Sony advertisements have been spotted in the UK newspaper Metro confirming a 2013 release date, at least for the European market. You can see the ad above, taken from the online PDF version of the issue.
This is good news for UK and European gamers, as historically there has been a delay between PlayStation launches in the U.S., Japan and Europe. With Sony confirming that a holiday season 2013 release was planned for the U.S., it looks like we may finally be seeing a simultaneous global launch.
The PlayStation 4 was announced during a press conference on Feb. 20, 2013. It will be Sony's entry into the eighth-generation of consoles, competing against Nintendo's Wii U and Microsoft's Xbox One.
The console will be a departure from the Cell architecture of the PlayStation 3, and will instead be compatible with the x86-64 set commonly seen in modern gaming PCs. The PS4 will also utilize 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM, an internal hard drive, dedicated AMD Radeon GPU, built-in wireless and a Blu-ray optical drive.
The PS4 will mark the debut of Gaikai, a cloud based service which Sony will use to provide downloadable content, streaming media, save file backups and crossplay features with the PlayStation Vita.
The console will also use a new controller design, the DualShock 4 and will not be compatible with the PS3's DualShock 3. The controller will feature motion detection, a two-point capacitive touch pad on the front and a "share" button that can be used to upload video and screenshots to social media and video sharing websites.
Surprisingly, the actual design of the console itself has yet to be revealed. Sony is expected to show this and more at its E3 press conference in June.