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"Sony Computer Entertainment has discussed the major decisions in designing the PS4 hardware. Including components such as a hard drive and 8GB DDR5 RAM memory were each billion-dollar decisions, both of which gave president Andrew House sleepless nights.  &amp;quot;The reason [having a hard drive or not] was such a large decision because it&amp;#039;s not just for launch but in it for the cycle,&amp;quot; he told Digital Spy and other attendees at a Develop conference in Brighton. &amp;quot;It has massive implications for the business model over [a] long period of years. What was great was Mark [Cerny, lead PS4 architect] advocated in a very succinct, natural way about what this would mean for developers and, by extension, the user experience. &amp;quot;Yes, we debated, but it came extremely clear to me - financial issues aside - that we had to be striving for a certain level of experience that was going to get people [to] embrace a brand new platform.&amp;quot; Mark Cerny added that you could debate whether every player needs downloadable content. &amp;quot;Not every player does,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Does every player need to play, say, Watch Dogs, the way it was as intended?  &amp;quot;Watch Dogs is a title that needed 15GB cached on a very fast medium like a hard drive for the level the creators wanted it to be. We couldn&amp;#039;t say the hard drive works for people but not everyone... We ultimately we had to make that decision.&amp;quot; For House, having a hard drive allowed the PS4 to embrace digital distribution and indie development, which was a similar move to the original PlayStation adopting CDs, meaning &amp;quot;many of the same things&amp;quot; in terms of cheaper products and more risk taking.  &amp;quot;The growth of mobile has allowed for a whole new outlet of talent with smaller teams and still great game creation,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;If you couple that with we&amp;#039;re starting to get to point with our own digital distribution network and a scalable network of players, with whom we could then treat as an audience who could connect with independent developers.&amp;quot; Originally it was a case of either 2GB or 4GB of RAM, but after much discussion with developers, it was then a debate of whether to bump it up to 8GB. Such calls were ultimately about how the PS3 was originally received. .  &amp;quot;We were balancing priorities at this point,&amp;quot; said House. &amp;quot;A lot of the philosophy that underpinned PS4 came frankly out of experiences on PS3.  &amp;quot;Some of these priorities were often in conflict with one another. We absolutely wanted to build [a] platform with strong momentum out of the gate, and [there] needed to be a strong price point and value proposition. &amp;quot;Mark was an advocate of what the experience level was going to be. That coupled with ease of development - again, in contrast with the bitter and painful experience on PS3 - these two things were in conflict with another, and we had to make a call.&amp;quot;  Ultimately House placed faith in Sony&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;fantastic procurement and hardware design group&amp;quot; that the economics of the platform would pay off. Eventually, though, the decision was &amp;quot;wholehearted&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;Debate was had, we listened to all different views from stakeholders from the company, but ultimately it was an easy decision to make, not a hard one,&amp;quot; he added. The decision of bundling the PS Camera with every console was also a big decision, but Cerny said that after the costs of the hard drive and memory, &amp;quot;it was pretty obvious for me something had to give&amp;quot;.  &amp;quot;At the same time, the camera makes sense as an independent proposition,&amp;quot; he explained. &amp;quot;It does not need to be included with the hardware to be a success. It if offers something that is perceived to be of value, then it&amp;#039;s a great thing to have in the PS4 ecosystem.&amp;quot; House added: &amp;quot;It was another one of these points [that] were there in the financial pressures, but it had us think through the consumer proposition again.  &amp;quot;I think what Mark&amp;#039;s alluding to was, if we were making the platform much more about consumer choice than perhaps our previous platforms had been, then having the camera as an option was not a negative, but that&amp;#039;s offering people choice.&amp;quot; House and Cerny were speaking at keynote session &amp;#039;20 Years of PlayStation, 40 Years of Console Games and 100 Years to Come&amp;#039; at the Develop conference in Brighton. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/playstation-4/news/a583039/including-a-hard-drive-and-8gb-memory-in-ps4-were-billion-dollar-decisions/>