Sony's game changer

Sony will launch its next-generation PlayStation this year, hoping its first video game console in seven years will give it a head start over the next version of Microsoft's Xbox and help revive its stumbling electronics business.

The new console, the company announced in New York on Wednesday night, will have a revamped interface, let users stream and play video games hosted on servers, allow users to play while downloading titles, and share videos with friends.

Its new controller, dubbed DualShock4, will have a touch pad and a camera that can sense the depth of the environment in front of it.

Sony said the PlayStation 4 would be available by about December and flagged games from the likes of Ubisoft Entertainment and Activision Blizzard, whose top executives also attended the event. It did not disclose pricing or launch date.

Sony's announcement was made amid industry speculation that Microsoft will unveil the successor to its Xbox 360 around June.

The current Xbox 360 beats the seven-year-old PlayStation 3's online network with features such as voice commands on interactive gaming and better connectivity to smartphones and tablets.

But all video game console makers are grappling with the onslaught of mobile devices.

Tablets and smartphones by Sony rivals such as Apple and Samsung already account for about 10% of the $80-billion gaming market.

Those mobile devices, analysts predict, will, within a few years, be as powerful as the current slew of game-only consoles.

"It looks good and had a lot of great games but the industry is different now," Billy Pidgeon, an analyst at Inside Network Research, said of the new PlayStation.

"It'll be a slow burn and not heavy uptake right away."

Console makers will also have to tackle flagging video game hardware and software sales, which research firm NPD says have dropped consistently every month for the past year as users migrate to free games on mobile devices.

PlayStation 4 will have an app on Android and Apple mobile devices that connects to console games and can act as a second screen, Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said.

"Playstation 4 ... really connects every device in the office and the smartphone and the tablet out there in the world," Tretton said.

The console, which has been in development for the past five years, will have 8GB of memory and will instantly stream game content from the console to Sony's hand-held PlayStation Vita through a feature called "remote play", the company said.

"What Sony is banking on is the ease of use," said Greg Miller, PlayStation executive editor at video game site IGN.com.

Sony PlayStation sales are just shy of Xbox's 67million installed base and well behind the 100million Wii consoles sold by Nintendo, say analysts.

Sony also announced a partnership with games publisher Activision Blizzard to take its Diablo III game to the PlayStation4 and PlayStation3 consoles.