Specifications PlayStation 4

Hardware
The PlayStation 4, as you'd expect for a seven-years-later follow-up, has impressively bumped specs:

• An eight-core X86 AMD Jaguar CPU
• 1.84-teraflop AMD Radeon graphics engine (with "18 compute units")
• 8GB of GDDR5 memory
• 500GB hard drive
• Blu-ray drive
• Three USB 3.0 ports
• 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Ethernet, HDMI, Bluetooth 2.1, optical audio and analog AV out

The PS4 will use a 500GB hard drive for storage; the same as the Xbox One. The specs overall match that of a modern PC with integrated AMD processors and graphics, or so it seems. It's not a particularly stunning set of specs for a PC, but it's far ahead of any existing game console. It's just not as ahead-of-its-time on the hardware end as the original PlayStation 3 seemed to be.

Immediacy of response reducing lag time while accessing content is also one of the promised PS4 features (unlike the extremely laggy Wii U, perhaps). The PS4 will allow speedy background downloading, and Sony claims that games will even be playable as they're being downloaded.

Yes, the PS4 will have a Blu-ray drive that can also play DVDs. The PS4 will also have three USB 3.0 ports, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, HDMI, Analog AV-out, and optical digital audio output.

What about PS3 games playing on the PS4? Sony has so far discussed PlayStation 3 gameplay on the PS4 under the same umbrella as playing PlayStation 1 and PS 2 games, via a digital library in a yet-to-be-determined PlayStation Cloud Service. Whether this would be accomplished via streaming, digital downloads, or emulation wasn't specified, but it sounds like Sony's answer to the Virtual Console.