PlayStation Meeting 2013

Prior to the official announcement, the new Sony prefix appeared in all the news under the name Orbis ^[3] , closer to the announcement date another name appeared - Thebes ^[4] . Almost all agreed that the prefix will go on sale during the winter holidays 2013 ^{[5] [6]} .

There were various assumptions about when Sony will officially talk about its next prefix. Among the possible large events were called:

• Destination PlayStation (February 2013), which ended up being dedicated to future games for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita ^{[7] [8]} ;

• Game Developers Conference (March 2013) ^[9] ;

• E3 2013 with the firm plan of Sony to release its new console before Microsoft (June 2013) ^[6] .

February 1, 2013 on Sony's official website appears information about an event called PlayStation Meeting 2013 (date: February 20, 2013) ^[10] , for this a separate page has been set up on the site where you can subscribe to the newsletter. A video is also posted on the page, in which the main objects are the icons depicted on the buttons of the DualShock joystick, later on the page added retrospective reviews of the life of the PlayStation ^[11] , PlayStation 2 ^[12] , PlayStation 3 ^[13] , PSP and PS Vita ^[14] . Almost no one doubts that on February 20 the PlayStation 4 will be shown, and in the end the line of games for Sony consoles: InFamous / InFamous 2 , LittleBigPlanet / LittleBigPlanet 2 , Twisted Metal , God of War , Gran Turismo and others ^[15] .

Almost no one doubted that during this press conference the next Sony console would be presented ^[16] , since it was at the same press conference called PlayStation Meeting 2011 in 2011 that PS Vita was presented ^{[17 ]} .

February 20, 2013 in New York at the PlayStation Meeting 2013 Sony Corporation announced the eighth-generation gaming console PlayStation 4 ^[18] .

The announcement of the new console was made from the stage by the head of Sony, Andrew House ( English Andrew House )). After him, the chief architect of the PlayStation 4 console Mark Cerny appeared on the stage, telling us that work on this console began 5 years ago, that is, in 2007-2008, and gave a little information about the architecture and technical specifications PS4 . Although the PlayStation 3 is considered a successful console, but in the next iteration Sony wanted to interfere with the interaction of developers and hardware as little as possible, so the PlayStation 4 was decided to create from existing components so that the development for it was not much different from the development for PC . The only accurate data reported on the console was the amount of RAM - 8GB. ^[19] .

As a demonstration of the high performance of the PlayStation 4 , the Unreal Engine 4 and Havok Physics engines ^{[20] are} shown.

Separate emphasis was placed on the fact that the PlayItem 4 completely redesigned the GUI , in which it was decided to completely abandon the use of XrossMediaBar (the first sign of rejection of this concept was the absence of XrossMediaBar already in PS Vita ) ^[21] .

The console itself was never shown (which was noticed by Microsoft ^[22] ), but a Sony representative showed the new DualShock 4 and said that the console would come with a stereo camera. The official images of these accessories are available on the official Sony website after the presentation ^{[23] [24]} . The president of Sony Worldwide Studios explained the decision to refuse to demonstrate the appearance of the PlayStation 4 by saying that the company wanted to draw public attention to the key innovations offered by Sony - the new controller and the Share button, and to show the appearance of the console later so that no one would get bored waiting for it to arrive on sale ^[25] (in the same place he noted that he had not seen the live PS4 , but he saw DualShock 4 the day before the official presentation ^[26] ). Another representative of the company said that the appearance is not so important at all, it is important what tasks the proposed solution can fulfill ^[27] .

Support for PlayStation 4 has been announced by a huge number of gaming studios and publishers ^[28] (149 names of partner companies are listed in the issued press release ^[29] ).

Gaikai CEO Dave Perry has announced the integration of cloud services with the PlayStation 4 : you can start playing games in downloadable games and demos from the PlayStation Store on PlayStation 4 right away, as it will use streaming technology and the player will not have to wait until the game fully downloaded. If desired, the game process can be transferred from the PlayStation 4 to PS Vita and continue to play the same game on the pocket console ^[30] . Backward compatibility with games for consoles of previous generations of Sony , as expected, will not, but it will be possible to play similar games "from the cloud" ^{[31] [32]} . Using Gaikai technologies will allow players to watch on their screen how someone else is playing, and even more - the opportunity to gain control of the character of the game that another person is playing ^[33] .

Special applications for Android and iOS will allow users of smartphones and tablets to interact with the PlayStation Network without using a console: it is possible to buy games and some other functions ^[34] .

The list of possible participants consisted of: Guerrilla Games (developing the Killzone series ), a studio that had previously worked on the Blur game , Ivory Tower , Evolution Studios (responsible for the MotorStorm series and participation is indirectly confirmed by the behavior of the studio’s representatives on social networks ^{[35] [36] [37 ] ]} ).

The announcement of the Final Fantasy Versus XIII games was expected (a representative of Square Enix and part-time producer of the Final Fantasy Versus XIII game, Shinji Hashimoto arrives in New York the day before PlayStation Meeting 2013 ^[38] ) and The Last Guardian for PlayStation 4 , on the eve it became known that for the PlayStation 3 these games will not be ^[39] . As an addition, the PS Vita announcement supporting work in 4G networks was considered - PS Vita 4G ^[40] ( February 7, 2013 Sony filed a patent application for the PS Vita version with HDMI output and USB connectors ^[41] ).

The list of current participants and the presented games that will be ready to launch PlayStation 4 for sale:

• Quantic Dream (representative: David Cage ): no project has been announced, the technical demo of the PlayStation 4 features is shown ^[42] ;

• Ubisoft (representative: Yves Guillemot and Jonathan Morin ^[43] ): a new excerpt of the gameplay of the Watch Dogs game is shown, it is confirmed that the game will be available first on PlayStation 4 , and then for other platforms ^{[44] [45]} (but initially the game is developed for the PC , and only then it will be ported to the console ^[46] );

• Square Enix (representatives: Yoshihisa Hashimoto ( Eng. Yoshihisa Hashimoto ) and Shinji Hashimoto ( Eng. Shinji Hashimoto )): a technical demo of the Luminous Engine is shown and something special is promised at the E3 2013 exhibition ^[47] ;

• Sucker Punch Productions : the exclusive PlayStation 4 game Infamous: Second Son was announced, a teaser ^[48] with gameplay elements ^{[49] was} shown;

• Jonathan Blow ( English Jonathan Blow ): introduced his game The Witness (first shown in 2011 ^[50] ), which will debut on PlayStation 4 ^[51] and, according to the author, will run faster than on PC ^[52] ;

• Capcom (representative of Yoshinori Ono ): shows the technical demo of the Panta Rhei engine (the next stage in the development of the MT Framework ), which creates a project codenamed Deep Down (it is expected that the prototype will grow in Dragon's Dogma 2 ^[53] ) for a new generation of consoles ^[54] ;

• Evolution Studios : Demo of Playcation 4 exclusive Driveclub game is shown ^[55] ;

• Media Molecule : an unnamed project only for PlayStation 4 is presented, the essence of which is the ability to create 3D objects using the PS Move controller (this was the first confirmation that the PlayStation 4 supports working with PS Move ) ^[56] ;

• Guerrilla Games : the next PlayStation 4 exclusive game in the Killzone series is presented, the gameplay is shown - Killzone: Shadow Fall ^[57] ;

• Sony Computer Entertainment (representative Mark Cerny ): shows the gameplay of the developed platform game Knack ^[58] , demonstrated the possibility of remote play on PS Vita ^[59] . The possibility of using PS Vita as a second gaming device is achieved using Gaikai technology ^[60] ;

• Blizzard Entertainment (representative Chris Metzen ): the release of the game Diablo III on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 has been announced ^[61] ;

• Bungie (spokesman Eric Hirshberg ): Destiny for the PlayStation 4 has been announced, a small demo has been demonstrated ^[62] .