Don’t have time to watch the two-hour long PlayStation 4 announcement? Here it is in 3 minutes, with the most important bits.

So, how about that PlayStation 4 right? Good looking console that. Well, it might be if Sony had bothered to actually SHOW the hardware. According to Shuhei Yoshida (president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios) they didn’t show the actual console because they “really wanted to explain what we’ve done with the DualShock 4, but as far as the system itself we have to keep something new for later. Otherwise you’d get bored.” Well alright then; nothing like a console reveal without actually revealing the console. Obviously Sony is keeping that surprise for E3, otherwise they’d run the risk of having nothing new to share next to Microsoft, which will in all likelihood reveal the next Xbox at the show in June.

Still, if you think about, how often do you actually look at your console? Aside from jamming games into the things, you hardly look at the consoles as they sit quietly (or not so quietly if it’s an Xbox 360) on your entertainment unit. One could argue that the controller is the most important part of any console (Nintendo certainly would!), so it kind of makes sense that Sony chose to focus on the DualShock 4 rather than the PlayStation 4 unit itself.

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, how about addressing that headline? After the jump you’ll find a trailer for the PlayStation 4. It’s rather brief but it also shows you clips from all of the games that were revealed last night. Convenient! Alternatively, Wesley jacked himself up on super-java-juice and guarana in order to liveblog the event at 1AM this morning. You can read that awesome over-view (complete with screenshots and his opinion of the hardware inside the PS4) right over here.

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Will this be the last rumour we post regarding the PlayStation 4? Man, I really hope so! Bring on Wednesday’s Sony press conference already.

Today’s rumour covers things like backwards compatibility and Sony’s 2012 acquisition of Gaikai streaming service. Basically, the two go hand-in-hand if The Wall Street Journal is to be believed – and most of the time they are.

Here’s the gist of it: because the PlayStation 4 is allegedly running off AMD x86 chips, the new hardware architecture will be incompatible with earlier PlayStation models. That pretty much rules out Sony’s entire back catalogue of games being made available on the PS4. In order to get around that, PlayStation 3 titles (and original PlayStation and PS2 titles) will supposedly be made available through game streaming service Gaikai.

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Destructoid has managed to get hold of a picture of what could be the new DualShock controller for the unannounced PlayStation 4. For weeks now, rumours have been doing the rounds that the PS4 controller will feature a built-in touchscreen, which you can see in the image above. It’s been suggested that this image is of a prototype controller and that it is entirely legit.

A number of things worth pointing out: the D-pad on the left looks to be made out of one piece of plastic rather than the individual directional buttons found on previous DualShock controllers. That’s not a good thing, because those individual directional buttons made fighting games that much better on PS3; compare that to the D-pad on the Xbox 360 controller, which was rubbish enough for Microsoft to correct in subsequent iterations of their controller. Then, it looks like there’s a speaker grill just below what is assumed to be the touchscreen. That’s a leaf out of Nintendo’s Wii Remote and GamePad book right there. And then, let’s point out the elephant in the room, shall we? What’s up with the blue light in the top of the controller? Are we looking at PlayStation Move support built directly into the new DualShock?

Loads of questions, tons of speculation and a hype train that’s gaining some serious momentum. Here’s hoping next week’s special Sony press conference isn’t to announce a new Wonderbook license agreement or something.

Source: Destructoid

Another day, another PlayStation 4 rumour. This time the rumour involves Sony’s supposed target price for their next console. According to “a reputable Japanese newspaper” (as Eurogamer calls it) Sony is aiming to sell the PlayStation 4 for about ¥40, 000.00. That translates to about $428.00 or just over R3, 800.00 at the current exchange rate.

If this rumoured pricing is accurate, our guess is that the PlayStation 4 will be around the R4, 500.00 to R5, 000.00 mark. Don’t get your hopes up though, because for now this is pure conjecture. It would be a nice change though, considering Sony’s hardware has, in the past, been exceptionally pricey at launch. Why, just the other day I found the box for my 60GB PlayStation 3 launch model and it still had a R7, 000.00 price tag stuck to it.

Sony is expected to unveil the next PlayStation at a press event in New York on 20 February.

Source: Eurogamer

Honestly, there is such a massive emphasis on that “rumour” bit in the above headline. Edge-Online has compiled a two page round-up of a bunch of PlayStation 4 rumours. Obviously, Edge is citing its own “industry sources”, but for the rest of us it’s safe to file this in the folder marked “S” for Super-Massive-Rumour.

According to Edge’s sources the PlayStation 4 will be out in time for the festive season this year. However, it’ll only be out in Japan and the USA. For Europe and the UK, and that includes South Africa because we share launch windows with these regions, the PlayStation 4 will only be out in “early 2014” due to “the complexities involved in European distribution.”

It is believed that Sony will reveal their new console on 20 February, which is a little over two weeks away. Late last week the company released a teaser video inviting people to head over to playstation.com to watch a streamed announcement in the coming weeks.

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