PS4 architect's own arcade board system

[spadgy]

Small story this, but this is one of the few places in the world it might serve as at least a curious anecdote. Call it a small exclusive (I write games news as part of my job, but this wouldn't work in what I do).

Last week at a work conference I got chatting with Mark Cerny a couple of times: the chap that is lead system architect on the PS4; been with Sony for ages; also developing Knack. Nice guy - slightly awkward conversational atmosphere, but that could well have been my doing!

So, we got talking about some crap, and it lead to him remembering some stories from coding on the various Atari arcade board systems.; it sounds a right pain, but he loved it. What I discovered of note was that, at his time at Atari, Cerny off his own back designed his own arcade board hardware (I understand it was pre-JAMMA) and only one prototype was built by him. It didn;t sound like his most official task, and other work got in the way. He remembered it fondly, and seems a real arcade hardware fan.

That's it really; the man who lead the design of the PS4 hardware also once designed an Atari arcade board system that never was.

No great omen I'm sure, and the link between the two means nothing really, but at least he's got good taste in hardware interests!

Ok... it was a pretty lame story.

[KAI]

Nice story spadgy.
RIP arcade hardware. Namco SYSTEM47X is not going to happen.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

I dunno I enjoyed it. Nice bit of geek trivia.

[emphatic]

I dunno I enjoyed it. Nice bit of geek trivia.

[BIL]

Good story, and it's so cool you get to hear stuff like this straight from the source! Thanks for sharing.

[Marc]

Far from lame man, really cool to hear. Some of the suits must have been geeky tech heads at some point.

[Ed Oscuro]

I wonder what / if programming was done for it? Might be an interesting addition to MAME if it was ever found.

[spadgy]

If I get time with him again I'll ask more. He told me seconds before he went on stage to do fascinating talk about his career and the design of the PS4. Here's a video of that talk.

During the same conference last week Peter Molyneux revealed to me he has a 'pathological fear' of 'dying in the waves at a UK seaside town' and Charles Cecil (Beneath a Steel Sky/Broken Sword etc) stood me up when we'd arranged an early morning swim in the cold UK sea. So, certainly, my job takes me to some weird places!

I also did an on-stage interview with the Epic founder and the guy behind all the Unreal tech Tim Sweeney. Fucking terrifying as the audience was fairly big. Tim was actually fascinating and talked in depth about games tech and coding in the future. If you're interested I can dig out a video, though you would have to endure seeing my nervous interview style!