Tag Archives: markcerny

The PS4 Pro, as explained by the man who designed it

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Sony really wants to clarify a few things about the PlayStation 4 Pro: First, the Pro doesn't signal the end of video game console generations, even though its specs and launch window fit a pattern that resembles PC or smartphone upgrade cycles more...

The Aftermath: Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro event

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For an hour-long media event, Sony packed a ton of new info into 60 minutes. Release date and prices for both the PlayStation 4 Slim and PS4 Pro, tons of HDR footage from upcoming games and even a few bits about how the PS4 Pro would better handle Pl...

PlayStation through the years: Mark Cerny on the PS4’s roots and the brand’s evolution (video)

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PlayStation through the years Mark Cerny on the PS4's roots and the brand's evolution video

The genesis story: the long-lead up to every console's launch usually leaves one in its wake. Typically, we get some sanitized version, appropriately molded by corporate PR and fed to the public with the crust cut off. But when you're Mark Cerny, lead PlayStation 4 architect, and you've literally grown up with the games industry and the PlayStation brand itself, the tale you get to tell tends to be more truthful, mesmerizing, and chock full of the hard knocks that make success stories so great. And that's just what Cerny delivered at Gamelab in Barcelona this week, recounting the whirlwind career that led him to have the heaviest hand in shaping Sony's next-gen platform.

Not familiar with the man's esteemed background? Then sample this bit of historical trivia: Cerny was the youngest Atari employee at age 17 (!). How's that for inspiring? Oh, and what's more, Cerny even fesses up to the egotistical attitude that flattened Sony's PlayStation 3 launch (spoiler alert: it has to do with crushing third-party devs). There's much, much more insider-y goodness packed into the 45 minute-plus video after the break. Go on, now. Watch it. You'll be better for it, we promise.

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Source: PlayStation Blog

PlayStation 4 lead looked at x86 chips in 2007, wants polished games on day one

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PlayStation 4 lead looked at x86 chips in 2007, made developers number one

Many game developers will tell you that the PlayStation 3's Cell processor was a real bear to support. What they can't tell you: the PlayStation 4's lead architect, Mark Cerny, was already thinking of a solution as far back as 2007. He just revealed to Gamasutra that he'd been researching x86-based processors for the PS4 merely a year after the PS3 launch, knowing that there were "some issues" with realizing the Cell's potential. The new console's unified memory and eight-core CPU were the ultimate results of Cerny's talks with game creators shortly after he took the reins in 2008. We've already seen the shift in attitudes through a very developer-centric PlayStation Meeting, but Cerny wants to underscore just how different the PS4's holiday launch should be versus what we remember from 2006 -- even the first wave of PS4 games should benefit from a healthy toolset, he says. We'll know his long-term planning paid off if the initial PS4 library shows the level of refinement that took years to manifest on the PS3.

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Via: Eurogamer

Source: Gamasutra

Ustream on PlayStation 4: discovery, one-click sharing and being ‘a modern day cable provider’

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How Ustream will work on PlayStation 4

"We've partnered with some of the biggest and most influential social networks in the world, including Facebook and Ustream, to bring gamers' friends into games like never before," former Gaikai CEO David Perry told attendees of Sony's PlayStation 4 event last week. It was the only mention Ustream got during the show, despite the video streaming service playing a critical role in Sony's next video game console. In-tandem with the PlayStation 4's new DualShock 4 controller and its "Share" button, users will be able to quickly upload saved gameplay video clips or directly stream their game out to the internet. The console's lead system architect, Mark Cerny, expanded on the importance of the Share button and its implications to the PlayStation 4 during last week's presentation. "Social play is so important to PlayStation 4 that we've added in hardware to support it, in the form of dedicated, always-on video compression and decompression systems," he said.

We saw a bit of the game sharing / streaming interface during Sony's presentation, but were left wondering about specifics: how will discovery work? and what of other, non-gaming Ustream content? Thankfully, Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable was able to offer up most of our answers in a recent interview. "Our goal is to allow discovery in a very clean user experience, both in discovery on the console itself and on various platforms that the content'll be available on (like Ustream, Twitter, and Facebook)," Hunstable said. He wouldn't speak to the specifics of how that discovery will work, nor would he say if you'll be able to sign-in simply using your PlayStation Network ID or if you'll have to sign up for a separate Ustream account, but he stressed that the decisions being made are, "based on what's easiest and best for the gamer." That same rubric is (thankfully) being applied to functionality. "The goal is to make sure it's very easy -- one click of a button, super simple -- and most importantly make sure it looks really, really good. And is viewable wherever people want to watch it from," Hunstable said.

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Sony unveils its next game console, the PlayStation 4, arriving in holiday 2013

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Sony tonight announced its much-rumored next video game console, the PlayStation 4. Sony Computer Entertainment prez and CEO Andrew House announced the console with little more than a logo and a handful of concepts, though he did say it's coming in holiday 2013. We're sure to hear more as the night goes on, and we'll be updating this post as we learn more.

Lead system architect Mark Cerny -- legendary game dev and, to us, creator of Marble Madness -- came up next. He said that development of the PS4 started five years ago. Cerny said he's been exploring how to evolve "the PlayStation ecosystem," and he started by speaking to the limitations of PlayStation 3. Cerny said he's been aiming to make sure "nothing gets between the platform and the game." An image of an old-timey hunter shooting space invaders in the sky is used as an example -- here's hoping the PS4 doesn't mean we'll be taking plastic guns and shooting pixels in the sky.

"We were able to create in PlayStation 4 a system by game creators, for game creators," Cerny said. As far as specs, he said it runs on x86 architecture, a "highly enhanced" PC GPU (with "almost 2 teraflops of performance," he added), an unknown amount of local HDD storage, and 8GB of GDDR5 system memory. Cerny next unveiled the DualShock 4, which looks an awful lot like the leaks we saw recently -- it features a touchpad, a light bar, and what looks like rubberized grips. Otherwise, it looks an awful lot like a DualShock 3 with some new bells and whistles.

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