Sony's Orbis

The next-gen consoles, by rumors, are stacking up to be quite the beasts for every ones enjoyments.

Rumors have recently surfaced for Sony's Playstation 4 or better known as the "Orbis". The claims of the Orbis is that it uses an AMD CPU and GPU and has a release date around the 2013 holiday season. Development kits are already suspected to be possession by 'select' gaming developers.

The CPU and GPU being discussed is and AMD x64 CPU and AMD Southern Islands GPU. The Southern Islands name is associated to a high end range of pc cards that boasts screen sizes of 4096×2160 and a full 3D gaming experience in 1080i.


While all this sounds great there are two major draw backs to the new Orbis. The Orbis is stated to not be backwards compatible with PS3 software but the most controversial downfall is that used games will no longer be able to be used on the system. The hardware is speculated to tie a game to a particular PSN account or even through some sort of digital download.

(In order to be non biased I feel compelled to inform you that the "X-Box 720" claims to have the same lock out on second hand games.)

The gaming industry stands on a back bone of its gamers. Part of said back bone is that of the used gaming community. Since the Atari, borrowing games and/or selling and trading games has always been a part of the gaming community. Video rental stores used to be a staple and in today's day and age, gaming parties.

Taking off of this to a personal aspect, I myself will buy a game and take it to a friends house to play and in my opinion, this helps push the gaming sales. No one wants to pay $60 for a game that no one knows what its like. I know my friends don't. I may be one of the daring but I'd hate to see a world where we push ourselves to only playing Mario, Halo, Gears of War, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy. Without being able to rent a game or borrow one from a friend or even taking one to a friends house would kill not only the secondary market but also push all gamers back into solitude. Sure there's the advent of online gaming but gaming is social at its core. We all like to get together and play.

So what do you guys think about the revolution in gaming with the new Orbis? Ho do you feel about not being able to play used or shared games?

-"Nurd" Pat!