PlayStation 4 - Page 3

These are my personal views.

we really do like the PS4! that is all I can say

lots of memory is essential for both the CPU & GPU to create large & alive game worlds

8 GB unified mem as baseline for next tech iterations makes me very, very happy. Fun times coming.

Thanks for the great event in NY @playstation - Very pleased with the commitment to 8gb of GDDR5 memory. Other specs are beautiful too!

I can’t speak freely about PS4, but now that some specs have been made public, I can say that Sony made wise engineering choices.

I really am excited, 8GB of super-fast RAM - holy cow!

Immediately after the PlayStation 4 press conference, we sat down with the Sony president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yotshida to discuss the new controller, the ambitious self publishing service for developers, and the expansion of cross-play functionality.

With Jonathan Blow being here, you kind of addressed how you are going to look at an indie market. Can you tell us a little bit more about that plan?

Yeah. Last year, the game awards were swept by games like Journey or The Walking Dead. More people and media are excited about small games. This trend is going to continue. Console games on the big stage are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger, but it has been brutal for the mid-range titles. It’s all about $60 million or $100 million budget games. If we just continue doing it as an industry, you won’t see lots of new and exciting stuff that much, especially for those young people wanting to come into the industry. They need to learn by being able to make games of their own, and have creative control. The same goes for the consumer. We work with people like Jenova Chen. They are so creative and think outside of the box. We learned, and our producers learned from them how they approach games.

Is Sony going to give these teams and people a new pricing structure? The biggest fear that indie people have had is the barrier for them getting into game development.

For the people that self-publish, it’s their product. They are the publisher. They are free to set the price from free to, you know, $30. It’s their fee. For independent publishers we work with, we are the publisher, so we make the final decision, but for our store, it’s very easy to set the price for each product, and it’s easy to make promotions or bundles. It’s very easy to do.

You showed us how you could use the Vita as a second screen in your living room. Is that local only, or is there any ambition with Gaikai to use that as a server and get further away in the living room?

Technically speaking, it works from anywhere, as far as you have a wi-fi connection from your Vita to the PlayStation 4. It needs to be wi-fi. However, for some games, when you play or connect from far away, it accumulates latency. Some games may not be playable, like fighting games or shooting games. But some other slower paced games will be playable. As long as you have home routers anywhere in your home, you can play every PlayStation 4 game. We ask developers when they finish the PlayStation 4 product and submit a master to make sure that they have the appropriate controller mapping to work on PS Vita. All games will work – unless it is a dance game [laughs].

You talked about the new streaming technologies and being able to start playing downloads and demos immediately. There was no mention of physical media. Is that still planned for PlayStation 4?

Oh yeah. It’s going to be Blu-ray based. The same as PlayStation 3.

As far as the games you are working on, we didn’t get a Gran Turismo, which is kind of a classic reveal for Sony. Is that still as series you are looking forward to releasing?

Working toward this event has been so much fun. I’ve never had this amount of speculation. Everyone has a list of 20 things they want to see at this event. This is just day one. We have more days ahead.

You showed the camera and how it works with the controller. Are you packing in the camera with every PlayStation 4?

We are not talking about the final compilation or pricing or the release date right as of yet.

You announced a new Killzone game. Is the development team bigger or is the same size as the Killzone teams for PlayStation 3?

We’ve been supporting some of the studios to grow. Many of you already know that studios like Naughty Dog moved from one team in a studio to a multi-team studio. Our studios are growing. As far as individual titles are concerned, because of the production values you can put into PlayStation 4, games can be larger. Comparing Killzone: Shadow Fall to Killzone 3, I think the number of people working on it is slightly larger, but it depends on the title.

Is your plan that the Vita is kind of a PlayStation 4, where it supports similar titles much like Sound Shapes? Cross-play has worked well. Can you push it further using streaming?

What we’ve been doing on PlayStation 3 has been experimentation. We like the idea of cross-platform play and the ability to continue from Vita to your home and play against each other. We will continue that. It was difficult to get PlayStation 3 to do more things because the system was made eight years ago. We’ve been working closely with the PlayStation 4 system software and hardware games to make it easy for developers to do this.

Media Molecule’s demo was amazing. Can you tell us a little about that game?

They totally approached what PS Move does. It is a robust 3D input system. We’re not talking about motion gaming at all. They used the Move’s 3D input capability with their new, groundbreaking way to render images. You can just go in and create like you are playing with Play-Doh. So when they are talking about sculpting, they are not talking about professional 3D graphics, they are talking about artists molding or children playing.

Is that the same Move controller you can buy now?

Yes. That works with the new camera. It’s going to be better because the new camera has higher resolution and has two fields. The two cameras are good for augmented reality games. On PS3, the vision was a bit blurry, right? Now, it’s in HD. One camera is dedicated to getting the best picture of you on the screen, and the other camera can work with PS Move. That’s how we use different cameras. More to come.

When asked if the company was prepared to compete with other consoles and hit a more favorable price, Yoshida said that Sony's decisions to use custom AMD hardware instead of its own proprietary Cell architecture has allowed it to save on R&D and production costs.

"The architecture choice we have made this time around has allowed us not to invest to create dedicated factories and conducting factories and things like that — so that helps in order for us to provide an affordable price to consumers."

Will the new console cost $599 to start?

"I certainly hope not. I think we’re very proud of what we delivered with the PlayStation 3 in terms of technology, and that we were able to enhance the features while still reducing the price to $249. But I think our goal with this is to debut at a more consumer-friendly price. But we haven’t made any final decisions about what the price will be at launch."

On possibility of PS4 blocking used games

When you purchase the disc-based games on PS4, it should work on any hardware. So that's what I'm saying.

On whether or not the PS Vita price cut in Japan will become effective worldwide

No, it's not. It's a region-by-region-based decision. Always.

On activation codes for secondhand PS4 titles

It's a publisher decision. We are not talking about it. Sorry.

On Sony's decision not to show PS4 hardware during the announcement

I'm sorry we did not show the hardware. But we have plans from now--in February--through the year for the launch. We like to disclose things based on what we think we really want to communicate first. And next time we will talk about these things.

On 3D support for PS4

No, it's not a focus, but it does [support 3D]. More games will run at 1080p and 60 frames per second, so it's an easier and better experience when you watch on 3D TV. We like what we can do on PS3 using 3D, but now the consumer electronics side [of Sony Corp.] has shifted focus from 3D TV to something else, so if they are not talking about it, why are we?

On 4K support for PS4

The official answer is the PS4 supports 4K output, but does for personal content like photos and videos, not games. PS4 games do not work on 4K.

On support for legacy platforms now that the PS4 has been announced

So we have Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls coming out this year; these are pretty big titles. And after that we haven't announced any new software for PS3.

On the possibility of bringing PS3 titles to PS4

It's an interesting concept. We've been upgrading PS2 games to PS3 with better resolution and better frame rate. And people love it. So I think at some point it makes sense and it's great for developers to be able to develop some things that they missed or couldn't get working properly on the older hardware because of the performance to be able to make it better for newer hardware. So we are open to look at that.

On Gaikai integration for PS4 launch titles

So we are saying virtually every PS4 game will be playable on PS Vita via Remote Play. I would be heartbroken if it doesn't day one. On day one, my expectation is that we have to have all games work on PS Vita.

On whether or not Sony would acquire Quantic Dream

We don't look at developers in the world who are making great games for some other publisher and say, 'We have to acquire them." We never do that. The way we acquire developers, when we do, is the natural evolution of the relationship that develops. When it makes sense, we sign a deal. In terms of Quantic, we worked with them on Heavy Rain, and we are working with them on Beyond: Two Souls, and they are showing something very interesting on PS4. So we are definitely developing that stronger relations and we love them as well.

On possibility of PlayStation App store

Personally, I would like to see that. Our PlayStation Mobile is really targeting to do that so smaller developers can really publish from the countries we support. But on the console side, for the PS3 and PS Vita, we still treat publishing like our disc-based model in terms of certification, approval, quality assurance. So we are discussing internally how we can make it a bit more open or a bit easier especially for smaller developers to publish. Because we totally believe in the importance of supporting these smaller developers because they provide really unique and interesting ideas to the platforms.

On what the PlayStation 4 Eye Camera is capable of

The PS4 Eye has two HD cameras, and these two cameras can be used in several different ways. One way is to use it for triangulation, so that space in front of the camera can be measured so that when you do this [motions with his hands] the game knows you are doing this. The other way is to make the augmented reality games like Wonderbook, using one camera for the video streaming, the other camera to…optimize for that task.

""We totally believe in the importance of supporting these smaller developers because they provide really unique and interesting ideas to the platforms.""

On whether or not the PS4 will be region-locked

I know the answer, but I don't want to be quoted and get a call from my PR guy saying, 'What did you say?'

On whether or not PSN will remain free for PS4

We totally believe that we want to provide more functionality and more services and more content on the network. And so we are looking at how we are going to structure that. And we are not ready to talk about that.

On possibility of backward compatibility for PS3 discs

No. You can quote me on that.

On whether or not the PS4 will make another appearance before E3

[Looks at PR rep] I hope not (laughs).

On whether or not The Last Guardian is still a PS3 game

I’m not ready to talk about it. Sorry. Because we've broken promises [before], we are waiting for the right time to reintroduce The Last Guardian.

On status of Rockstar's Agent and Square Enix's Final Fantasy Versus

You are asking the wrong person. I have some knowledge, but I'm not in a position to talk about it.

On pricing, Tretton said that the PS4 is "designed with the game developer in mind and the consumer in mind," and will offer games with prices ranging from $0.99 to the more traditional $60 range with the ability for players to sample games before they buy.

"I think people are willing to pay if they see the value there," he said. "The heat for the true gamer is on the console."

He said that games on mobile devices are "additive experiences" and that gamers won't "migrate down the food chain" for their primary gaming experience.