Sony’s UK Playstation blog revealed that the company plans to discuss “release plans” for the PS4 this week at Gamescom in Germany. With the Xbox One launch scaled back, many are hoping for an aggressive launch date from Sony to give it a head start in the market.
Xbox One and PS4 Can’t Provide Full Unreal Engine 4 Experience
In 2011, veteran gaming firm Epic Games created an impressive graphics demo for the Unreal Engine 3. Although written for PC hardware, the demo, called “Samaritan,” was Epic’s attempt to show console makers what the next generation of gaming performance should bring. Epic estimated that 2.5 teraFLOPs would be required from the next generation consoles in order to provide the desired level of detail at 30 frames per second with a 1080p resolution. In 2011, it took three top-of-the-line NVIDIA…
PS4 ‘Play While Downloading’ Debuts on PS3 with The Last of Us
A key feature of the upcoming PS4 is the ability to begin playing games before they are fully downloaded, much the same as iTunes offers the ability to begin watching a movie rental before the download for the entire film is complete. But it was revealed late last week that existing PS3 owners will get to experience the feature first with the new game The Last of Us, set for release June 14. The game’s developer, Naughty Dog, revealed the…
eBooks Account for 23% of U.S. Publisher Revenue in 2012
Last week’s news that Microsoft is considering a $1 billion buyout of the Nook eBook company it formed with Barnes & Noble is less surprising in light of data revealed today by research firm Statista. According to data from the Association of American Publishers, eBooks accounted for nearly 23 percent of U.S. publisher revenue in 2012. On the year, eBooks accounted for 22.6 percent of sales as a percentage of U.S. trade publishers’ net revenue, up from 17.0 percent in…
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Microsoft & Sony Reportedly Interested in Free to Play for Next Gen Consoles
In news that will likely be met with a chorus of groans, Microsoft and Sony are both reportedly “going heavily” into the free-to-play model for their next generation consoles, according to statements made by Epic Games VP Mark Rein at a roundtable discussion for the Game Horizon conference in the UK this week. Mr. Rein told the audience during the discussion that “the next-gen consoles are going to be fully embracing the free-to-play and these IAP-type business models. So in…
Next Xbox Gains AMD x86 CPU, Loses 360 Backward Compatibility
After earlier rumors suggested that Microsoft’s next Xbox will be powered by an AMD GPU, new information Monday points to an AMD CPU as well, opening the door for an advanced integrated offering from the struggling chip maker. According to sources speaking with Bloomberg, Microsoft will use an AMD solution that combines the company’s Jaguar CPU technology with a 7000 series GPU. This closely matches the hardware specifications for Sony’s PlayStation 4, which was announced in late February. Microsoft’s current…
The Best-Selling Video Game Consoles of All Time
The launch last fall of the Nintendo Wii U, Sony’s PlayStation 4 announcement in February, and the impending announcement of the next Microsoft Xbox all mean that the next generation of home video game consoles is underway. As we wait to see exactly what this generation of gaming will bring, let’s put things in perspective by comparing the consoles that have come before. In the following charts, we’ll look at the major home video game consoles of the last 30+…