Sony aims at gamers with new PlayStation 4 console

Sony unleashes its powerful new PlayStation 4 video game console on Friday, seeking to win over consumers with immersive, realistic game worlds and easy online sharing with friends. The successor to the PlayStation 3 makes its debut in North America, hitting Europe later in the month. "Millions of gamers are eagerly awaiting the launch of PlayStation 4," analyst Scott Steinberg at the consultancy TechSavvy told AFP. "It promises to define what the next generation of gaming and online connected titles will bring and help cement set-top devices' new position in a world increasingly defined by smartphones, tablets, free-to-play, social, online games and mobile devices." The PS4 comes seven years after its predecessor and a week ahead of the release of a new-generation Xbox One console by Sony rival Microsoft. The PS4 is priced at $399, while Xbox One will have a $499 price. "With the PS4, we wanted to make a high-performance machine at a low price to put one in every living room across the world," Sony Computer Entertainment America vice president Adam Boyes said while giving AFP an early look at the new console. "We created a box that is capable of amazing things." Along with building more powerful computing engines into consoles for cinematic graphics, engineers built in social features and took lessons from smartphone and tablet games that are making inroads. "Like a Swiss Army knife, we are taking the best of what we learn from mobile devices and putting it in the console," Boyes said. "It is not just around the TV in your living room, it is about expanding that." A button on the PS4 controller allows players to share video snippets or screen captures from game play at leading online social network Facebook. Pictures of game play can also be shared by firing off links via Twitter. Players can let friends watch them play live, with video streamed at online platforms. "For the first time in the history of consoles, you literally press a button and broadcast to everyone you know," Boyes said. While Sony tools let game makers extend play to smartphones or tablets, the Japanese video game titan spotlighted ways it has tied its handheld Vita device to consoles. A PS4 version of Ubisoft's hit video game Assassin's Creed Black Flag lets players use Vita as a controller for the console, or even use the handheld to pick up playing where they left off on a television screen. Dozens of PS4 games demonstrated behind closed doors at a hotel in Manhattan revealed that studios are using the console's processing power to make scenes realistic. "With the additional power, we can now add a bunch of technology to give you an even more immersive world," said Ubisoft's Sylvain Trottier, who is in charge of the next-generation console version of hit videogame "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag." "For sure, future titles are going to be even more amazing and more realistic," he continued, referring to the potential of PS4 and Xbox One. The PS4 has eliminated need to chose between game features and vivid graphics in games, according to "Killzone Shadow Fall' art directors Arjan Bak and Misa Baas. "We can now actually do a lot more of everything," Baas said, noting that the exclusive PlayStation science fiction shooter created by Guerrilla Games studio has gotten "brainy" as well as immersive. "We've gone from YouTube video quality to something that is much more cinema." Activision crafted an even more vivid version of hot-selling "Call of Duty: Ghosts" for the PS4. "We were able to throw more on next-gen systems," Activision executive Daniel Suarez told AFP. "As developers get more familiar with the hardware, work with Sony or Microsoft, you are going to see an evolution of games looking better, playing better, and new paradigms of how people play." Doors opened by new consoles could include virtual reality, enhanced motion-sensing controls, and "things we haven't even thought of yet," according to Suarez. "We are just at that first look at the summit of what is going to be possible," Suarez said. For Sony, that future includes bringing independent game makers into the fold. "They are making it a lot easier for people to self-publish on the PlayStation," said Katie Hallahan of Phoenix Online Studios. "It means the player will have a good variety of games, not all shooters and action but cool stuff that is a little different," she added. "Xbox has been noticing that and catching up." Source: Hindustan TimesImage
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PlayStation 4 Will Stream Games

Not surprisingly, the PlayStation 4 rumors have been flowing as of late. With the expected reveal of the console coming this Wednesday, February 20 in New York City, it only makes sense that little bits of information would begin to emerge about what we’ll be seeing. The newest rumor is in regard to the next PlayStation’s ability to stream games. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “Sony Corp. is planning to offer technology to stream games to its next videogame console,” according to its own sources. The new technology, to be unveiled Wednesday along with the new console, will allow users to play games
delivered over the Internet, these people said. The streaming service, they added, is designed to use current PlayStation 3 titles on the new console; the new device is also expected to play new games stored on optical discs. As WSJ points out, such a move on Sony’s part would be unsurprising. Even when it was drowning in red ink, it still took a massive risk when it bought streaming service Gaikai for $380 million. There is absolutely no doubt that, with an investment that significant at such a difficult timefor Sony, Gaikai's technology will be poised to play an important role in Sony’s future. Streaming games to PlayStation 4 (and perhaps other Sony devices) would be significant, giving gamers access to a wide array of titles that they never had to purchase outright. This could suggest that Sony may have a game rental-like service on its next PlayStation, or perhaps even a new subscription service that would give gamers access to a library of offerings. At this point, everything remains speculative. We've reached out to Sony for official comment and will update when we hear back. In the meantime, catch up on all of the pertinent PlayStation 4 news and rumors, including (but not limited to) information on PS4's controller, word of a new LittleBigPlanet and the possibility of  Source: IGN
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Steve Ballmer: hits and misses from the Microsoft chairman

Microsoft's former CEO and chairman will be remembered as much for his failures as his successes
Microsoft's outgoing chairman Steve Ballmer once famously declared "I love this company". But as he departs the software giant, the question is, did Microsoft love him? The enthusiastic tech billionaire, renowned for his rousing speeches that earned him the internal nickname Mr Monkey Boy, leaves the company significantly diminished from its 1990s heyday, yet in an improving financial situation and with its digital fingers still in many pies. So should Ballmer's 14-year reign be seen as a success or a failure? And what will Bill Gates' successor's legacy be, as he takes up a new life as head of the US basketball franchise the Los Angeles Clippers? The various hits and misses from Ballmer's time at the top could end up defining his legacy. Miss – Smartphones: In 2007, when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' unveiled the iPhone, Ballmer dismissed the new device as being "not a very good email machine", which would never do for business customers, because it lacked a physical keyboard, the BBC reports. Apple ended up cornering the exploding smartphone market while the Windows Phone, launched in 2010, had to make do with a small slice of the pie. Hit – Gaming consoles: Ballmer is widely credited with helping the growth of Xbox, one of Microsoft's biggest success stories of the past two decades and the jewel in the crown of the company's entertainment and devices division. Since its launch in 1996, Xbox has grown to be one of the main competitors in the console wars, holding its own against products from Sony and Nintendo. Miss – Tablets: Launched in October 2012 with a "belated attempt" to take on the market-leading iPad, the ill-fated Surface tablet failed to find much of an audience. Despite a huge advertising campaign, Microsoft was forced to write off nearly $1bn a year after it was released, ComputerWorld notes. Website Hothardware claims the device has cost the company $1.7bn in less than two years. Hit - Windows XP: At its peak, Windows XP was the operating system used on more than 80 per cent of PCs, CNN notes. The popular software has shown "surprising staying power" and in 2013, 12 years after its launch, it could still be found on 39 per cent of the world's desktop computers. Miss – Internet Explorer 6: In the early days of the world wide web, after seeing off competition from Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer had a near total stranglehold on all online browsing, with a market share of 96 per cent in 2002. Nine years later, Forbes' technology writer Mark Gibbs wrote an impassioned piece entitled "Internet Explorer must die". The article branded Microsoft's sixth incarnation of their browser as an "epic failure". Gibbs wrote: "The security and standards compliance of this browser were simply terrible and various fixes were generated and released by Microsoft at a pace that seemed glacial given how crucial IE was to both users and Microsoft’s market presence and ambitions online". In 2014 IE's market share is put somewhere around 50 per cent, and is on the wane. Ballmer worked at Microsoft for 34 years, during which time the company’s astronomical growth turned him into a billionaire. His shares in Microsoft now exceed those of Bill Gates and amount to 3.99 per cent of the company – which makes him worth more than $15bn. For further concise, balanced comment and analysis on the week's news, try The Week magazine. Subscribe today and get 6 issues completely free. Source: The Week UK
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