The operating system at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 4 is FreeBSD 9.0.
It's been exposed that the operating system powering the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a Sony spin of FreeBSD 9.0. It's not a huge surprise FreeBSD is being used over Linux, in part due to the more liberal licensing. The PlayStation 4 is x86_64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD.
At Sony's E3 2013 press conference, the company has finally unveiled the hardware for the PlayStation 4, after not revealing the design at the original launch event for the PlayStation 4 in February.
This is what the console will look like when it hits stores later this year. Essentially a big black box that is similar in design to Microsoft's Xbox One, departing from the PlayStation 3's curved design and returning to the hard edges similar to the PlayStation 2.
Sony fired a direct shot across Microsoft’s bow at its E3 press conference on Monday evening, clearly positioning PlayStation 4 as the anti-Xbox One.
PlayStation 4 will fully support used games, said Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton. You’ll be able to trade your games in at retail, but also sell them to another person or lend them to a friend. Xbox One, in contrast, will only let you sell games to “participating retail stores,” and lending and renting are not supported.
Back when Sony's February PlayStation 4 unveiling concluded without actually showing what the console itself would look like, I actually defended the company. After all, the look of the plastic shell surrounding the new PlayStation hardware didn't actually matter as much as the games on display. After seeing today's teaser trailer promoting the PS4's E3 press appearance, though, I have to think that Sony is just trolling us at this point.
Sony revealed the PS4 at an event in New York last month and it managed to impress a lot of industry people. Linus Blomberg, CTO and Co-founder of Avalanche Studios, is one of them.
He told us that due to the competition from mobile platforms, and due to the fact that PCs have overtaken consoles by a large amount when it comes to performance, a new console cycle was needed desperately.
By the time Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 at last night's press conference, the rumor mill had already basically told us what the console would be made of inside the (as-yet-nonexistent) box: an x86 processor and GPU from AMD and lots of memory.
Yesterday, Sony gave a sneak-peek at its next-generation PlayStation®4 (PS4™) game console coming later this year and, here at AMD, we couldn’t be more excited. Bringing a supercharged PC architecture that combines next-gen hardware, software, and the fastest game network in the world. Oh, and this is all powered by a semi-custom designed AMD accelerated processing unit (APU) jointly developed in coordination with Sony!
So the world didn't exactly get what it wanted out of Sony's PlayStation 4 debut tonight. There was no sight of the actual console itself and details about its specific release date and price were also nowhere to be seen.
Sony's team-up with Gaikai is sure to net some interesting ideas and implementations with cloud streaming, the sharing of game screens, remote play and other concoctions, but it was the games themselves that made the biggest impact.
