I'm pretty confident that both PS4 and the next Xbox will allow publishers to easily gate used disks. Currently, with EA's "Project $10," you receive a code to access multiplayer content and you buy that code for used games. PS4 and Xbox-next will not need you to type in a code for a new game since they will know the disk is new (And the code will probably be on some tag embedded in the disk).

This will make it easier for the users and while I am sure that some smaller publishers will use this feature to completely block used game sales, I suspect that EA and Activision will use this new seamless capability to blackmail Game Stop and other used game sellers into sharing the profits or at least not undercutting week 1 sales with used games. I like used games being available but I understand why EA would be angry with Game Stop convincing customers to buy a used game over a new game the first week of release.

Good read. Thanks- I know the text doesn't get the same love as video.

I cannot imagine the whole region locking structure suddenly being abandoned.

Persona 4: Arena was the most recent game to bring this issue to the fore, and one reason behind region-lock seems to be to allow sales projections by region to have at least a chance of being accurate. For instance if ATLUS wants to sell Euro distribution rights to someone, and there is no region-lock, how are they meant to negotiate a price for this? The other issue is that the publishers maximise their total sales by regionally pricing.

As an Aussie, I would love to have been playing P4A for months and Fire Emblem for almost a month at this point. Instead I have to wait for line upon line of text to be translated to 6 languages for the PAL release.

Sure, I would prefer region-lock gone, but I do not see this changing.

The one that really gets me on edge is region-locked game lobbies, way to kill the multiplayer community for your game...

@alex said:

Earlier in the article...

Yoshida said:

That's some great insight. I cannot see region locking going away completely until we are a one world nation. Maybe this will happen, probably it won't. The world market is still and will be for the foreseeable future be a collection of smaller markets. each market with it's own demands and costs. The video game industry is an international industry but has to do business in these regional markets. Region locking seems to be the best option right now. Maybe with time and the propagation of digital releases other options will be considered.

@alex said:

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

Btw 4k isn't Sony proprietary tech like Blu-Ray

What loser hasn't filled up a ps3 hard drive? I have a 320 gig and its full as fuck. ive been upgrading them since day one. its too dam easy to fill those tiny ass drives with big ass games.

@insidioustuna:@thebiolover: What?

@jams: Hm. Interesting. Yeah, it still says two messages, but I did at least get the new ones that have been posted towards this one, though it was somewhat garbled 'cause I couldn't quite tell who was saying what. Thanks. I hope it's fixed sometime soon.

@ntm: Replied dude!

If you guys are looking for a little insight into the ps4 specs. Pcper.com has a podcast discussing it. They go into some good detail about the architecture.

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Podcast-239-NVIDIA-GTX-TITAN-PlayStation-4-Hardware-SSD-Endurance-and-more

do people really care what the box looks like

it's a box that you don't look at it except when you turn the console on

if it was shaped like a giant penis and covered the entire wall i can see why it'd be a problem but it doesn't, so why do people care about the box

I'm still blown away by the 8GB of RAM, and GDDR5 at that. That's an insane leap over the PS3/360.

Apparently they do. Much of the negative press I've seen was about them not showing the PS4 hardware. So stupid. No one expected them to show this early at all and, when they do, they complain they didn't show everything.

It's a shame he can't talk freely, he'd provide a better insight than anyone on the matter. Plus I'm still curious about this whole URAM thing. I want to know if what Sony is calling "unified RAM" really is the same as this URAM, which would be awesome.

Please let the PS4 be region free.

"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."

That seems to hint to a big HDD, which is good. PS3 HDD was too small in the beginning (40GB, I still have it and I can only install 5 games or so). I hope for 1TB or more. Under that:

Great write up Alex. I really appreciate how candidly he speaks. Obviously he is just as much a suit as the next guy but he comes off sort of humble and human. Which I prefer to the canned ones we tend to get sometimes.

Yoshida is a great dude, he was very candid on the couple of Podcast Beyond's that he has appeared on. He also properly cares about what those guys think because he will bring up things that they have said on the podcast before. I just can't imagine a op level MS employee listening to a podcast in this way

@spartyon: I wouldn't be so worried, these things are always sold at a loss.

@gaspower: @Chavtheworld@HassunCheers for the tips guys I will certainly give them a read.

"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."

would it be the same style of functionality present in the PSP , where you get to turn it off mid-pause , then when-EVER you turn it back on , instantly on the game ? because that would be cool and it is a commercial device that has that feature , if that is the type of thing everyone is talking about .

agreed.

Yeah that's pretty much what it should be able to do, if they are using actual URAM. The first thing I wanna do if I get my hands on a PS4 is put it on standby and unplug it, then plug it back in and see if it still resumes. Cause that would be awesome.

"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."

Seemed pretty clear-cut to me. The discs will work, and EA will keep putting their stupid online passes in them.

Really, what I'm curious about is whether Sony will continue with Online Passes. Ubi's been a bit back and forth, Warner seems to have abandoned them after the Arkham City fiasco (notice no online pass for Arkham City GOTY, MK Komplete, or Lego Batman 2 Vita), Activision only tried it once with Prototype 2 and presumably didn't see whatever increase in new sales for the title as being worth the effort, and THQ no longer exists, leaving EA as the only third-party that uses the scheme on a regular basis.

Blu-Ray isn't even Sony-owned. They're just part of the BDA director's board.

And both 4K and 8K (!) UHDTV were proposed by NHK, not Sony.

I think what they will do with digital games eventually add it to PSN+ free subscriber game thing, but at the same time discount it maybe 10%-20% off for digital downloads. Or maybe they will do the Steam thing with sales and all.

That does remind me, I really do wonder what happened to that thing Valve and Sony had going when Sony allowed Steam on the PS3. I wonder if Valve and Sony decide to pursue it further since Gabe Newell has less than nice things to say about Microsoft, Windows 8, and their push to integrate it into altogether in one environment.

Glad to have this info.

I think they will come up with some sort of plan for backwards compatibility, for 'greatest hits.' They'll definitely want their high selling digital titles to carry over no matter what. It hasn't been great for back compat on the PS3 - very few good PS2 games are available digitally, and the people with launch PS3s have tiny hard drives. I suppose the only folks who have a nice large Sony library on one console are people who reinstalled hard drives to launch PS3s and carefully babied the system to make it last, or pirates.

The big problem on PS4 is whether back compat games could be bug-free in light of the new proposed features. Suspend/Resume, recording gameplay, incremental downloads to start playing faster, and sharing - I think the new PS4 games might have to be custom designed with supporting those features in mind, and the old emulated games would have to be reworked, either that or say 'no new features for emulated games.' That's no good - they want active, connected users if their grandiose network concepts are to succeed. It'd be especially tough for PS3 games, which almost all have online components, installed portions, updates, and so on of their own to manage, on a new system with a different architecture.

Basically it sounds like it would be a lot of work, an unreasonable amount. They need to prioritize the new content, as much as I and others want to retire our old consoles.

@platina32: I was fine with the small HD is ps3 cause when I bought my 60GB second time I filled it up I pulled it out and replaced it with 500GB. It only cost me $70 for the harddrive but the differance in cost if I had bought larger HD from sony to start with have been over $100 probably.

How much ram can a ram ram into if a ram rams some ram?

I've been thinking about for a few minutes and I think I know the answer: 4k.

Wow, Yoshida is really honest. I'm enjoying this new Sony.