Though Nintendo has been strangely forthcoming with details on its
next-generation consoles — the Wii U is launching this holiday season,
about 18 months after it was first unveiled — both Sony and Microsoft
have been more characteristically quiet on future plans. That hasn’t
stopped a number of unconfirmed reports from trickling out about the next Xbox “Durango,” and now Kotaku has what it claims to be details on the PlayStation 3 successor, Orbis, coming in time for holidays 2013.
That isn’t to say Orbis is a codename destined to be dropped before
launch — “Orbis Vitae” (i.e. PlayStation Vita) is Latin for “circle of
life,” and Sony may not be able to resist such great wordplay. Internals
reportedly include an AMD x64 CPU and AMD Souther Islands GPU that can
output at 4096 x 2160, which is in the range of what’s considered 4k
resolution. (Sony’s home theater division is already toying with 4k content scaling and 4k home theater projectors.)
