PLAYSTATION 4 Q&A - MADE SIMPLE

On 20th February Sony came and went with a two hour long introduction to the PS4. There was a lot to take in and a lot of questions were left on peoples minds, so, I have come up with the answers for what I think are some questions on peoples’ minds.


They showed an image about a load of technical hardware inside the PS4, what the UMD did all that mean?
I think that Sony wanted to get this off their chest straight away as the PS3 was quite difficult to develop for. Generally the PS4 runs on PC standard hardware and the x86 (x86-64) which is a 64bit processor and similar to what all Windows PC use is an example of this. In the past, consoles have been 32bit and have been very different to PCs but with this similar hardware architecture it will not only make it easier to develop on the PS4 but hopefully some ports from PS4 to PC will be improved greatly. 

I saw 2 people, one wearing a PS t-shirt and some other guy with a Gaikai t-shirt, who are they and what does Gaikai even mean?
Gaikai is an online streaming service, much like OnLive, that Sony bought last year. Using Gaikai on the PS4 you will be able to stream your game to others to watch as well as be able to jump straight into game demos using their streaming service (rather than wait to download anything). Also using the Gaikai technology, you will be able to stream your game to your PS Vita and essentially be able to continue your game on the device when your kids come interrupt your gaming session to watch some trash like the University Challenge or something.

So the PS3 plays blu-ray, does the PS4 play red-ray or something? Do I need to rebuy all of my films again?
Don’t worry - the PS4 has a blu-ray disc drive the same as the PS3 (but faster)

I bought a ton of stuff on PSN, can I play that on PS4?
Sadly not, the PS4 won’t host the PSN games nor is it backwards compatible but they are looking into using the Gaikai service to ‘maybe’ re-release PS3 games on the PS4.

So the PS4 has its own Kinect? That’s what I saw isn’t it?!
That certainly looked like a Kinect but it wasn’t - quite. Sony haven’t speculated much on this but it will come shipped in the box and will be used to track the position of each game pad in the room.

The PS4 game pad had a share button? Do two player games have to use the same pad or something?
No. This is quite an interesting and brilliant feature (if I may say so). Using this button you can instantly record or stream your current game and upload it for others to view (and comment and share etc).

Can I buy cheap second hand games and play them on PS4?
Yes, you can, you can continue to dive deep into those bargain bins and pick up that fantastic single player game for 10% of the price it has worth Eurogamer has revealed.

Why were there two people dancing with some kind of dolls?
I don’t really know but it just made it obvious that you can use the PS Move on PS4. So those six people with PS Move will be happy...

I bought Diablo 3 on PC and it was crap, should I get it on PS4?
It’s up to you. It’s supposedly going to be able to be ‘offline’ so you won’t get single player lag and you can play with 4 players on the same screen at once (if that’s a good thing, we’ll have to wait and see).