Why Sony believes the PlayStation 4 needs PC chips

Mark Cerny, the architect of Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 video game system, said that PC architecture had finally grown up enough to become the foundation of a sophisticated home console.

In a speech at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Spain, Cerny said that the Japanese company had learned that the PlayStation 3 hardware based on the Cell microprocessor was just too complex for game designers. They eventually mastered the technology, but in the early days of the PS3, not enough good games exploited the processor. The slow acceptance of the PS3 led to the eventual departure of Ken Kutaragi, the father of the PlayStation business. Cerny stepped into his shoes as the architect of the PS4.