Now that E3 2013 has come to a close, the biggest news out of the conference this year was the race between Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. A poll from Amazon shows people highly prefer the PlayStation 4 to the new Xbox. This is likely a result of some of the Xbox's controversial new policies such as requiring a daily connection to the Internet and its tricky used game policy (A policy the PlayStation 4 does not have).
With so many people preferring the PS4, it's important for everyone to be up-to-date with knowledge of the next generation console, due to hit stores in November.
The first thing is the design. The PlayStation 4 was revealed to exist back in February but only the controller was on display. It wasn't until E3 when Sony finally showed the bisecting box design of its long anticipated gaming center. The device is slim and reminds many of the PlayStation 2's model. The biggest fears were crushed when the box was slim and elegant looking, meaning it will look like a good addition to any living room entertainment system.
Speaking of the controller, the PS4's new handset looks very similar to the DualShock 3, only seasoned PlayStation users will understand the improvements. It comes complete with the regular D-Pad and analogue sticks. Although, the new design has more responsive and better feeling analogue sticks with a sunken in top rather than the round top that has been synonymous with the PlayStation design so far.
The trigger buttons on the back have a new look as well but they still don't compete with the Xbox's design in terms of actually feeling like a trigger. Some new features from the DualShock 3 include a speaker, a headphone jack that supports standard headphones and a clickable touch pad.
The PlayStation 4 will require a $50 subscription to PlayStation Plus in order to play multiplayer games. On the positive side, the subscription won't be required for some online services like Netflix.
CNET gave a more in depth rundown of the specifications for the device listed below:
* An eight-core X86 AMD Jaguar CPU
* 1.84-teraflop AMD Radeon graphics engine (with "18 compute units")
* 8GB of GDDR5 memory
* 500GB hard drive
* Blu-ray drive
* Three USB 3.0 ports
* 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
* Ethernet, HDMI, Bluetooth 2.1, optical audio and analog AV out
