The internet practically caught fire Thursday, as Sony announced the "PlayStation Meeting 2013," a press conference to be held in New York City on February 20 at 6 p.m. Easter time. Immediately the announcement has sparked rumors that the PS4 will be unveiled at the event.
The announcement said the event would give us an opportunity to "see the future," and came with this video, posted on YouTube today, which looks like a vague teaser trailer for something PlayStation-related. Something like the next-generation PlayStaiton 4?
According to theVerge, an industry analyst has said that Sony has also sent invitations for the event to company investors, so it's sure to be huge, even if it's not the PlayStation 4 (but let's hope it's the PS4). And a Wall Street Journal story, based on anonymous sources, is reporting that the event will reveal the PS4 and that Sony's next-generation video game console will be on sale later this year.
That will put the PlayStation in direct competition with Microsoft's new Xbox system for the 2013 holiday shopping season, which is a different strategy than Sony approached the PlayStation 3, waiting at least a year after the Xbox 360, and even longer after the Wii, had been on the market.
Code-named Orbis, the upcoming PlayStation 4 is expected to run on AMD processors for both CPU and GPU, with rumors putting it running 8 total cores at 1.6 GHz each. Rumors also have Sony dropping the dual-shock controller design in favor of something with a touchscreen and possibly biometric sensors built-in to the controller. With the PlayStation 4, Sony reportedly wants to "incorporate more social gaming aspects into the new machine," according to the Wall Street Journal.