Sony’s Mark Cerny Talks PS4

In a brand new interview Sony’s Mark Cerny, a man currently charged with the design of the PlayStation 4 hardware and functionality, talks about the system, backwards compatibility and running that 4K resolution for the user interface.

The interview’s in Japanese, but translations exist, so whilst it’s tricky to 100% verify the information as exact, it’s likely enough that the core facts are intact.

[videoyoutube]First up, why did Sony decide to drop backwards compatibility? Apparently doing so was deemed a “necessary evil”, and was done “to make sure devs will be happy going forward”.

We assume this means that the costs saved from not having BC mean devs get the extra, super-fast RAM, and so on.

And whilst the PS4 doesn’t include the Cell chip, Sony learnt from the development of Cell to make the PS4 so powerful.

4K resolution? Games are “focusing on 1080p”, Cerny says, but it’s entirely possible to render the user interface (on top of the game, as you can now with the PS button) in 4K.

That said, it’s likely that most games won’t do this to save resources – running the UI alone at 4K takes 10 GB/s.

Cerny also talks about the custom chipset (and confirms the PS4 will use ARM’s TrustZone) and reiterates that the console will allow users to play games whilst they’re downloading – something that was mentioned at the reveal but nice to hear again.

He also hints that we should be seeing near-100% take-up on Vita Remote Play for PS4 games, saying that there’s “almost no overhead” and “without pain whatsoever, you will be able to Remote Play a PS4 game.” That’s encouraging, as is the brief mention of off-TV play…

Cerny also states that the operating system will run on BSD, a flavour of Unix.

For our latest thoughts on PS4 and what it means for next gen, click here.

12 Comments

  1. It all sounds very good to me. Happy to hear about the almost 100% adoption rate for Vita-play.

    • Indeed, very happy to hear about the almost 100% adoption rate for Vita-play. This means that at least SONY themselves will probably have it for each of their games.

      • 3rd parties will always be weighing up potential lost sales, although with the small install base of the Vita it’s not like they’re selling multi-million copies of their games on the Vita to miss out on.

    • That’s the most important thing I took from this interview. It’s probably the number 1 reason why I got a Vita in the first place.

  2. Gif me that beautiful controller!! =D

    • Unfortunately it’s Jpg, is that ok?

  3. I read the interview on a different site, the bit where it says ” running the UI alone at 4K takes 10 GB/s” had straight after it “and 10 GB/s for the second screen”. Will the PS4 support duel screens?

    Like the near-100% take-up on Vita Remote Play.

    • I’ve not seen anything but speculation on a second screen, but remember Sony’s original vision for the PS3 had two HDMI ports…. perhaps they are realising it with the PS4.

      Or, it could just mean 10gb/s for the Ui, and, if overlayed on 4k content another 10gb/s for the underlying content (second screen). Might just be lost in translation.

      • The translation wasn’t the best, there were a few parts you needed to read over to get the meaning.
        I cannot see duel display being used by many as most don’t have two HD TVs that they can put together, unless you can use a smaller screen like a monitor. That could be useful.

  4. Great branding at last for the Vita, making it almost as essential as a basic controller for PS4 to reap the full benefit of next gen game releases.

  5. With the reomote play Vita feature Sony should seriously consider a PS4 bundle with a Vita included, that should push the userbase for Vita way up.

  6. Lack of backwards comparability is bad, like a lot of others, I can only afford a PS4 if I trade in my PS3 towards it.

    As I have a reasonable size game collection and quite a few I’ve not played, I cannot see an early purchase in my future.

    In addition, plus is now pointless as your instant game collection will evaporate when you move to PS4.

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