January 23, 2013
Leaked developer documents offer new insight.

With E3 fast approaching, the floodgates for next-gen rumors are now open. Kotaku has secured new details about current PlayStation 4 development kits, offering insights into the system's potential power, controller, and unified user accounts.

According to 90 PDF documents reportedly secured by the site, the latest PlayStation 4 development kits issued for January 2013 include four dual-core AMD64 "Bulldozer" processors amounting to a total of eight CPU cores, an AMD R10xx GPU, four USB 3.0 ports, two Ethernet connections, a Blu-ray drive, a 160GB HDD, as well as HDMI and optical audio outputs. The information falls in line with recent rumors and prior development kit leaks. The site cautions that due to the fact that the specs are based on development hardware, the consumer-grade version of the system could differ.

The information comes by way of SuperDae, the same individual that leaked early images of Microsoft's Durango dev kits and even attempted to sell one on eBay last year.

What's more, SuperDae's developer documents suggest that the PlayStation 4 could maintain the traditional DualShock 3 and Sixaxis controller designs, contrary to the touchscreen, PS Vita-esque controller rumored last week.

Finally, Sony could allow multiple users to be logged into the system at any given time. According to a diagram used in the documents, each user will have localized saves and be able to log-in and associate their Sony Entertainment Network account to each additional controller. The benefit, Kotaku says, is if four people are playing local co-op, each can earn trophies as they progress.

Of course, with the leak based on development hardware and an official reveal likely months away, the final version of the system could be an entirely different beast by the time of release.