Sony's big PlayStation event: everything you need to know

Yesterday at the PlayStation Theater in New York City, Sony announced two new iterations of the PlayStation 4, both of which are due to launch this year. That makes three hardware launches for the company’s gaming division over the next three months: PlayStation VR on October 13th; the new slimmer PS4 on September 15th; followed by the more powerful, 4K-capable PlayStation Pro on November 10th. The holidays are about to get very busy for Sony.

Just after the event I had the chance to chat with Shawn Layden — head of both Sony Interactive Entertainment America, and the PlayStation Worldwide Studios group — about the timing of the launches, the challenges of selling 4K content, and whether the PS4 Pro was influenced by Microsoft’s similar Project Scorpio, which launches next year.

Today Sony announced two new versions of the PlayStation 4: a slimmer model of the original, and a thicker and more powerful version called the PS4 Pro. We had the chance to see both models side by side at the New York City event. Give them a look for yourself, below.

The design of the PS4 Pro is like a Big Mac: where the original console has two plastic buns, the Pro has three! As for the slimmer PS4, it's noticeably shorter than its 4K-friendly alternative. Both models have the slanted rectangular sides and overall shape of the original PS4 design.

Well here's something pretty baffling: Sony's just-announced $400 PlayStation 4 Pro game console, an upgraded and more powerful version of the original PS4, won't be able to play 4K Blu-rays when it ships this November. Reporters from Engadget and BBC News have apparently confirmed the news with Sony directly. Instead, the PlayStation Pro will only support 4K playback from streaming services. That's a perplexing decision from a company that has been a strong proponent of Blu-ray from the beginning. Sony reasons that consumers won't mind because the PS4 Pro is "primarily for gaming."

Microsoft's Xbox One S is also "primarily for gaming" and it plays Ultra HD Blu-rays just fine. Presumably the same will be true of Project Scorpio when it's released next fall. Aside from streaming 4K video, the PlayStation 4 Pro also supports 4K gaming thanks to its beefed up graphics and faster processor. Sony's even going so far as to bring HDR support to existing PS4 consoles in homes right now.

Sony may not have been the first to announce a console that can support 4K gaming, but it is the first to show us actual game footage using the high-resolution output on the PlayStation 4 Pro. During today's event, Sony showed off a handful of games including its upcoming exclusive Spider-Man game, Watch Dogs 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided taking full advantage of the consoles ability to run 4K and HDR-enabled games.

(Watch Dogs 2)

Earlier today at Sony’s Playstation event, BioWare showed off its upcoming installment in its Mass Effect franchise: Mass Effect: Andromeda. The demo ran on the newly revealed Playstation Pro, and it looks very, very good.

We’ve already seen a trailer for the game earlier this year, which takes humanity into a brand-new galaxy. The new footage gives us a new look at the game, which was captured directly from a Playstation Pro. BioWare's Aaryn Flynn noted that the Pre-Alpha gameplay segment was selected to highlight the way the game will look on certain Playstation models, such as enhanced resolution and high-dynamic lighting.

Sony's just announced PlayStation 4 Pro is capable of playing some PS4 games in 4K and HDR, including the upcoming Horizon Zero Dawn, which will be one of the titles to support the enhanced graphics the PS4 Pro has to offer when the game launches in February 2017.

The same purchased copy of the game will include both the standard PS4 and enhanced PS4 Pro versions, but it's clear that the nicest-looking post-apocalyptic survival and dinosaurs robot hunting will be on the PS4 Pro.

Along with the new PS4 Pro, which offers HDR and 4K for video and gaming, Sony announced that all current PS4s — both original hardware and the Slim refresh — will be getting HDR support in a firmware update next week.

So while it's not quite the full 4K and HDR output that the PS4 Pro will be offering, the lower powered PlayStation 4 will have HDR support for gaming and streaming video, although Sony has yet to announce which of the Dolby Vision or HDR10 standards it will be supporting.

Sony has officially unveiled the next big iteration of the PlayStation 4. The console — codenamed Neo, which the company discussed in brief just ahead of E3 in June — upgrades the three-year-old PS4 hardware with a faster processor, better graphics, and support for 4K resolution. It launches November 10th, and it will cost $399. It’s intended to be sold alongside the base PS4 instead of replacing it, and new games will still be playable on the older hardware. The existence of Pro, formerly called Neo, was first reported on back in March.

The PS4 Pro can output 4K and HDR video, which is powered by an upgraded GPU. Sony also boosted the clock rate for the new PS4 Pro. It will also come with a 1TB hard drive. "PS4 Pro is not intended to blur the line between console generations," Mark Cerny, the chief architect for the PS4, said on stage. "Instead, the vision is to take the PS4 experience to extraordinary new levels."

The worst-kept secret in gaming is now official: at an event in New York today, Sony finally announced the much leaked slimmer version of the PlayStation 4. It will cost $299 and be available on September 15th "in most markets."

The new console is functionally nearly identical to the original PS4, but with a new streamlined design that makes it noticeably smaller. The slim PS4 also comes with a slightly updated version of the DualShock 4 controller with a redesigned light bar that’s now visible from the front.

Buying a video game console used to be so simple.

For decades, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sega released new video game consoles every six to eight years, differentiating one round of video games from the next. Unlike computer games, consoles were predictable and reliable. Every Super Nintendo game ran the same on every Super Nintendo, just as every Xbox 360 game reliably performed its job on every Xbox 360. But this year, that structure has started to shift, with pivots from Sony and Microsoft.