Earlier today Sony announced a PlayStation event with a statement on their Twitter account that read “See the future”, followed by a link to a teaser video of the classic PlayStation buttons and the date “February 20, 2013, 6pm EST”. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that the event will in fact be the unveiling of the long rumored PlayStation 4.
Citing “anonymous sources”, the WSJ report claims that Sony is planning to launch the PlayStation 4 (or PlayStation Orbis, as it is often called in rumors) sometime later this year in order to compete against Microsoft’s next Xbox this coming Holiday season.
If Sony does in fact announce their console first, it would appear that Kaz Hirai’s recent statement that they intended to let Microsoft make the first next-gen move was nothing more than a ruse.
The WSJ’s sources also revealed that the PS4 will “incorporate more social gaming aspects into the new machine”, and that Sony has focused their attention on “changes in how users interact with the machine” in lieu providing a console that is based only on “spec improvements”. While the report made no mention as to what kind of interface the next PlayStation will have, it does seem to dovetail with recent rumors that claimed Sony is testing biometric sensors and touch screens for use in the new controller.
As for what is powering the PlayStation 4, the Journal report states that it will use AMD processors for both the CPU and GPU, which could make backwards compatibility with existing PlayStation 3 games “difficult”.
Finally, Michael Pachter has also weighed in on the Sony event via his Twitter account. According to the industry analyst, Sony is inviting both investors and the media to the February 20th event. In his words “that means console announcement”.
We will have to wait for the February 20th event to know for sure, but all signs appear to point towards the PlayStation 4 being announced in just three weeks.