Sony PlayStation 4 announcement recap

It is official: Sony PlayStation 4 is coming Holiday 2013.

The announcement, among many others, was made throughout the night at the PlayStation Meeting 2013 in NYC. Below is a brief recap of the biggest news of the evening - more details are likely to follow in the coming days.

Things kicked off quickly - the announcement of the PS4 itself was made within the opening 20 minutes of the conference. From there, the design of the console was overviewed. System architect Mark Cerny said the new console will be more accessible to both consumers and developers - a far cry from the Cell architecture of PS3 that many thought to be too difficult to work with.

The system will have an enhanced PC architecture - with an x86 CPU, 8 Gbs of GDDR5 RAM, a PC-like video card, and a hard drive. The details on the latter two components were not shared. PS4 will be able to save your game state when you power down - and resume when you power it back on without loading screens. Gamers will be able to play while the game is still downloading in the background.

A new style of controller (DualShock 4) will be included, it features a front touch pad, a share button, and a light bar to set the players apart. The share button will allow gamers to save and share video, stream their gameplay live - while others can join and watch you play or even take over if you need their help passing a level. This focus on sharing extends into a revamped user interface with real-name profiles and more interaction options with friends.

Gaikai had some time to present their ideas about the cloud architecture of PlayStation - but as it will be rolled out in phases, not many details were mentioned about practical application. It was briefly noted that demos may be streamed to the console - as well as older PS games as PS4 will not be physically backwards compatible. The PS Vita's shared play capability will attempt to rival that of Wii U.

On the games front, brand new games were announced. Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerrilla Games), Driveclub (Evolution Studios), InFamous Second Son (Sucker Punch), Knack, The Witness. Tech demos from Square Enix and Capcom were shown.

The third-party support is said to be strong, with Watch Dogs, Destiny, and announced Diablo 3 as all arriving on PlayStation 4.

We will have more in the coming days as details are revealed - we have yet to see what the body of the console looks like, and no doubt E3 announcements will be just as exciting. We'll also be bringing our PlayStation 4 console home online for the New Game Network.