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A Playstation 4 Teardown
Dave Knott writes "Just over one week ahead of the launch of the Playstation 4, Wired has posted an article with a full teardown of Sony's new device. In an accompanying video Sony engineering director Yasuhiro Ootori dismantles the PS4 piece by piece, describing each component and showing just what is contained inside the sleek black box."
That's super of them, to give the modders a head start like that!
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Sure, people who don't care any like the games...
But surely Sony have left a bad taste in many peoples mouths, with removing promised features, poor security after getting hacked several times, DRM rootkits, propriety crap instead of standards...
It feels weird to say it, but XBOX is clearly the better platform here.
Paid shill anyone? Did you forget the Eye of Sauron on the Xbox One? Did you forget how Microsoft initially was not going to allow resale of games? How much does Microsoft pay you? The XBox 360 had a proprietary HD while the PS3 had a standard HD that was end user replaceable.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The PS4 controller, AKA the dualshock4, is a pretty impressive little device. Trackpad, motion, control, speaker, headset, analog sticks, bunch of buttons.
And it will connect to any device via bluetooth or USB because it shows up as a Generic HID device on both! You can pair it with your PC, phone or tablet via bluetooth or connect it to anything that supports USB.
Right now just the basic stuff is supported. Both analog sticks and all buttons (Including the tackpad click). The big triggers register a button press, and register analog on a seperate input too. Hell, even the tilt/motion control shows up as an analog input.
I'm fairly certain, like with the wiimote, an improved driver will be developed to access the special functions like the track pad and audio interfaces.
I don't plan on getting the PS4 but I already have a dualshock 4 (You can buy them now at gamestop) and I'm toying with it on lots of things. Already use it as a controller on my tablet for playing emulators and it works better than anything else I've tried by far.
A high-quality and detailed teardown of their own product? I think that's freaking awesome. And smart too - they know the success of the PS4 will depend on the early adopter, hard-core gamer, the type of person who has likely put together a home-grown PC gaming system and who would get excited about exactly this type of video. Well done Sony.
Where is the 'we will screw you later on' module?
Every sony product has one..
Why an SSD?
A 2TB laptop drive can be had for very cheap.
PS4 will have FF XIV, nothing interesting except Halo reruns for Xbox and no Metroid announced for Wii U.
PS4 wins.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Is it too late to reinvent cartridges by sticking the games on 64gb usb sticks? I miss the tactile feel of the game, the blowing out the dust so it kinda works if you hold it in when it starts.
Why store them on SSDs?
The thing ships with a hard drive and 2TB laptop drives are cheap.
A high-quality and detailed teardown of their own product? I think that's freaking awesome. And smart too - they know the success of the PS4 will depend on the early adopter, hard-core gamer, the type of person who has likely put together a home-grown PC gaming system and who would get excited about exactly this type of video. Well done Sony.
A detailed teardown was inevitable from someone - probably Ars Technica, for example. And that teardown comes with a review of Sony's architecture and decisions, and the review may not necessarily be entirely favorable. However, this way, the first teardown is accompanied by glowing descriptions of the hardware. Anything later is an also-ran, by definition, and will draw less eyeballs than it would have if it was first. The widest seen review now will be their own. More companies should do this.
After owning 3 360s, I switched to PS3 and am never looking back after I get a PS4. Microsoft screwed themselves out of this good customer.
I still cannot believe that in order to run streaming apps like Netflix or Hulu I have to purchase xbox live just to get the ethernet adapter to work. 50 bucks a year to turn on the ethernet adapter seems a little pricey.
. It had a proprietary HD enclosure, which could be bought on ebay for a small amount then the end user could supply their own drive.
"Fat" PS3's don't have the "enclosure", and with the slims, you can just take the enclosure off the old drive.
Other than that, Standard SATA.
PS2 HDD's on the other hand are "blessed", you need a "blessed" HDD if you want to use it with softare that supports the HDD. That doesn't apply to PS2 Linux though, you can use any PATA drive with that.
I love this kind of fanboyism. My platform isn't quite as shitty as yours. Great.
He makes a comment about how the stickers are there on the back screws to discourage people opening it up and then he goes on to say you can replace the HD with any standard drive.
Seems they thought of what would happen if people tried to sell their PS4 on the used market. It would be easy/easier for the buyer to tell if the unit had been opened up while still allowing for people to upgrade their systems.
It's not like they dropped some security torx screws in this or other odd screws like others do (Apple).
Did you notice Sony will only let you watch streamed Video and Music sold to you by them?
No DLNA support
No USB support
No using a PS4 for home media
I've been called a paid Sony Shill on these forums, and I'm now saying that the XBox is the best all-round device for the next generation.
That's not true. The drives also had a digital signature on them to make them work with the 360. No signature and the drive wouldn't work. The signature was tied to the drive capacity, serial number and model number.
People hacked around this by putting custom firmware on drives that gave it the serial number and model number of another drive. You then could copy the digital signature from that drive and get as much storage as that signature allowed. So, for example, if you copied the signature from a 60GB drive you got 60GB of storage even if you have a 200GB drive.
So no, it wasn't just a proprietary enclosure. And the process of duplicating that signature violated the DMCA. Hacking/duplicating firmware probably did too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Xbox is the ONLY device that does this. Its absurd and you are making excuses for it.
Good-bye
Hmmm, possibly that, since it can also function as a BluRay player ... at which point how you'd escape the spinning disc thing is a mystery to me.
Clearly, he wants the disc to remain stationary while the console scans it linearly like an ultra high resolution flatbed scanner.
Or, even more awesome ... the disc stays still while the console spins around.
Probably more efficient to spin the disc though.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The 500GB HD can be replaced by any commercial drive of larger capacity according to the engineer in the video!
But surely Sony have left a bad taste in many peoples mouths,
OK, I'll address these points one by one.
with removing promised features
I'll give you this one. Although I'm surprised IBM didn't push them to not include Linux support in the first place since they sold higher-end Cell systems.
poor security after getting hacked several times
That's still better than Microsoft whose response to Xbox Live hacks is to pretend they're not happening.
Oh, and due to your next argument, you also tacitly gave me permission to bring up that Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer are responsible for some of the largest security holes in computing ever.
DRM rootkits,
Sony is actually a number of different divisions operating under a single name. In this case, the rootkit was from Sony Music Entertainment and Phillips actually make Sony Music Entertainment stop using the CD designation for discs that had said DRM on it.
propriety crap instead of standards...
I can't tell if you're talking about all of Sony or just Sony Computer Entertainment.
If you're talking about all of Sony, I'm going to remind you that they were involved in the creation of:
* The cassette tape
* The 3.5" diskette
* CDs
* Blu-Ray
all of which were standards at one time or another. (Note: DVDs also used the error correcting technology from CDs, but Sony was not involved other than that)
For just the PS3:
The PS3's main processor is proprietary... but so was the Xbox 360 CPU (unless you thought a triple-core Power PC was a standard component...), the Wii CPU..., and the WiiU CPU while we're at it.
Having said that, the PS3 uses the following standards:
1. 802.11b/g built in to all models. The Xbox 360 originally went with wired networking only and required a $100 addon for WiFi support. It wasn't until the "S" models that they included it in the base system.
2. Standard 2.5" (aka laptop) SATA hard drive bay. The Xbox 360 uses hard drives with custom firmware instead.
3. Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless controllers and peripherals. The Xbox 360 uses custom 2.4GHz RF instead.
Note: I'm intentionally not listing technologies that both systems supported such as USB or video outputs.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I like that Sony provided the teardown. It shows a certain amount of openess and I get the sense that the engineers that designed it want us to see it in all its glory.
But then I see other things pop up, like having to download an update and register the device before I can play Blu-ray discs, that it won't play MP3s or CDs, that it won't stream video content from my computer. All of this reeks of a lame attempt to force PS4 owners into subscribing to Sony's Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited by placing artificial limits on the hardware.
What I love about my PS3 (and I bought mine the day it was released and haven't had a single problem with it) is that I could use it for more than just games; it became my HTPC.
It seems like the PS4 won't be able to fill the shoes of its predecessor. And that's a shame. And the reason why I won't be buying a PS4 at launch and probably won't touch it until sony "patches" the firmware to fix these "bugs".
I've got it!
We spin the disc clockwise...
And then spin the console counter-clockwise!
Just think of the throughput! That laser will be moving across the disc so fast, Sony will have to build hardware that works with 0's and 1/2's instead of 0's and 1's!
I'll let you in on a little tip.
Just the tip?
Because I'm pretty sure I know how that game ends ...
This signature is false.
the XBox is the best all-round device for the next generation.
What?? You can't play any 360 games on it, requires microsoft servers to run many of the games, it won't work without a Kinect plugged in and you have to let it phone home at least once a day. What's more you HAVE to have an xbox live gold SUBSCRIPTION to use it (can you say Maintenance agreeement anybody?) and the 500G hard drive inside is proprietary -- plus it costs $100 bucks more than PS4. You're high dude. Nobody wants that. Nobody except the Halo junkies.
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I have 2 PS3s in my house, we have a huge libary of games for the PS3. I was a buyer day 1 with a 60GB unit that was backwards PS2 hardware compatible.
I would have bought a pair of PS4s on launch day if they had PS3 hardware inside of them, even if they cost $599 each.
Sony, pay attention... Some of us have money to spend, we don't mind... but what we do mind is having a bunch of boxes in front of our TVs. I will have a single console in front of my TV, not 2, not 3, just 1... I won't replace the PS3 with a PS4 because all our software will stop working.
Release a PS4 with PS3 hardware inside, even at a price premium, and I'm a customer. Not before.
Which is why the superior gaming platform is the PC! Oh wait, it's Windows is made by Microsoft
Who needs Windows when you have SteamOS?