It seems all of the speculation and blurry camera shots of controllers were pretty dead on, last night Sony announced their next step in gaming evolution with the PlayStation 4. While the actual console, not surprisingly, wasn’t shown the new controller was debuted called the DualShock 4. The controller looks to be a modified version of the current controller with a bit of a wider body, the analog sticks have been modified to have a concave look to it for better control, and the D-pad is also modified. The biggest changes to the controller are the new touchpad, similar to the one of the PS Vita and the inclusion of a light bar on the front of the controller that acts like a Move controller. Gone are the Start and Select buttons, replacing them are a Share and Options buttons. The controller also sports a headphone jack (similar to the XBOX 360 controller) to talking to friends and other players easier.

Ease of connectivity and more social integration were one of the key features that Sony was pushing, that ability to share your gameplay, your stats, yourself with others through not only the PS4 but through a whole slew of devices (1st and 3rd party devices). The PS4 is going to allow players to watch others play a game live, check out their shared gameplay library and screen shots, you’ll even be able to help a friend get through a difficult section a a game by taking control of their game and playing for them. It is an extremely ambitious project that I hope Sony can deliver on. They have made efforts in the past to create this huge social connectivity through gaming in the past but they never followed through with their promises, something I admit the Microsoft has done a bit better job at achieving. But if Sony can pull this off on day one of the launch of the PS4 then they may be a force to be reckoned with.

The new specs on the hardware is going to be the biggest factor in seeing Sony’s goals come to fruition. This new PlayStation is going to run like a beast.  Check out the specs below:

• Main Processor Single-chip custom processor
  • CPU : x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores
  • GPU : 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon™ based graphics engine
• Memory GDDR5 8GB
• Hard Disk Drive Built-in
• Optical Drive (read only)
  • BD 6xCAV
  • DVD 8xCAV
• I/O Super-Speed USB (USB 3.0) 、AUX
• Communication Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)
  • IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
  • Bluetooth® 2.1 (EDR)
• AV output HDMI
  • Analog-AV out
  • Digital Output (optical)

When we get more information we’ll post more.