It was leaked, it was highly anticipated, we honestly weren’t sure whether to be impressed by it, but it’s official! Live on stage in New York, Sony’s Andrew House announced the PlayStation 4 games console!

Whilst everything is pretty much as it leaked, the Apple karma, everything just look pretty damn spec heavy, although physical media you’ll have to wave goodbye to sadly.

The Specs

We’ve still yet to lay eyes on the box itself, but lead system architect Mark Cerny announced on stage that the PlayStation 4 will pack an eight-core processor with 8GB of memory. The processor uses similar technology, even from the processor architecture of x86, to traditional PC chips, which will make porting high-end Windows games over a doddle.

One pretty cool feature is the ability to instantly pause games and boot straight into them, or switch between them, and download games can be played even while they download, yes its all download now, time for you to upgrade your speeds or bandwidth.

Downloadable content maybe all well and good, but this does mean that Playstation games will not be playable on the PS4, even PS3 discs won’t run on the PS4, but Gaikai CEO Dave Perry hinted that they would run not just on the PS4, but on your phone, courtesy of the cloud.

DualShock 4 Controller

The leaked images were spot on. The new controller for the PS4, the DualShock 4, packs in a touch pad in the middle, as well as a “Share” button (which lets you easily tag and upload footage from your gameplay, like a console PVR) and a headphone jack.

In the Cloud

Sony snapped up game streaming service Gaikai last year, and now we know what it’s for, and live on stage, Gaikai CEO Dave Perry announced that you’ll be able to log on to the PlayStation Store and instantly play any demo of any game you like, using the power of the cloud. With a tap of the Share button, you can share a live feed of your gameplay, have your friends watch, give you tips and even take over your controls for you if you’re stuck against an iron hard boss. You’ll also be able to broadcast your games over the web to anyone – not just your friends – through popular streaming service, Ustream.

That’s not all, either. You’ll be able to play PS4 games on the PS Vita using Remote Play, Perry announced – Sony’s dabbled with this technology for years, but with the PS4, it looks like it’s finally about to make it standard. This is a pretty high task to give the PS Vita, and we can’t wait to see this in person to see just what gaming can not only be found on a PS4, but how it really works and if it really is that impressive, on PS Vita, which to this day has struggled to take off truly next to Nintendo and Smartphones alike.