Big rumors for Sony's new console today.
Project is currently named Orbis. And, given the Vita's name, that may be a final name. Orbis Vita can be read as "Circle of Life".
The bulletpoints:
CPU will be an AMD x64. The GPU will be in line with AMD's 2012 lineup of PC GPUs, which is just a tremendous amount of power. What that means is that the Orbis will be able to output 3D in 1080p (the PS3 could barely do 720p, and most 3D games didn't even hit that, as it was a risk of overheating the device). But in 2D, the Orbis will be able to hit true 2k definition, of 4096×2160. Most TVs can't handle that yet, but again, this is always a life cycle game. The Orbis is scheduled for release Holiday 2013, and I can guarantee by 2017, the same amount of people that have 1080p devices today will have 2k devices.
The system will not be backwards compatible, at all. this shouldn't be a surprise, as I've pointed out before. The PS3 had a unique processing system called Cell, and it would be too expensive to put this new CPU/GPU in the Orbis, and then add a Cell processor just for backwards compatibility. So keep your PS3s.
The system will have an anti-used game system, as Microsoft's next console is rumored to have. Basically, when you buy a new game, you will register the game to your PSN ID. When you buy a used game, you will only be buying a trial version of the game, in essence. You will then have to pay a fee to unlock the game. This is bad news for used game buyers, but good news for people who hate online passes, as this basically will eliminate them.
All games, even full AAA titles, will be available both as a Blu-Ray disc and as a digital download. This means you should expect big big big hard drives on the Orbis. 1TB may be a launch size. Because AAA games on the PS3 ran up to 50GB in size. So that would be under 20 games on a HD for a TB drive.
As always, these are rumors, but Kotaku speaks very highly of the source. Some of the above could change, but the point to take home is this: both Microsoft and Sony have Holiday 2013 as a target. The idea of a launch later than that, at this point, is dead. And that's a good thing, as I've mentioned before. Even if you're not ready to buy a new console until 2015, you want the new console to come out as soon as possible, as it only means better games sooner.
http://kotaku.com/5896996/the-next-p...re-the-details