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Sony PlayStation Meeting 2013 livestream — watch the event right here

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:45:10 +0000

Sony officially announced the PlayStation 4 at a massive New York City event today. We didn’t see any hardware, other than the new Dual Shock controller, but there was a plethora of games and new technology announced.

Rewatch the entire event below.

Here are a few highlights from the event:

Filed under: Games

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This is what a prototype PlayStation 4 controller reportedly looks like

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:16:58 +0000

Man the harpoons, because that is one whale of a controller.

The above image, which first appeared on Destructoid, features what looks like a PlayStation DualShock controller with a touchpad at its center. We can’t confirm if this is the real deal, but Kotaku claims its source verified that it is an actual prototype gamepad for Sony’s next-gen console.

At most, this is a likely a prototype, which means it may not reflect what the final controller will look like. It is likely a working mockup that Sony’s engineers have thrown together so developers can make their games. It is bulky because it has all of the new technology slapped haphazardly into its shell.

We contacted Sony, but its spokesperson said it does not comment on rumor and speculation — and I don’t think “rumor and speculation” is the name of the new console.

Sony is holding an event on Feb. 20 to discuss the future of PlayStation. Gamers and analysts widely believe this event will focus on the next PlayStation home console.

Filed under: Games

‘Orbis’ vs. ‘Durango’: The altercation over rumored specifications for the next PlayStation and Xbox

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:09:43 +0000

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It’s the laziest kind of dialogue you’ll hear in an indie film. A couple of guys sitting on a couch or at the bar will say something like “Who do you think would win a in fight, Dan Rather or Barbara Walters?” It’s a hypothetical exercise done for fun since we can’t possibly know who would really win — although, clearly Barbara Walters would.

Let’s give it a try ourselves: What would win in a fight? Microsoft’s rumored next-gen system “Durango” or Sony’s PlayStation 3 followup codenamed “Orbis”?

Eventually, we’ll know exactly which system punches harder and moves faster (Sony’s holding a major event on Feb. 20 that may involve the next PlayStation), but for now we’ll have to work from the rumored specs for each new piece of hardware. Most of this information comes from VG Leaks’, which published documentation on the Orbis and Durango in recent weeks.

Let’s get ready to force-feedback!

In this corner: PlayStation Orbis

Sony’s next system is a wrecking machine according to the data we have. It features a powerful graphics processor and the speediest memory on the market.

Here’s what we’ve heard:

Eight-core 1.6 GHz AMD “Jaguar” CPU
18-core GPU based on AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 Series
Capable of 1.843 TeraFLOPS (floating-points operations per second)
Shared 512 KB of read/write L2 cache
4GB of GDDR5 RAM
GDDR5 does 17 GB of data per second
Around 3.5GB of RAM available to game software
50GB Blu-ray disc drive

And in this corner: Microsoft Durango

Microsoft’s latest gaming hardware doesn’t like a bum, either. It has an identical CPU to Orbis and a similar GPU. The graphics processor is a bit short on compute-unit cores, however, and while Durango supposedly has twice the memory of Orbis, it’s of the slower (and cheaper) DDR3 variety.

Here’s the system’s stats as far as we know:

Eight-core 1.6 Ghz AMD “Jaguar” CPU (same as the Orbis)
12-core GPU based on AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 Series
Capable of 1.23 TFLOPS
32MB of fast embedded SRAM
SRAM capable of 102GB of data per second
8GB of DDR3 RAM
DDR3 does 102GB of data per second
6.5GB available for games

So, who wins?

I already told you: Barbara Walters.

It all depends on how you define “winning.” On paper, the Orbis is more powerful. The six extra cores in the GPU and the faster RAM could really boost visuals to a very high level if game developers take full advantage of the system’s capabilities. Most studios, though, don’t usually do that.

Games are still gonna look amazing on Durango, and while it looks like the Orbis can punch harder, Durango could outmaneuver Sony’s hardware in terms of features.

The intangibles

Orbis reportedly has 512MB of RAM reserved for the operating system and extra features. The Durango has 1.5GB of RAM set aside for the same thing.

This is where the two systems, so similar in hardware architecture, will attempt to separate themselves from one another.

What is going on in the Durango that requires an extra gig of RAM at all times. Does a new version of the Kinect require that memory, or is it a whole suite of social and media features?

Meanwhile, 512MB for the OS sounds like Sony might skimp on ever-present software features or maybe it’s using the cloud-streaming functionality of Gaikai to pack a major wallop in a small memory footprint.

We’ll know the answers to some of these questions soon. It’s only a week until that Sony event. GamesBeat will have coverage of that and any other announcement, so stay tuned.

Filed under: Games

Sony invites the world to see the future of PlayStation on Feb. 20

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:19:49 +0000

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It is happening. Although I’m not entirely clear what “it” is.

Sony just released a video on its PlayStation blog with the title #PlayStation2013. Sony titled the blog “See The Future,” referencing an event it is holding on Feb. 20.

GamesBeat received an invite to that event. If you can’t see the future, we’ll go ahead and see it for you.

Here is a nebulous vision of light and flickering that Sony calls a video:

The video is just a swirl of nonsense until the end, when the famous buttons of the DualShock controller come into focus. Sony has used the triangle, circle, cross, and square symbols since the original PlayStation.

Let’s put it this way: If this Feb. 20 event is not about the next PlayStation home console, then someone at Sony goofed up.

GamesBeat reported on leaks regarding the rumored Orbis system earlier this month. The specs for the system popped up on a handful of sites in the last two weeks, which suggests the system is near.

Filed under: Games

Loose lips sink PlayStations: New specifics about the next Sony console (rumor)

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:12:10 +0000

Yesterday, we reported on a few rumors about the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

Those rumors suggested that Sony’s Orbis (codename for the next PlayStation) is more powerful than Microsoft’s Durango. Today, a new set of rumors seems to confirm some of those previous leaks and assertions.

Eurogamer posted some data it claims it gathered from trusted sources that have Orbis development kits:

Orbis/PlayStation 4

AMD eight-core 1.6GHz CPU
Radeon HD graphics card (possibly a modified version of the 7970M)
1.84 TFLOPS
“Secret sauce” compute module
CPU component could be 75 to 80 mm²
4GB of GDDR5 ultrafast RAM
512MB RAM reserved for the operating system
100GB Blu-ray disc drive

Interestingly, the AMD CPU combined with a Radeon 7970M produces the 1.84 TFLOPS benchmark — according to Eurogamer — that popped up in a separate rumor about the next PlayStation.

A PC with such specs like that can run Crysis 2 on its Very High settings at 60 frames-per-second. A dedicated console should churn out even more due to its more efficient architecture.

Eurogamer’s sources also claim that Microsoft’s Durango will share the same AMD eight-core CPU as the Orbis, but it will have a much slower memory bank. Microsoft’s next Xbox reportedly has 8GB of DDR3 compared to Orbis’s 4GB of GDDR5. DDR3 is an older and slower standard, especially compared to GDDR5.

In this case, Sony’s ultrafast RAM, despite having less, is likely an advantage — especially if it’s true that Microsoft is reserving 3GB of its memory for the OS and always-running applications.

So games may run better on Orbis, but Microsoft may have more features and functionality.

Of course, this is all speculation. The increase in leaks is a sign an announcement is imminent. A Sony executive claims they may have something to say about a new PlayStation in May.

Filed under: Games

The DeanBeat: Don’t ya wish these fantasy game consoles were coming?

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:00:16 +0000

With a month to go before this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo video game trade show (E3), rumors are surfacing about next-generation console announcements. We’re not likely to hear much about what sort of features they’ll have for a while with the exception of Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U, which is launching this fall.

But gamers love to talk about their fantasy consoles. We all have our wish lists. How about a little crowdsourced hardware design? I’m up for it. Here’s what I’m hoping will be in the next-gen systems.

It would be nice to see all of the consoles adopt game streaming from the cloud. If you process and store the game in the cloud as OnLive and Gaikai do, you can stream video of a game to a player, relieving the machine on the receiving end of the need do processing. That means that the console never becomes outdated as you can always just upgrade the hardware in the data center to improve the gamer’s experience at home. Cloud gaming hasn’t taken the world by storm yet, but it seems like an inevitable byproduct of advances of streaming, compression, and better broadband.

One rumor suggested the new consoles won’t have physical media. I won’t miss discs, but it may be a little early to get rid of them entirely. Sure, this thought conflicts with the idea of cloud gaming, so I have mixed feelings about it. But we may not be ready for the next console to be entirely dependent on the cloud. I’d be happy to see Jedi mind tricks with brain wave controls, but I’m not expecting great advances on that front, either.

This is an exercise that anybody can join. Nicole Lazzaro, head of XEO Design, would love to be able to carry her games across all kinds of devices, consoles included. She wants the machine to know her friends and be ready to send demos of games to them. She wants a flexible display that she could roll up in a pen and an easily browsable game catalog.

Todd Hooper of Zipline games wants a console with no discs, 4K 3D graphics, and awesome graphics power. He’s happy to pay $60 for games running on such a console. For him, free-to-play games would simply be a nice option. GamesBeat writer Rob LeFebvre would like to see a great “console convergence,” where each system maker’s games will run on their competitors’ machines. GamesBeat intern Mike Minotti wants to see Mario games running on Xboxes. Those are good wishes, and we never said they had to be realistic.

Mark Deloura, former vice president of technology at THQ, said the biggest question for him is how the consoles remain relevant. He also worries about the physical drive. Will Blu-ray be big enough to store the data from next-gen games? Maybe it is the BDXL specification, which stacks Blu-ray discs on top of each other. The transfer rate from those discs would be 45 megabits per second, so it could take 100 seconds to fill up 4 gigabytes of main memory from a disc. That’s a challenge for the technologists, as it’s no easy thing to change to a new disc format. Deloura would also like to see a more open ecosystem for online titles and stronger support. And the consoles should catch up to social/mobile when it comes to innovative business models.

And here’s some more specific wish lists.

Nintendo. The company has described its Wii U as having high-definition graphics, Wii-like motion sensors, a tablet-like controller with a touchscreen, and near-field communications. I’d like to see Nintendo finally embrace the world of online gaming and digital distribution. How about Steam on a Nintendo console, asks GamesBeat writer Stefanie Fogel. Nintendo has the right idea in embracing tablets as controllers, but it really ought to go all the way and use the iPhone or iPad as the input device.

Everyone is quite worried that the Wii U won’t have much processing power. It will be able to run high-definition content, but it may not be as powerful as the current Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Our preference: faster, faster, faster, of course.

Sony. Sony should return to mass-market pricing. That may mean your PlayStation 4, code-named Orbis, won’t have a chip with 256 cores. But who wants to pay $600 for a next-gen machine for the living room? Sony has said it has no plans to describe its PlayStation 4 at E3. Hooper says that Sony would do better to have a better online strategy that catches up with Microsoft’s. Rolling out updates, for instances, should take far less time than it currently does.

Microsoft. A rumor emerged this week that Microsoft will subsidize its current Xbox 360, offering a $99 price for a console-Kinect bundle if you pay for a two-year subscription at $15 a month. That is marching down the road toward a subscription-based console, like a mobile-phone contract, where the hardware is free and you pay for software or an online subscription. On top of that, free-to-play business models, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual items, have made a big splash on social and mobile platforms, but they could really be disruptive on the consoles.

The next machine is reportedly code-named Durango. It reportedly has 16 processor cores — compared to three in the Xbox 360. It is also rumored to have an Advanced Micro Devices graphics chip that can handle 4K resolution (better than high-definition TV) graphics. Amen to that. Dave Taylor, a veteran programmer, would rather see a Larrabee-like processor with 80 or more cores.

I’d also want Kinect 2 since the original Kinect motion-sensing system isn’t as accurate as I’d like it to be. Of course, it goes without saying that we really want the Star Trek Holodeck, where virtual reality is indistinguishable from the real world. Microsoft has said it has no plans to talk about a new console at E3.

Apple. These guys could easily get into the console business with an Apple-branded television set that runs apps from the App Store. When you can spend 99 cents for decent-quality games on the TV, you may never pay $60 for a console title again. You could use your iPhone or iPad as a controller.

What we don’t want to see

One thing I really don’t want to see in the next-gen consoles is stereoscopic 3D. I think the past few years have shown that it doesn’t add that much to the experience, makes a lot of people dizzy, and still adds cost.

I think that game developers and publisher want to see an end to used game sales, particularly for new games that have just hit the market. GameStop would hate for the next consoles to block used games, though it contends a relatively small portion of used game sales are for the newest games. Gamers, who have viewed used games as a right, would hate it, too. Legal precedent supports them too.

What’s your own wish list? Please vote for your favorites in the poll or add some new desires in the comments.

Filed under: Games, Mobile

Sony’s PlayStation 4 may be code-named Orbis

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:57:29 +0000

Sony’s next PlayStation is code-named Orbis and it will use chips from Advanced Micro Devices, according to video game publication Kotaku.

Sony isn’t expected to begin talking about it for months, and Kaz Hirai, the new chief executive of Sony starting April 1, said in January that the company will not talk about a PlayStation 4 at the next E3 trade show in June. If and when it launches, Orbis will be Sony’s attempt to regain supremacy in the video game business.

But Kotaku, citing a reliable source, said that the Japanese company will launch the machine in time for the holidays in 2013. Microsoft is expected to launch a new machine in 2013, while Nintendo plans to launch its Wii U this year. Sony declined to comment to Kotaku.

The upcoming console reportedly uses an AMD “x64″ CPU, Kotaku said. That would be x86, according to common chip language. An AMD Southern Islands graphics processing unit, or GPU, will also be in the machine. That’s consistent with rumors reported by SemiAccurate, a chip blog. AMD is prepping the Southern Islands graphics chips for high-end PCs this year. The resolution will reportedly be 4096 x 2160, far ahead of today’s high-definition TVs. It will be able to do stereoscopic 3D in full HD. Some developers are reportedly getting early developer kits already.

The PS 4 will likely not run PS 3 games, and used games will likely be unable to run on the Orbis. The games for the device will reportedly be authenticated via a PlayStation Network (Sony Entertainment Network) account.

Filed under: Games

Medical ed site Orbis lands $8M to ease nursing shortage

Matt Bowman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:00:36 +0000

VCs have, for the most part, steered clear of education startups, save for a few areas where consumers are willing to open their wallets — things like standardized test prep and language learning. However, Lightspeed Venture Partners thinks it’s found a goldmine in nurse training. Today, the firm announced an $8 million round for IL-based Orbis Education, which helps universities web-enable their nursing programs, reduce their per-student costs and meet the country’s growing need for medical professionals.

As Congress hashes out a plan to expand medical coverage, the country’s demand for nurses is skyrocketing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by the year 2016, nearly 600,000 new nursing positions need to be created. That means schools must graduate 90% more nurses per year. However, universities are poorly incentivized to increase their nursing graduation rates, since such programs are 2 to 3 times as costly as other subjects, but universities can’t charge that kind of multiple for tuition. Restrictions on the student-to-instructor ratio can be as stringent as 8 to 1 for clinical programs. That, in part, is why 100,000-150,000 qualified applicants are turned away from nursing schools every year, despite the shortage, according to Orbis CEO Dan Briggs.

To help schools reduce costs and accept more applicants, Orbis replaces the brick-and-mortar classroom with the laptop. Theory courses are taught by university faculty via interactive online classes that include threaded discussions, real-time webcasts, projects, assignments and proctored exams. Students can complete the online courses according their own schedules, and hands-on clinical preparation is taught by appointed university faculty assigned to work directly with students.

So far, Orbis has partnered with San Diego State University, the University of Oklahoma, Marian University, Sharp HealthCare, St. Vincent Health, and Glendale Adventist Medical Center. The company plans to use the investment to expand into states with the most acute nursing shortages. California, where Orbis already operates, is in the worst shape; other targets include Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

Lightspeed Principal Andrew Chung, who led the investment, said that most other education verticals are already saturated — disciplines where classroom instruction constitutes the bulk of the educational experience (history, psychology, math) are covered by the University of Pheonix and similar online schools. However, programs that require large amounts of hands-on time “in-the-field” need the technology it takes to integrate apprentice-style education with theory courses. “This might be one of the last frontiers,” Chung said, but he did add that adjacent verticals like medtech and x-ray training are still ripe for investment.

Orbis is headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind.

Posted in Business, Deals