Sony Corp plans to release its new Playstation 4 home console this year
for around $430, giving the successor to the popular PS3 a touch panel
control and easy access to social networking sites such as Twitter and
Facebook, Japan's Asahi newspaper reported.
Sony's game chief, Andrew
House, will reveal the new features at a Playstation meeting in New York
on February 20, the paper said, without saying where it obtained the
information.
Sony declined to comment on the report.
The
gathering in New York is the first major Playstation meeting in two
years. The last time Sony held such an event it revealed the prototype
for its handheld Vita. The meeting before that in 2005 came two months
after it revealed its concept for the PS3, which sold 70 million units.
It
has been more than six years since Sony launched the PS3, a longer gap
than between the PS3 and its PS2 predecessor. The gaming market has
since been transformed by the rise of tablet PCs and smartphones that
are wooing away casual gamers with free or cheap games.
The shift
to mobile devices has forced console makers such as Sony, Nintendo Co
Ltd and Microsoft Corp to try to find new ways to win back consumers to
consoles.
In a sign of the competitive pressure they face,
Nintendo last month cut its sales target for the Wii U, successor to its
100 million-selling Wii, to 4 million machines by the end of March from
its launch in November, compared with an earlier forecast for 5.5
million.
Shares in Sony, which is due to release its third-quarter
results later in the day, last traded up 4.0 percent at 1,540 yen, in a
broader market down nearly 1.0 percent.
© Thomson Reuters 2013