PlayStation 4: The Last of the Game Consoles

There’s an excellent chance the PlayStation 4 will be the last videogame console ever, at least as we understand the term.

On Wednesday, Sony unveiled (sort of) the PlayStation 4, its next home gaming platform, at a lavish two-hour event in New York City attended by over 1,000 journalists and fans. While the embattled electronics maker did not yet have an actual device to show or even a dummy form factor, it spent the time talking up its philosophy behind the system. PlayStation 4, a constant stream of presenters reiterated, was for gamers: sick new graphics, ungodly amounts of RAM and cool new gaming-centric features like the ability to stream gameplay videos in real time.

Somewhere jammed in the middle of that two-hour orgy, Sony gave the tiniest of cursory nods to the idea that a PlayStation box is now expected to serve up streaming movies and television, too, with a single slide that announced support for all the major providers like Netflix, Amazon, et al., which was whisked off the Jumbotron faster than the human eye could process all of the logos. Movies aren’t games, so who cares?

“We’re focusing on that core gamer, the gamer who wants the ultimate experience and lives for gaming,” Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton told Wired contributor Steven Levy after the event. “If you’re not a gamer, I don’t think you get it.”

Not a gamer? Beat it, loser. We don’t even want you buying PlayStation 4. So what is all this, then? Why is Sony rallying the gamer troops under its banner? PlayStation 4′s reveal preceded the as-yet-unscheduled announcement of the next Xbox. And it’s clear that Sony is attempting to preemptively define itself against Microsoft.

Over the last few years, Microsoft has been attempting to change the way people think about its Xbox 360. It launched it in 2005 as a game console, the same way Sony is talking up the PlayStation 4 today. But now it wants you to think of it as an ecumenical home entertainment system, capable of streaming television, movies, music and everything else. Depending on your cable provider, you can use Xbox to control your live TV experience too. Microsoft has opened a new studio in Los Angeles — not to produce games but to produce Hollywood entertainment content.

source: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/02/ps4-analysis/?cid=co5996054

Well i am not a Playstation 3 fan as i own the Xbox360 so im not bothered atall by this

I own both ps3 and x360 and i prefer the x360. sony will have to pull something out their ass for me to buy a ps4. x720 will dominate i think.