PlayStation 4 Announcement

This afternoon I huddled around a coworker's desk and watched Sony Computer Entertainment's launch of the PlayStation 4. We kind of assumed that is what the announcement would be but weren't quite sure. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. There were three major things missing from the announcement though:

1. When it will be available for purchase?
2. What it looks like?
3. How much it will cost?

Otherwise, it was nice to see the announcement. Some things we did find out are:

1. The new console is actually called a PlayStation 4 and not some other name like Orbis.
2. The CPU and GPU are on the same chip, creating a really impressive piece of hardware with almost 2 TeraFLOPS or 2 trillion floating point operations per second of processing power.
3. The CPU is Intel x86 based.
4. The Dual-Shock 4 controller was shown and is similar to the existing controller but with the addition of a touch pad, headphone jack, and a few other enhancement goodies.
5. You will be able to play PlayStation 1, 2, & 3 games on it (using Sony's cloud gaming service)
6. You will be able to play PS4 games on your PlayStation Vita (again using Sony's cloud gaming service)
7. You will be able to use other devices like your phone or tablet to play your PS4 games (again using Sony's cloud gaming service).
8. The graphics are truly next-generation.
9. There are a number of features that will make it easier to play games with friends.

Sony also kept hinting that there will be a number of announcements throughout the year. We will probably see more at the Game Developer's Conference this Spring and then additional follow-up at E3 in the Summer.

If I was going to guess at a release date, I would hope Sony could get it to us before Christmas. If that is the case, then I know what I want in my stocking this year. I guess I better start being good right now.