Sony Reportedly Cut PS4 Camera to Beat Xbox One Price

By Catherine Cai
published

Sony cut the PS4 camera, eliminating support of the PS Move, to drop the price of the PS4. Is this really a tragedy?

Sony dropped a bomb shell when it revealed at E3 this year during its press conference that the PlayStation 4 was going to be $399, $100 cheaper than its competitor the Xbox One.

According to sources close to IGN, the reason that Sony was able to drop the price of its next gen console to be cheaper than the Xbox One was because it cut the PlayStation 4 camera at the last minute.

Because the PlayStation 4 camera was cut well into the console's development, this meant that some functions built into the PlayStation 4 controller have been rendered useless. The DualShock 4 controller was built with LED Move trackers. Now these LED's sole functions are to serve as visual cues for the player on in-game occurrences, such as when the player is low on health.

The PlayStation 4 camera has now been made into a $60 accessory.

Though Sony is essentially giving up support of the PS Move by doing so (unless it releases some killer games that support the camera), it may have been the right call on their part. Motion control, at least for this generation, has proven to be a dud for gaming. Sony's proven that its focus right now is on core gamers, who probably don't find motion control to be an integral part of their gaming experience. And this attitude is paying off; not only did Sony win the favor of gamers at E3 2013, but the PS4 is doing rather well in pre-sales.  

29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • KelvinTy
    If camera-to-console is such a hit, they and the developers would have known.

    Now why they bundle the camera with the unit when they know it would just increase the costs, time and resources into development?
    Reply
  • blubbey
    Why is this a question? Of course it's a good move. Random points why off the top of my head.

    1) Motion controls are rarely used in my experience. It's usually just an "oh that's cool", used a few times then sits there unused. That's my experience with the Wii, Move and Kinect.

    2) Cheaper means more will buy it (many "casual" people will see the prices and pick the PS4 over X1 because of it).

    3) The people who you can rely on to buy your console are the more game orientated market, they more than likely won't buy many, if any, motion related games.

    4) They could phase out the motion controls later on in life if nobody is buying it. It'll be easier than, say, releasing a "slim" version of the console to strip it of it.

    5) If they did include then didn't add it, there may be consumer backlash if the price isn't cut enough.

    6) If it was included, they may have warped ideas of its use. That might've lead to wasted money on motion control games. This way it's easier to see, easier to put money where it's needed.
    Reply
  • back_by_demand
    Is it worth an extra $100 to not have to buy from a company that installs rootkits without your knowledge and allows yur credit card details to be hacked, tough call
    Reply
  • JJ1217
    In Australia the difference between the Xbox One and the PS4 is only $50 (599 and 550). If the Xbox One had almost the same hardware, I'd pick the Xbox One (Since KH3 is still coming out on Xbox One, and I'm an avid player of Halo). I'm still annoyed at the slower memory. We've all seen what faster memory can do to APU's.
    Reply
  • daglesj
    11054883 said:
    I'm still annoyed at the slower memory. We've all seen what faster memory can do to APU's.

    You do realise that the Xbox One will or can use a new form of Tile Rendering which lowers the memory need and ups the detail available by a huge factor? It's going to be available with the One and with most GPUs going forward with Windows 8.1. It's part of the DX11.2 spec.

    Possibly why MS decided to go with a lower powered GPU/RAM solution as sheer brute force rendering won't be required. Instead of needing 2GB to render an image you only need a fraction of it and get more detail.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EswYdzsHKMc

    Intrigued as to why folks are keeping quiet on this little nugget.


    Reply
  • mafisometal
    XB1 uses DX11.2 enough said, API's will never get the full performance of a console. It's a big hindrance to Microsoft. While the PS4 is forced to design for the hardware. Any major game developer will be hand and hand with software and hardware while an XB1 developer will most likely use the API oriented design structure. Don't get me wrong, they both are great, but for the long run DX11.2 will be a big hinderence when the performance gets pushed to the maximum. That's why XB360 suffered at the end of the market. PS3 caught up due to those limitations and as well as XBLA being a complete mess wit indie developers.
    Reply
  • Murissokah
    11054994 said:
    11054883 said:
    I'm still annoyed at the slower memory. We've all seen what faster memory can do to APU's.

    You do realise that the Xbox One will or can use a new form of Tile Rendering which lowers the memory need and ups the detail available by a huge factor? It's going to be available with the One and with most GPUs going forward with Windows 8.1. It's part of the DX11.2 spec.

    Possibly why MS decided to go with a lower powered GPU/RAM solution as sheer brute force rendering won't be required. Instead of needing 2GB to render an image you only need a fraction of it and get more detail.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EswYdzsHKMc

    Intrigued as to why folks are keeping quiet on this little nugget.


    I'm pretty skeptic that a new software architecture would be able to overcome the memory bandwidth issue, specially for graphics. How are you supposed to load huge textures fast enough? Where are these textures going to be stored in order to avoid R/W to memory? The ESRAM is too small and still slower than GDDR5, so I'm pretty skeptic on this one. I would love to be proven wrong on this, but I can't find grounds to hope for it.

    And then there is the fact that the PS4 reportedly has an 18-Block GPU against a 12-Block on the Xbox.
    Reply
  • kartu
    BS.
    Sony's camera costs 59$ and that's with a nice margin.
    So even with camera it's 40$ cheaper than Xbone 180.

    Besides, Sony's controllers come with a headset.
    Reply
  • kartu
    Oh, and dear M$ I still remember what you were planning to do in regards of used games and regional locks.
    Reply
  • daglesj
    11055088 said:
    11054994 said:
    11054883 said:
    I'm still annoyed at the slower memory. We've all seen what faster memory can do to APU's.

    You do realise that the Xbox One will or can use a new form of Tile Rendering which lowers the memory need and ups the detail available by a huge factor? It's going to be available with the One and with most GPUs going forward with Windows 8.1. It's part of the DX11.2 spec.

    Possibly why MS decided to go with a lower powered GPU/RAM solution as sheer brute force rendering won't be required. Instead of needing 2GB to render an image you only need a fraction of it and get more detail.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EswYdzsHKMc

    Intrigued as to why folks are keeping quiet on this little nugget.


    I'm pretty skeptic that a new software architecture would be able to overcome the memory bandwidth issue, specially for graphics. How are you supposed to load huge textures fast enough? Where are these textures going to be stored in order to avoid R/W to memory? The ESRAM is too small and still slower than GDDR5, so I'm pretty skeptic on this one. I would love to be proven wrong on this, but I can't find grounds to hope for it.

    And then there is the fact that the PS4 reportedly has an 18-Block GPU against a 12-Block on the Xbox.

    Well back around the turn of the century we had PowerVR based Kyro cards that had half the sheer power of the current Nvidia Geforce 2 cards of the time but with tile rendering they could push equal frame rates with the same image quality. Sometimes better.

    Will be interesting to see.
    Reply