Epic Games vice president Mark Rein calls Sony's decision to use off-the-shelf PC components a "very smart move."

Epic Games vice president Mark Rein has said Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4, which features a mix of off-the-shelf computer components, is like being given "the world's best PC."

"I think it's a very smart move on Sony's behalf to build this sort of enhanced PC architecture and then put so much in it," said Rein in an interview with CVG.

One of the chief positives for Rein is the PlayStation 4's 8GB of GDDR5 RAM. "Let's not forget it has 16 times the memory we had in PlayStation 3--that's not insignificant. Knowing that every machine has that’we can do crazy, ridiculous stuff with that."

"The other exciting thing is that’ when you think about Windows, even Windows for most people is tied to about 2GB of addressable memory space. This really opens up beyond what most PCs can do, because most PCs are running a 32-bit version of Windows."

"It's like giving you the world's best PC," he added.

In terms of gaming, then, Rein was enthused. "The kind of stuff that they announced that they're doing, the level of convenience and things like that’ they're making a really perfect gaming PC," he added.

Rein added that the next generation of consoles is about more than just adding extra specs to the hardware, though. "I've always said that the things in the next-generation that aren't just brute force hardware are all about the service and simplicity of the experience - the things that make it as fun and easy to get a PS4 game as it is to get a game on your iPad."

The PlayStation 4 is due for release later in 2013. At GDC last week, Epic released a new video of the Unreal Engine 4 running on Sony's new hardware.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot