Sony has been understandably tight-lipped about its next generation game console, most obviously because the company is still trying to move PlayStation 3 hardware. But could another reason be that Sony doesn't yet want to reveal its planned participation in killing off the used games market? It's a subject that was touched on earlier this week, and now new information about "Orbis," the codename for Sony's next gen console, seems to suggest that Sony's all-in with the idea.
Gaming news and review site Kotaku claims to have "learned some important details" about the PS3's successor, which first and foremost is apparently being called Orbis. According to Kotaku, Orbis will do away with backwards compatibility, shunning both PS3 and PS2 collections. That would be a stunning development if true, though even more concerning is the fact that "multiple sources" are telling Kotaku that Orbis will include built-in used game measures. The most likely scenario, according to the site's "main source," is that new games will either ship as PSN downloads, or on Blu-ray discs locked to a single PSN account. You won't need an always-on connection to play games, but you will need to hop online long enough to authenticate your copy.
As for the hardware, Orbis is said to feature an AMD x64 processor and AMD Southern Islands GPU capable of pushing pixels at a resolution of up to 4096x2160. It will also be able to play 3D games in 1080p.
None of this has been confirmed by Sony, of course, and it's being reported that Orbis will ship in time for the 2013 holiday season, which is still more than a year away. That's plenty of time for specs and details to change, especially if gamers start voicing their concerns over what could end up being the death of the used games market, not to mention services like GameFly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment