Oxo Tower on London's South Bank, replacing the vertical Oxo sign with the console's familiar circle, cross, square and triangle icons from its controller.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the details you'll want to know about Sony's new console.
$399.99: The launch price of the PS4, a significant drop from the PS3’s much-maligned opening price of $499.99 for the 20-GB model and $599.99 for 60 GB. More important, that price point places the device $100 below the opening cost of the Xbox One, reversing the price advantage the Xbox 360 held over the PS3.
For early adopters, Sony is throwing in some nice freebies, including a free month of PlayStation Plus, free month of Sony Music Unlimited, and a $10 PlayStation Store credit.
Unfortunately, you can't play PS3 games on the PS4. The same goes for most peripherals. Except for the PS Move, none of your PS3 peripherals (controllers, etc.) are compatible with the PS4. The same goes for older Bluetooth headsets and headphones, at least for now.
If you've already purchased PS3 versions of select titles, you can upgrade to the PS4 version for just $10 more. This only applies to a handful of games.
The PS4 and Xbox One offer very similar hardware specs but the two consoles aren't entirely the same on the inside. The PS4's power supply is built-into the system, whereas the Xbox One still has a massive external power brick. The PS4's processor combines an eight-core AMD "Jaguar" CPU with an AMD next-generation Radeon GPU and 8GB of 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM. The two consoles have very similar CPUs but the PS4's GPU is beefier (and that 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM is faster than the Xbox One's 2,133MHz DDR3 RAM). On paper at least, the PS4 holds the advantage for gaming performance. (Extremetech has a good rundown of how the final hardware specs compare on the two systems.) But you can still expect the games to look nearly identical on each system. It's unclear whether that will change over time as game developers figure out how to get the most out of each system.
To play multiplayer games online, you'll need a PS Plus account ($50 a year), which is a departure from the PS3's free online play model.
There are 13 entertainment apps available at launch, including Netflix and Crackle. Amazon and YouTube are no-shows for now. A browser is on board, but it doesn't play YouTube videos.
The PS4 includes a 500GB hard drive, but you can replace/upgrade it yourself -- and it's pretty easy to do.
The PS4 has a "near-perfect" controller (according to our CNET review) that's a big upgrade over the PS3's. It has a built-in speaker and it also doubles as a motion controller (it has a light on the front like the PS Move).
Unlike the Xbox One, the PS4 doesn't feature any sort of TV overlay functionality -- it's called OneGuide on the Xbox One -- that allows you to switch easily from watching TV to playing games. On the Xbox One, you can also play a game and display live TV in a small panel on the side (Xbox One's "snap" feature lets you run two apps at once, with one of them in a picture-in-picture window). As an integrated home-entertainment device the Xbox One is more sophisticated out of the gate.
The PS4 has a tighter link to to the PlayStation Vita. You can play PS4 games on your Vita using PS4 Link, a remote/mirror setting that streams the game to the Vita and turns it into a second screen. We experienced virtually no lag in our tests.
