Not sure how accurate this is but I haven't seen any physical comparisons between the console form factors.

Looking at this article, the PS4 is small, wow. I remember seeing a comparison of the Xbox One being about the size of a 13" MacBook Air, but the PS4 is diminutive. I expected some hulking, slanted box the size of a DVR.

(link with pics)

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yeah that's really compact, didn't knew the difference was that huge , I hope the heat dispersal is good on that thing.

When it was held on stage the first thing that I thought was that it looked relatively small for a new console. Smaller than the 360 and PS3 launch boxes for sure. Will this one include an external power brick?

@louiedog: That's a good question. A power brick would be a big change for Sony, none of their consoles have had one. I was really surprised when I got a Vita and saw a power brick attached to the charging cable.

Crikey that thing is tiny, looking at pictures I was judging it at slightly smaller than the One but damn that thing is somewhere between the PS3 slim and the super slim. Its going to look so weird next to my ancient fat PS3.

The power supply is internal, because Sony are wonderfully nuts.

At least PS3s didn't cause house-fires.

Glad to know I don't need to dedicate all the space near my tv to one console. I've got a ps2 and a gamecube sitting there as well and I don't want to have rearrange everything.

I figured it'd be smaller, if only because the Xbox One looked huge, but I wasn't expecting that. So it's like PS2 size except thinner? That's cool. Unrelated thought brought on by the comparison: this time around both consoles can be stacked into tall Xbone and PS4 towers. PS3 was unstackable and with 360 it looks like it would be unstable.

@djou: My Vita doesn't have a power brick, it's just a USB cable...?

I am all for this.

@somejerk: Seems fine, as both the smaller PS2 and PS3 models work well; PS3 generates a fair amount of heat but that's more or less to be expected from a modern PC.

That's sexy. Now just to pick up a VITA to complete the picture.

@gs_dan: Really? I got a USB cable that plugs into a power brick. The other end of the power brick is the standard PS cable going into an outlet. I don't know what else to expect, maybe something more Apple like.

Better more powerful hardware than the Xbone yet it's considerably smaller?

Doesn't sound good to me. What about heat dispersal and stuff?

I want a pick of it beside a Wii.

Man, it really is. That's... good but at the same time it could be bad if they sacrificed heating and sound dispersing for a slicker design.

Looks like a cross between both versions of the PS2. Nice.

I think I saw some people comparing it to the PS3 slim's size. If so that's great. Those behemoths like the original xbox and the original PS3 take up way too much space on my small shelves.

At that size, with the kind of power on it sounds like it's either going to be as loud as a jet engine, or double as a heater.

Huh. That'll fit nicely on top of my 360. Now I just wonder how loud it'll be.

And I love that it's so small.
But mark my words, in a year or two there will be some little shitlord asking for a Slim version of this one as well. Which then means that, well, there'll be nothing inside it anymore because there's not exactly room for it

Didn't the PSP have a medium sized brick?

I'm not going to ask for a slim version but I will totally ask for a white version. I know damn well that Japan will get one eventually and I'll end up importing it like I did with the white PS3.

@moffattron9000: I think its impossible to say until we see specs on how much power the console is drawing. I'm hoping they planned ahead and tested the device for overheating. As a company Sony has made some big strides in their industrial design, their laptops/tablets/phones actually look decent although they still run like crap. If they put a decent blu-ray drive in their and a 5400 rpm HDD it shouldn't get too hot.

Wow and the Xbox One is wide! Oh well, thankfully I don't care about that stuff.

@jouseldelka said:

If you've seen the pictures of the back of the PS4, it's basically just a grate composed of really wide squares. I don't think heat dispersal will be an issue so much as I'd be worried about noise, but because of how much an issue that was with both platforms in the last generation I'd be surprised if they hadn't taken those things into serious consideration. I'd have to imagine since the overheating problems of the original 360 that being able to hold a reasonable temperature over a long time is a well looked after issue. The original 360 and PS3 were both really loud though, so it'll be interesting to see if there's really all that much they can do about that.

Whoa. It looks great but count me as another person worried about heat management of such a small volume of space.

@winsord: The PS3 Slim is very quiet, so hopefully they learned from that.

Frankly, if it ends up being as loud as the 360 that might be enough to get me to wait for a redesign. That thing really was a jet engine.

Neogaf post that I chuckled at: "Sony has actual hardware engineers for their consoles instead of ordering their parts from Newegg."

Then I saw an actual picture of the inside of the XBO, and yeah, I see their point.

The size really makes up for the initial underwhelming feeling I had on first seeing it. I like it.

Are there any pictures of what the guts look like yet?

@krakn3dfx: Yeah, I think Sony's has better hardware engineers they seem to be in some weird design war with Apple to make thin, small laptops. Whereas MS is competing with Apple on the software side. I hope they take that research and put it into the PS4 since its the flapship device for the company.

@aleryn: Not sure if this picture eases your mind.

@djou: Huh. Pretty sure mine is just a USB cable and a plug, mobile phone style.

Well Sony is an Hardware company first and Microsoft is a software company. That always showed in the design and reliability of each company's respective hardware.

I want a pink one, just to be the weird person who has that.
Like my slim PS2 !

I'm sure Square will have a White and Pink FFXV edition of the console. They did it for XIII.

That's pretty cool beans.

@zeforgotten: I want a pink one because I am a weirdo. in fact, I may spray paint mine pink... Or bust it open and replace the blue LEDs with pink ones.

Wait....something about the size of the disk drive there doesn't seem right...maybe that's just me, but other comparisons I saw showed them being much closer in size (with the PS4 still smaller, but not by such ridiculous margins)

@jukezypoo: I think it depends of they are having some slack space as part of the slot or not this time. If you look at the PS3 pictured you can see some lighter black/grey at the top and bottom of the slot which is solid plastic rather than part of the hole in the silver surround, a bit of angling on it to help feed the disc towards the actual hole. If the PS4 pictured just has a slot and the hole we see doesn't have an interior angled plastic then it is the same size as the PS3's slot in the photos so going by optical disc they are at the same scale.

When I looked at the spec sheet they put out and took yardstick to my PS3 Slim it seemed like a boxy, thinner version of that sort of dimensions (the picture looks possibly but if the PS4 was 10% larger it would still look about right, same with the Xbox One could be 10% too big and it'd look about right).

The PS4 is still not as small as that 1995 PSX or the PS3 Super Slim

PS4 = 305 x 53 x 275mm

PS3 SS= 292 x 60 x 241mm

PSX= 193 x 38 mm × 144 mm

Isn't the PS2 Slim their smallest console? Even the slimmed down PSX had some thickness to it. The PS2 slim is barely larger than a DVD case.

Those Sony hardware designers are really good.

the one thing that excited me about the xbox design is how it supposedly had a big ass fan in there or something. i'll take a big box if it meant it would work reliably longer.

Well the back of the thing is nothing but vents so that should help and Sony been pretty good about heat dispersal.

A big, wide fan should make it quieter, though not necessarily cooler than a small fan (or fans). If it works as well as a 360 Slim then heat shouldn't be a problem provided that you can keep the vents clear.

As someone who travels around a lot and likes to still play games in hotels or on vacations this is a definite plus.

I really want to see pictures of the insides. I also wonder what the power consumption is. I doubt there will be any over-heating issues, because it seems well ventilated, but who knows. That thing is crazy small for what it is.

Me to, don't want another vacuum cleaner like the original 360. Still the back of that thing appears to be almost entirely vents so it will probably be ok.