Sony hint's at PS4

Cash being spent on R&D for future console

It's only inevitable someone would spill the beans about's Sony's future console plans. Lucky for us the firm's chief financial officer, Masaru Kato, yesterday explained to investors that "future platform" development was the reason for Sony's spike in R&D costs.

Kato explains that future platforms are on the agenda. "The PS3 still has a product life," he said in an investment meeting, as quoted by Eurogamer. "But this is a platform business...so for the future platform... our development work is already underway, so the R&D costs are incurred there." He said he could not specify which platform he was discussing in regards to these costs. Could this be proof the PlayStation 4 is in development, though Kato could nevertheless be referring to other new technologies, or even Sony's next platform, the NGP.

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3D love, hate or could care less, it's here to Stay

At this recent CES 2010 we saw an resurgence of 3D, an old technology taking shape in the 21th century. Toshiba a Japanese base company, is using a futuristic approach to bring 3D Technology into our homes with Toshiba's Cell 3D HD Displays. And yes, it's the same "Cell processor" that power's Sony's PS3. 3D technology has come a long way, NanoGeekTech has covered the climb of True HD 3D and most importantly Sony's influence on this new exciting take on an old technology. 

3D is a very important and natural progression of technology. The entertainment industry could be saved by 3D's resurgence with Avatar making a "Making Titantic Splash" proving there is "hope" , the medical profession will be able to benefit tremendously. Can you imagine in the near future doctor's having the ability to perform a pre-surgery using a real time 3D High Definition imagine of the patience using a motion control interface. Game Developers can hop on the Stereophonic HD 3D bandwagon, Simon Benson Sony Europe's senior development manager states on GameIndustry.biz "In the same way, when we're making 3D models for games, making a building or something... our artists need to spin it around, manipulate it on-screen to know how to build it properly. When you've got stereoscopic vision, that becomes far easier - you just see it before you. You can see how big something is relative to something else. It's not a little thing really close, or a big thing far away. I can understand where it is spatially because I can perceive that with stereoscopic vision. It helps the creation process." There may be some side effects associated with True HD 3D images, a small minority are complaining about headaches.

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Will Sony utilize IBM Power7 CPU for PlayStation 4 in 2012

Let's just say, what if Sony released the PS4 in 2012, that's about three years from today. What sort of exotic technology would Sony force upon the developing world to showcase their artistic freedom. Well, according to Dutch site PS3Clan.nl, Sony is rumored to have selected IBM's Power7 CPU for their next-generation console tentatively called the PlayStation 4.
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IBM shall debut POWER7 for the server market in the summer of 2010. The PlayStation 4 shall use a cost effective version of the architecture custom designed for Sony's specific needs.

FGNOnline currently has info available regarding specifications and performance is that the PS4 implementation of the chip shall use 6-8 cores, 24-32MB shared L3 Cache, Quad threading per core, and a double precision performance approaching 200GFLOPS.

The CELL chip which powers the PS3 is capable of 15 double precision GFLOPS. The CELL chip which powers the PS3 is capable of 15 GFLOPS double precision. This would give the PS4 a performance leap of over 10 fold over it's predecessor.

If true the PS4 would indeed be a graphical powerhouse when debuted sometime after 2010. I'll have to chalk this up as an rumor for now until I hear otherwise.

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