Yoshida reveals more PS4 details in press roundtable

Sony’s PS4 announcement Wednesday revealed a lot about the PlayStation 4 but didn’t answer all of our questions. More details have come out since though, including the answers Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida delivered at an hour-long press conference yesterday. The media roundtable covered a range of topics, from backwards compatibility to third-party game titles. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits:

•  The PS4’s hardware will not block used games, but it will be up to publishers to decide whether games are sold with single-use activation codes.
• The recent Vita price cut in Japan will not become effective worldwide. Those pricing decisions are made “region by region”.
• PS3 discs will not be compatible with the PS4 hardware.
• Sony decided not to show the PS4 hardware at the reveal in order to focus on other things first, but they have plans throughout the year building up to the launch and “next time we will talk about these things”.
• The PS4 will support 3D but it will not be a focus, as the TV division is shifting focus to other technology. Still, “More games will run at 1080p and 60 frames per second, so it’s an easier and better experience when you watch on 3D TV”.
• The PlayStation 4 will support 4K, but not for games at this stage.
• Sony is open to upgrading PS3 games to PS4, just as some PS2 games were enhanced and re-released on PS3.
• Yoshida hopes to have every PS4 title available on Vita via remote play, and will be “heartbroken if it doesn’t day one”.
• He would also like to see a “PlayStation App Store”, to make it easier for small developers to get their games onto the console.
• Although Yoshida knows whether the PlayStation 4 will be region locked, he won’t reveal it yet. He doesn’t want to “get a call from my PR guy saying, ‘What did you say?'”
• PSN may or may not remain free. Yoshida says, “We totally believe that we want to provide more functionality and more services and more content on the network. And so we are looking at how we are going to structure that. And we are not ready to talk about that.”
• There was no direct answer on whether The Last Guardian will remain a PS3 game, or move to PS4. Sony is waiting for the right time to “reintroduce” the game, to avoid broken promises.

Lastly, Yoshida revealed that we probably won’t see more of the PlayStation 4 until this year’s E3. But we also weren’t supposed to see the PS4 controller until Wednesday, so…we’ll see how that pans out. In the meantime, you can read Yoshida’s full responses on GameSpot, check out our summary of the reveal here, and hear our views in a special edition of the Gaming Trend podcast.

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