If rumours from last night are true, Sony have begun shipping PlayStation 4 / Orbis development kits to development studios in North America. According to VG24/7, the Dev Kit is essentially a modified PC using components close to what the final PS4 will actually contain. A updated Dev Kit with near-final specs will ship in January.
The Dek Kit is packing an AMD A10 APU, which is a quad-core chip that has one core acting as a GPU. VG24/7’s source stated that Sony was pushing for a machine that would be “very affordable” and “isn’t a slouch”. Currently, the PS4 is code-named Orbis, which may eventually be the console’s final name.
The Dev Kits also feature the all-important Blu-ray drive, same input / output ports as the PS3, and 8-16GB of RAM. The RAM itself is a massive improvement over the PS3, which will make the UI “as fluid as possible”, allowing you to jump from a game to any part of the PS4′s menu without ever leaving the game itself.
Sony’s aim is to make the machine powerful enough to produce 1080p 3D, which is quite a feat compared to the 720p 3D output the PS3 is capable of.