Sony releases retrospective videos about history of PlayStation

Gearing up for some big announcement in a couple of days, Sony has been releasing a series of videos that give us a retrospective look at the history of the PlayStation franchise. As we get closer and closer to the event, Sony has released what one would expect to either be the last, or the second-last video in the series—a look at the history of the PlayStation 3.

The video takes us all the way back to the first unveiling of the PlayStation 3, with its considerably large and monolithic design. We then get aglimpse of the first—and ultimately most popular—slim redesign of the console. One of the most distinct visual differences between the slim PS3 and the original one, other than the size, was that the slimmer one had a matte paint job on it, as opposed to the very glossy original.

We also get a look at some of the games that have made it to the system, and will be making their way to the system. This includes all the Spider Man games, The Last of Us, BioShock Infinite, and Uncharted.

Then we get a look at the PlayStation Move, with all the new differences to gameplay motion control brought to the table. The Move was often hailed as being better for gaming than Microsoft’s Kinect, as it was much more accurate and allowed for finer controls in more action oriented games, as well as the casual sports games.

The most popular of the lot

You can check out the other videos, which include a look at the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation Portable in Sony’s YouTube channel.

Just recently, fresh rumours had popped up about the possibility of backwards compatibility in Sony's highly anticipated next-gen console. According to Wall Street Journal, Sony may be taking an unconventional approach to backwards compatibility. The report states that the console may be able to stream PS3 games on to the PS4.

This would explain Sony’s acquisition of videogame streaming service Gaikai last year. The cloud-based gaming could potentially be a good method to maintain backwards compatibility, as the next console is said to use an x86 AMD chip that doesn’t work well with the current console architecture.

Backwards compatibility is one of the most important things that a console has on launch, as a console that lacks backwards compatibility may put off early adopters from purchasing it, especially since a console doesn’t have many games for it during its first few months. As Sony has proven with the PlayStation 3, though, companies can get away with slowly phasing backwards compatibility out of their consoles through revisions.

Before that, an image had popped up of an early prototype of the PlayStation 4 controller. Multiple sources had later confirmed that the picture is indeed real. While the middle part of the controller seems to be a touchscreen, the blue part on top of the controller seems more puzzling. It is possible that Sony is integrating the Move controller with its next controller, and the blue part acts like the bulb of the Move. Also interesting is the new design for the analogue sticks. They seem to be rather unconventional when compared to the DualShock 3.

For more information on what to expect, check out our PlayStation 4 rumour round-up.