The news broke about Sony's next-generation console last month. As expected, it will officially be dubbed the PlayStation 4. Unlike the PS3, the new console architecture closely resembles a typical gaming PC. The system will sport an 8-core AMD Jaguar CPU along with 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM and a next-gen AMD Radeon GPU.
Sony seems to be taking a safe route with this console. The PlayStation brand has had a history of being difficult to develop for, however, Sony is clearly focused on improving the process with this console iteration. Just take a look at the press release announcing the console; the very first section is titled "Gamer Focused, Developer Inspired" and touches upon the system's "ease of development". Good move Sony!
The 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM stands out as a major boon for game developers. Consider for a moment that the PS3 only had 256 MB of RAM, imagine what developers will be able to accomplish with a 32x improvement in memory. Additionally, the GDDR5 used by the PS4 will have a memory bandwidth of 176 GB/second compared to the 25.6 GB/second of the PS3.
