The morning following Wednesday's PlayStation 4 announcement, Sony provided reporters access to Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida, who did not appear during the presentation, but nonetheless has been on-hand to talk to press about the company's direction for its new hardware.

Throughout yesterday's roundtable meeting, Yoshida was a mix of cagey and effusive, willing to talk at length about certain things left hanging following last night's announcement, and tabling others for a later date. Here's a brief overview of what was talked about, and how he chose to respond to those questions.

The Box

Much ado has been made about Sony's decision to not show the console box itself, instead opting to show the new DualShock 4 controller and the in-system interface. Yoshida was blunt about why this was the case, responding simply that the final design of the console is "not finalized." He was cagey about whether or not we'd see it, or really anything else regarding the PS4 prior to E3, opting to defer to his PR handler, who wouldn't confirm one way or the other.

The PlayStation 4 Eye

The new 3D camera peripheral, which was briefly touched on during Wednesday's presentation, is something Yoshida was happy to talk about and describe. "How it works is the PlayStation 4 Eye has two HD cameras," he said. "These two cameras can be used in several different ways. One way is to use as triangulation, so that the 3D space in front of the camera can be measured, and can separate the player image. Face tracking will be much more robust. Another way is to make our augmented reality games, like Wonderbook, look much nicer. Using one camera for the video streaming of the player image, and the other to focus elsewhere, two separate camera settings to optimize for whatever task."

He was, however, less willing to talk about how the Eye might be bundled with the system, saying only that "we are not ready to confirm what will or won't be in the box."

Used Games

Eurogamer effectively was able to get Yoshida to confirm last night that the PlayStation 4 won't feature any specific technology designed to prevent players from playing used games on their system. Since then, multiple quotes have popped up leading one to believe that maybe it's not as cut-and-dried as all of that. Yoshida's answer during our talk seemed to confirm his original statement, as he stated that "all disc games on PS4 will work with any PS4."

He was a bit more coy when addressing whether any such restrictions could be employed by other publishers, as with specific registration codes or other technologies designed to hinder the used market. All he would say was, "It's a publisher decision," and that "there are all sorts of capabilities."

Remote Play

One of Sony's big tentpole features for the PS4 is the notion that all PS4 games will potentially be playable via the Vita using remote play streaming. Yoshida was asked about whether or not all games would support this at launch. His response? "The remote play side, we are saying virtually every PS4 game will be cross-play compatible with PS Vita. I would be heartbroken if this functionality wasn't available at launch. My feeling is that we have to have all games work with this."

Gaikai

Yoshida was asked whether the Gaikai infrastructure would be something we'd see on other relevant PlayStation platforms, such as the PS3. "That's the vision," he replied. "That's what Dave Perry said. In the future, the ultimate goal is everything everywhere. When we say everywhere, we mean every device, including the smart phones, TVs, what have you. That's our goal."

Backward Compatibility

Sony made it relatively clear last night that PS3 games and other PlayStation titles would not be natively supported on the PS4. However, he was less clear when discussing the possibility of future emulation for PS1 and/or PS2 games, saying only, "we are not talking about our Emulation plans yet" and that "there won't be native support for those games."

Region Locking

I asked Yoshida about the possibility of region locking going away in the next generation. However, he did not respond, saying only that he knows the answer to the question, but did not want to get an unhappy call from his PR department.

Peripheral Compatibility

When asked whether or not the PS4 would support previous hardware, Yoshida explained that the system will not support old DualShock controllers, but will obviously support PS Move controllers, as was briefly demonstrated last night.

3D Support

Sony made a big push toward stereoscopic 3D gaming on the PlayStation 3, but hasn't mentioned up to this point any potential support for it in the PS4. Yoshida had this to say on the subject:

"It's not a focus. It does do [stereoscopic 3D], and it does do it better. Because of our basic capability is higher, more games will run in 1080p, 60 frames, etc, so it's an easier and better experience when you watch on a 3D TV. But the 3D was a big thing a couple of years ago, we made it a big thing, because it was led by the consumer electronics side of Sony. And you know, we like what you can do with 3D on the PS3. But now the consumer electronics side of Sony have shifted focus from 3D TVs to something else. So, if they're not talking about it, why are we?"

4K Support

Yoshida was asked about whether or not the PS4 would support Sony's proprietary high-resolution, titled 4K. According to him, the system will provide 4K output for TVs that support it, but that content will be "personal content," IE home movies and such. Games, video services, and the like will not run in the 4K resolution for the foreseeable future.

Hard Drive

We know the PS4 will have a local hard drive, but how upgradeable/interchangeable that hard drive might be is still a question mark. Yoshida's response? "We're not ready to talk about the exchangability of the hard drives, but it's our dream that people are filling up their hard drives on PS4. Because on PS3, not many people did."

An App Store?

When asked whether or not the PS4 might support a more developer-focused self-publishing system like the Apple or Android app store, Yoshida remarked that he would very much like to see something along these lines in the future. "Our network, PlayStation Mobile, is really targeting to do that," he said. "Small developers can publish from any country we support to everywhere we publish. We are discussing internally how we can make it a bit more open, a bit easier, especially for smaller developers to publish. We see the importance of supporting these smaller developers, because they provide some very unique and interesting ideas to the platform. So somewhere in between what we are doing with PlayStation Mobile, and the kind of console publishing model, we'd like to work toward for PS4."

A More Western Influence

I asked Yoshida about the stronger presence of western developers and figureheads at last night's event than in past years. More specifically, I asked whether this represented any kind of sea change at the company, or was simply more emblematic of what Sony had to show at this time. His response wasn't a direct acknowledgment of either answer, though it did provide a bit of insight into his and Mark Cerny's role in the current scope of PlayStation 4 development.

"More and more development is done outside of Japan. Mark Cerny is a game developer, but he's very knowledgeable about hardware, he speaks Japanese, he's a nice partner to have. Because it takes a certain kind of understanding to work with Japan. It's a very strange place.

It's hard. I moved from the US to Japan a few years ago. I used to work there, but there are many new people. I was away from Japan for eight years. Coming back to Japan, the communication is very intense. You have to be there to understand how it works. Mark is able to bridge the two different cultures, and it's amazing. I'm there not because I'm running the studios at all in Japan, we have Alan Becker, and he's been doing a great job in my mind. I'm there because I can join the hardware team to bridge hardware guys with our Worldwide Studio resources. Mark is doing that from the tech side, I'm doing that from the game development side, making sure that the hardware guys have all the resources we have outside Japan, so that they are able to design and build the PS4."

The Challenges of Messaging

Lastly, I asked Yoshida about the challenges inherent to trying to excite consumers about a device using methods other than just pure visual prowess. Wednesday's demos highlighted plenty of technical achievements, but many of them had more to do with interface, usability, and functionality, than graphical power. Yoshida acknowledged that balancing this message has been a challenge for Sony. "The simplest answer is we want both. People like David Cage, for him the higher performance is really important, because what he wants to do is make a digital character really look like a human being. So depending on the developer, the performance can be really really important. Some consumers are really socially addicted, like myself, those people, it's really important for them to be able to share what they are doing, or communicate and see what other people are doing in the community, and that's our focus. But some people are totally untied, they're like, 'why do you want to expose your privacy?' There are many different consumers and many different developer focuses, so we want to be able to cater to these different needs."

Nice write-up. Yoshida always seems like a good dude though that region-locking answer worries me.

I think he's saying all the right things at this point. From what's been announced, the PS4 will be a huge leap forward in hardware. 512MB of memory was way too small for the PS3. 8GB of unified GDDR5 is practically an embarrassment of riches by comparison.

Microsoft has their work cut out for them if they want to keep up.

I'm sure he's telling the truth that the console will play used disc-based games, but I'm hopeful that they get their act together and start deeply discounting the digital editions. That would under-cut Gamestop, if they're really so worried about losing profits to the second-hand market. PC Gamers / Steam users have been living in the future, it's time console peasants joined us.

@lively: Totally agree, especially with what you said about the RAM. Not only did the PS3 only have 512MB, it was effectively split 50/50 between graphics and computing, so only 256 MB could be used by the GPU at any time. This jump to 8 GB can essentially be a 32x increase depending on how developers choose to use it because that arbitrary divide is apparently gone. The only thing that worries me is how this move will impact the price. Digital Foundry wrote a great article about the PS4 specs and mentioned that GDDR5 memory is only sold in smaller sticks right now, the largest of which is 512MB, so Sony either crammed 16 sticks of memory onto their board or they are using tech that hasn't been announced yet (which isn't exactly unusual for new consoles). Either way, that kind of memory doesn't run cheap, but I can't see Sony making the same pricing mistakes they made with the PS3 launch.

It seems like they did a good job at emphasising their positives to the point where people aren't hanging much at all on any possible negatives so much. We'll see how long it lasts.

@alex said:

I'm going to pretend that those are bottles of sake and that everyone is having a great time with this whole PS4 thing.

From this interview, I can see the PS4 doing well. Even if some of it features may not work 100% at least the system will stand tall and move forward in the right direction.

Hey, if someone see's this comment, can you please reply to it. I want to see if it'll change my messages. It keeps saying I have two unread messages; it has since the site change. I want to know if I'm still receiving messages. Alright, thanks :).

You remember that guy in the press conference that was werdly excited about cars? That's how I am right now about the PS4. Makes me think of that guy that got his penis stuck in the XBox 360's drive.

the lack of backwards compatibility is a real kick to the balls, but not a surprise. but the fact that PSN purchases won't transfer over to PS4 is unbelievable. don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the PS4 conference and am pretty impressed with the PS4 overall, but stuff like that just makes me really sad

on the other hand it's nice to hear yoshida talk so much about catering to consumers' needs - specifically the fact that he realises privacy is a big issue. not something that should seem at all surprising because good business depends on appealing to consumers, but a lot of big decisions made over the last decade or so have seemed pretty counter-intuitive

@ntm: lol

@ntm: Quit pushing your own wacko agenda!

Gotta love Yoshida. Guy seems to understand a lot of things that gamers want.

I sure hope they can back up the big talk they made.

Eh. I'll just stick with my Wii U for a while then. Some of this seems good but the lack of backward-compatibility's a real dealbreaker to me.

I wonder if switching to an x86 chip means that PlayStation 5, 6, and so on will have a much easier time with backwards compatibility. PC's, after all, have a practically unlimited back-catalogue, usually only hampered by drivers and operating systems (which can be fixed with enough tweaking).

Or, in the nearer future, maybe the PlayStation 4 will see a flood of PC ports.

This would still be cold comfort to people with now-useless PS3 / PS2 games.

PS5 will be all digital or cloud gaming, if they even make one. Remember, we're talking about 2020 here.

messages and the inbox is broken. One day it showed messaged but 404'ed if you clicked on them and then the inbox just didn't work at all.

@lively said:

Yes, for future PS BC. Very few titles using unique hardware trickery will require special software patching if possible on the PS5, just look at how the PS3 PS1 BC isn't 100% for an example of that.

And yeah it sucks to how all the PS3s and PS2s in the world just exploded.

I thought the conference was great. I just had two problems with it, the Square Enix engine tech demo and that pointless looking touch-pad but they're minor things. Everything else was clear and descriptive so it was to my taste... the most hardware and tech sites and some gaming sites are getting a bit to... inane and childish.

Anyway it's good they had a meeting like this to clear things up (sorta). Shows a dedication to selective transparency and attempt to earn trust and respect from the consumer.

If they're worried about used games, take all restrictions off of used games, but cut the price of digital releases. Then GameStop gets what it wants with the used games market still existing, but at the same time, sales of non-refundable, non-tradeable digital games with higher profit margins will increase. Everybody wins.

I have no idea why Sony doesn't get Yoshida to speak at these things. He's an ultra humble and down to earth contrast to the other Sony presenters and he's quite well spoken even in English. The biggest thing is that he just seems honest and knows what gamers want, even with a PR department breathing down his back. It would be a lot easier to get people to drink the Sony Kool-Aid if they used him as a speaker.

I'm always surprised at Yoshida's candidness. Even though he can come off as cagey or defer to a PR person, when you compare this to the public faces at Microsoft its night and day. He has interesting game centric tweets, goes on podcast, does round tables. I'll give him credit, he goes the distance to make sure gamers know that he's an executive that listens to them. Would any of the Japanese executives at Nintendo ever do anything like this?

I'm happy to see them acknowledge that not everyone wants to connect their console to Facebook or w/e and share every damn step they take in a game.

i cant wait for deep down , im going deep down you guys!!!

The fact that he's been willing to talk about things like always online and used games makes me think that either the PS4 will be region locked, or they're still not 100% sure either way.

I never knew Mark Cerny before this event but seeing him on stage made me wanna learn more. After watching some videos on YouTube I'm now certain Sony made a great decision in getting him on board.

Sounds like their heads are in the right place. Awesome.

Because im sure publishers and devs want their games to be deeply discounted on the digital market, where a lot of people will be buying their games in the future. WAKE UP PEOPLE.

That was a really good write-up. It solidified a lot of questions I had (to best it possibly could within their PR plan).

Agree. I feel like Sony has a lot of good people representing this system, it'll be interesting to see if Microsoft takes note.

Great article Alex!

As a European who's a fan of Persona, that region locking answer makes me effing scared.

Man, Shuhei rocks. Every time, all the time. When did the Sony Team become so likeable?

I've going to write something about this soon, but I just had to step in and say Nah.

Even in 2020 all of America will not have stable enough internet to eliminate disc-based formats entirely. And forget America. What about the rest of the world? Consoles are sold in more and more countries every year as the middle classes in Asia, the Middle East and South America continue to grow at a rapid rate. Do you really believe any company is going to build a box (uh, no box?) that can only run in countries with flawless internet? So, you do what Sony does. Make a box with a drive for when the internet doesn't work, and then allow streaming for those users who can enjoy it.

Look at how they're devouring the PS2 in Brazil (and it costs 500US bucks). Console gamers aren't going anywhere. And if there's money to be made... why not make money? If someone will buy a console, someone will make it.

Streaming and cloud gaming will always be the cherry on top, not the de facto, at least for the foreseeable future. This myth of the cloud is gaining a lot of traction now and I know a lot of people would love to jump down my throat, but it's just not going to happen that fast. Maybe in 2025 you will be able to buy a SKU that allows you to only stream, but the disc-based has to continue to exist. Don't believe the hype.

I am trying to get my head around the PS4's specs but find I don't know enough about how processors, RAM, graphics cards etc work and work together to form my own opinion. Can anyone tell me a good site to go to which will explain it all for a relative newbie?

Except they, most likely, still own a PS3 or PS2.

You should listen to the Tested podcast, "This Is Only a Test," Will and Norm do a good job explaining these things and I imagine this'll be a big point of discussion on their next podcast.

I bet that it is the same as with the PS3,

Where the options is technically there but only two or three games made use of it this entire generation.
- One of those was because it was packed with a complete blu-ray movie on disc hence there being a whole array of extra laws to be taken into consideration for the publisher.

I bet that admitting that the PS4 is technically capable of region locking games will just cause a ton of negative PR for something that in practice we will only see in another 2-3 games ever.

Enjoyed the article, but I would suggest that for articles like this there is more contrast in the formatting. I am having trouble distinguishing the text.

Everything everywhere, except if you paid for it already. That seems to be their company line on backwards compatibility.

Great article Alex!

I totally get why the PS4 won't be able to play PS3 games; that was a mistake they made back half a decade ago with the Cell, but I'm disappointed that they aren't even considering PS2 or even PS1 backwards compatibility. I can't imagine it would be that difficult to detect the discs and emulate them, especially with the power of the console itself now. Gaikai is merely a bandaid over that gaping wound that we've been complaining about for years with the PS3. If they can't even get my PSN purchases of PS1 and PS2 games working, that will just be embarrassing for us and for them.

This is going to be a rough transitional period into more "normal" computing architecture that will help in the long run, but they need better solutions and answers to the problems it creates right now.

The region locking is another worrying issue. Until developers can manage to get games a global release on day one, we shouldn't be punishing our European or Australian friends just to screw over specific markets with their currencies.

I'm pretty excited, almost makes me want to buy a vita.

Want to second the vote for Yoshida to do Sony events and pressers. He comes off much more real that anyone else at Sony or anybody at Microsoft.

@leebmx: When in doubt about technical stuff, go to Richard Leadbetter at Digital Foundry (hosted on Eurogamer). It still amazes me he is one of the only people out there doing this kind of thing.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-playstation-4

Just reading that article it occurred to me they glossed over the whole "unified" part of the RAM. URAM is really interesting from the research journals I've just been reading, it's like DRAM combined with flash memory. Which basically means you can choose whether you want it to be volatile, and have super fast read/write like DRAM, or non-volatile and store for up to years with no power on.

That's how Sony is gunna be doing the whole put your machine into sleep mode, with no power thing. And that's pretty cool. I have no idea what the performance implications are gunnna be on it, I mean, theoretically the URAM should be as fast as normal DRAM. But this is the first time I've ever heard of it being used in a commercial device.

And GDDR5 to boot, it has to be so damn expensive right?

It's pretty difficult from the sound of things actually. Just because a system is exponentially more powerful doesn't mean it can natively run the software. The software is designed around the hardware and if the hardware isn't the same, it doesn't work correctly.

At this point though, I'm not really that concerned about backwards compatability. I remember being vehement about getting a PS3 that would have PS2 backwards compatability, but once it was there, I almost never wanted to play PS2 games. Sure, from time to time I'd pop one in, but by and large, not really. It's kind of a bummer that all my PSN games won't transfer over just because I really liked having a huge library of games on-hand without swapping discs ever, but I think I'm just going to hang on to my PS3 and not worry about it. The problem with keeping old systems around before this generation was that they all hooked up to your TV with different cables. Now it'll only be a matter of swapping my HDMI cable between the two systems, which we used to have to do in my apartment in college because my roommate had a 360 and I had a PS3 and we only had one HDMI port for a while. Not that big of a deal.

I would imagine. Atlus seems really bad with dealing with that part of the world.

@posh: @rudecubes: Forgot where I read it but people are saying that putting backward compatibility will make the console a ton more expensive and then you'd guys will just bitch about that. So keep your (buy a) PS3 and buy a PS4. Done.

@awesomeusername: you say that like it's simple. at this point, I do need to upgrade my PS3 and having a whole other machine doesn't work well for me since I travel a lot. I did say that the lack of backwards compatibility was at least expected, since they fucked up with that cell processor, but my main problem is with the PSN purchases not carrying over.

John Carmack also had something interesting to say on Twitter regarding the Sony hardware.