Sony PlayStation 4 rumours met with scepticism

DigiTimes reports that Sony plans to start production on a PlayStation 4 at the end of this year, with a planned release some time in 2012. The news site, which has frequently been first to report Apple rumours that turn out to be true, said that Sony would include “body movement-based control like Kinect” in the PS4.

However, video games experts have greeted the report with scepticism.

Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry blog wrote: “The basic notion of a true next-gen PlayStation releasing within 18 months is ludicrous. PlayStation 3 has only become profitable for Sony relatively recently and the platform holder will be hoping for a substantial period of time in which to recoup the enormous losses they have incurred this console generation. In the here and now, PlayStation 3 has yet to dip below £199, where we would expect sales volumes to increase significantly. Closing this window of opportunity prematurely doesn't really make sense from any kind of commercial perspective."

Eurogamer also noted that no rumours of a PlayStation 4 had surfaced anywhere within the “notoriously indiscreet” video games industry.

Games blog 1Up.com repeated comments from Sony CEO Howard Stringer last month, in which he said: “I wouldn't look for any discussion of a next generation PlayStation for quite some time."As well as the desire to keep selling the PS3 for a bit longer, Sony also has the launch of the PlayStation Vita to deal with. The successor to the PlayStation Portable should begin going on sale late this year, with a European release expected around spring 2012. It’s unlikely that Sony would want to divert attention away from that and on to a new home console.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that DigiTimes has been a reliable source of rumours about upcoming products for some time now. As Eurogamer says, “it is difficult to readily discount anything from ‘manufacturing sources’ so quickly”. It’s worth keeping an eye on this particular rumour.

Sony plans to redesign PlayStation Network

Sony is planning a redesign of its online gaming network, the PlayStation Network (PSN), following a hacking attack that brought the network down for nearly a month, according to reports.
The original layout for the PSN and the PlayStation store was heavy in text and had a lot of information on the screen. The new look is more streamlined, with bigger images and more accessible information, according to the report. It will be similar to the streamlined design of Microsoft’s online gaming network, Xbox Live.
Sony’s online network is a critical service that competes with Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service among others. There are also 948 games now available in the PlayStation Network store, as well as 4,000 pieces of add-on content for games.
Sony’s PSN was offline for 24 days in the United States, and longer in other countries. The company took the PSN down after hackers were able to break in and steal sensitive information about more than 100 million customers. Sony laid indirect blame for the PSN’s downtime on hacktivist group Anonymous, which typically rallies a group of loosely connected hackers under moral or political banners.
PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable owners were unable to download new content for their games and play online with other players. The downtime came at a critical time for two major releases — Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat, both of which prominently featured online play and had received a good deal of critical acclaim.
Sony offered PSN users free games and a whole batch of other welcome-back goodies — like free subscriptions to the company’s premium PlayStation Plus version of the PSN — to entice players to continue using the PSN. The packages will probably appease a large number of console and handheld gaming device owners. But a lot of gamers — myself included — already own those Triple-A titles, and find they aren’t really worth as much as they used to be.