E3 2013: Microsoft announces sales date for Xbox One - BBC News

10 June 2013 Last updated at 15:20 ET By Daniel Emery Technology reporter, BBC News

Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment division, explains the firm's Xbox One strategy

Microsoft has announced the launch date and price for its new Xbox One.

The new console will go on sale in November this year, with a recommended retail price of £429 in the UK, $499 in the US and 499 euros.

The announcement was made during its keynote opening event at the E3 games expo in Los Angeles.

Rival console manufacturer Sony said its console would be out during the "holiday 2013" period, although no official date has been set.

If both the PlayStation 4 and the XBox One go on sale in November this year, it would be the first time the two rivals have launched simultaneously. Previous consoles were released at least a year apart.

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View from E3

Prior to this event at E3, much criticism was levelled at Microsoft over rumours it would force gamers to be "always online" when playing Xbox One.

After the lukewarm reception a few weeks ago, Microsoft opted to focus on the games.

Titles like Forza Motorsport 5 gave a glimpse of "cloud" gaming, while others - such as Konami's Metal Gear Solid 5 - hinted at real-time missions. Even when you're not playing, "you" still are - things will happen, stories will move on, missions may change.

The demos here were not merely theatrical trailers, but gameplay footage - the first real indicator we have had as to how the console will actually really feel.

Minor technical issues aside - at one point sound was lost, prompting some overly-enthusiastic audience members to create their own noises instead - it was an impressive way to kick off this year's E3. Your move, Sony.

Aoife Wilson, a Staff Writer with Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine, told BBC News that there did not appear to be any reason for the increased price in Europe compared to the US.

"There's a 34% mark up on the price this side of the Atlantic and there's no real reason I can see for that", she said.

"The price seems to be a real sticking point for many people, based on the comments I've seen on Twitter. But the XBox One has so many unique capabilities over its rival, that it might just give them the edge."

"I think people will be willing to pay that price and I do think that price will come down next year", she added.

By comparison, when Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005, it had a launch price in the UK of £279.99, $399 in the US and 399 euros.

New games

Most of the event was used to showcase the new titles that would accompany the launch.

As both Sony and Microsoft know, a good exclusive title can dramatically increase the popularity and sales of a new console. Many have put the initial success of Microsoft's first console - the XBox - when it launched in 2001 down to securing the exclusive on the first person shooter Halo.

The first game shown at the event was Ryse: Son of Rome.

A first person hack-and-slash action game, developed by Crytek, it puts you in the boots of a soldier of the Roman empire. The game had originally been announced as a XBox 360 exclusive at E3 two years ago.

Other exclusive titles, such as Killer Instinct and Forza 5 were also shown.

Microsoft also announced it was going to set up five in-house development studios to create exclusive content.

A number of other titles were also showcased, including Minecraft ,the block mining and building game; a new version of Halo due out in 2014; DeadRising 3, a zombie horror game; and a new version of the first person shooter Battlefield series.

UK's new visa rules 'causing anguish' for families - BBC News

10 June 2013 Last updated at 11:34 ET

New financial rules for migrants from outside the European Union are tearing UK families apart and causing anguish, a group of MPs and peers have said.

They said thousands of Britons had been unable to bring a non-EU spouse to the UK since July 2012, when minimum earnings requirements were introduced.

Children have also been separated from a parent, the parliamentary group said.

The Home Office said the rules were designed to ease the burden of migration on the taxpayer.

Under rules that came into force a year ago only British citizens who can show they earn at least £18,600 a year can sponsor their non-European spouse's visa. This rises to £22,400 for families with a child, and a further £2,400 for each further child.

The inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, which is calling for an independent review of the minimum income requirement, looked at more than 175 cases from families affected by the rules.

Forty-five claimed their inability to meet the income threshold had led to the separation of children, including British children, from a non-EU parent, the group said.

In one case, a woman from outside Europe had been separated from her British husband and two sons, including a five-month-old baby she had been breastfeeding.

Douglas Shillinglaw, from Kent, is among those to have been affected. His wife is in Lagos, Nigeria, with his five-month old son and her six-year-old son from another relationship.

Mr Shillinglaw, a self-employed mortgage broker for two years, told the BBC he was being "judged like an employed person".

"Self-employed income is different from employed income. I have got enough money to pay my mortgage and bills, and that should be enough," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"And should anything happen to me, I have a family that will take care of them. My family are wholeheartedly behind what I am doing."

Mark Reckless, Conservative MP on the home affairs select committee, said the government had promised to bring down net immigration and it had done so by "bearing down" on bogus colleges, caps on work visas and reforms on family immigration.

"If you are bringing someone into the country, then you should be expected to support that person without recourse to public expense," he told Today.

"Over time, it might be possible that the regulations could be adjusted. There will be hard cases and we learn in light of those experiences."

'Children shouldn't suffer'

The group also heard from a number of UK sponsors in full-time employment at or above the national minimum wage who reported that they were unable to meet the income requirement.

Wider evidence suggested that 47% of the UK working population last year would have failed to meet the income level to sponsor a non-European Economic Area partner, the group said.

By the government's own estimate, almost 18,000 British people will be prevented from being reunited with their spouse or partner in the UK every year as a result of the new rules, it added.

Baroness Hamwee, chairwoman of the inquiry and Liberal Democrat home affairs lead in the House of Lords, said the parliamentary group had been "struck by the evidence showing just how many British people have been kept apart from partners, children and elderly relatives".

"These rules are causing anguish for families and, counter to their original objectives, may actually be costing the public purse," she said.

Liberal Democrat group member Sarah Teather MP said that "whatever the objective of the policy, children shouldn't suffer as a result".

A Home Office spokesman said the rules had been designed to make sure those coming to the UK to join their spouse or partner would not become a burden on the taxpayer and would be well enough supported to integrate effectively.

"High-value migrants would not be refused because their British spouse or partner was not employed," he said.

"They can meet the income threshold by having cash savings of £62,500 or through their own private income, for example from investments. We have also introduced greater flexibility for those holding investments to liquidate them into cash in order to meet the rules."

WWII Dornier bomber raised from English Channel - BBC News

10 June 2013 Last updated at 16:26 ET

The salvage attempt has been held up by strong winds in recent weeks

A German World War II bomber has been raised from the bottom of the English Channel.

The Dornier Do-17 aircraft was shot down off the Kent coast more than 70 years ago during the Battle of Britain.

Believed to be the only intact example of its kind in the world, it has lain in 50ft (15m) of water on the Goodwin Sands.

Attempts by the RAF Museum to salvage the relic had been hit by strong winds over the last few weeks.

The BBC's Nick Higham on board the salvage barge said the weather conditions for the hour-long operation were "near perfect" on Monday evening.

The salvage almost had to be postponed again when the rope from one of the salvage barge's four anchors got wrapped around its propeller, but the crew were able to free it in time to take advantage of the tidal conditions, our correspondent said.

The aircraft was badly corroded, the fuselage twisted and held in place only by a strut inserted by the salvage team. The engines had come adrift and will not be raised until Tuesday, he added.

The Dornier will be restored at a site in Shropshire before eventually going on display at the RAF Museum in Hendon, north London.

Museum spokesman Ajay Srivastava said: "It has been lifted and is now safely on the barge and in one piece.

"The operation has been an absolute success, the aircraft looks great and I believe it will be towed into port tomorrow morning."

Originally designed as a fast reconnaissance aircraf, the Dornier had been converted by the Luftwaffe in the mid-1930s into a medium bomber.

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At the scene

It emerged just as the sun was sinking in the west, flying briefly for the first time in over 70 years.

Though covered in barnacles it's clearly a plane. Half the distinctive double tail plane has survived. So has the undercarriage, tyres still fully-inflated.

In places you can see the camouflage paintwork. And both propellers emerged, dangling from the main carcase of the aircraft, twisted but immediately recognisable.

The salvage operation has been dogged by bad weather and some bad luck. But this afternoon the sea was an almost flat calm and there was no wind.

Joe Prill, of Seatech, the specialist diving contractors working for the RAF Museum, decided to risk a lift attempt. Diver Dave Bridger went down to attach the cables to the airframe.

The fuselage broke the surface just before 1830 BST.

There are considerable challenges ahead, not least getting the fragile wreck off its new home on a flat barge for transport by road to the RAF Museum's conservation centre.

But there is delight and relief on board the salvage barge GPS Apollo, even if Darren Priday, of the museum, may have succumbed to understandable euphoria when he joked: "We'll have her flying in a week."

The aircraft was a mainstay of the German bomber fleets during the Battle of Britain in 1940. The wreck is believed to be aircraft call-sign 5K-AR, shot down on 26 August that year at the height of the battle.

Two of the four crew members died and were buried elsewhere, and two - including the pilot - survived to become prisoners of war.

The existence of the aircraft at Goodwin Sands became known when it was spotted by divers in 2008 lying on a chalk bed with a small debris field around it.

Sonar scans by the RAF Museum, Wessex Archaeology and the Port of London Authority then confirmed the identity of the aircraft.

A grant of more than £345,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund allowed the salvage project to start.

The plan was three years in the making and involved divers attaching lifting equipment to what are believed to be the strongest parts of the Dornier's frame and raising it whole, in a single lift.

The original plan to build an aluminium frame or cradle around the fragile wreck was abandoned after it became clear it would take too long and send the £600,000 project way over budget.

A two-year restoration will now take place at the RAF Museum's site in Cosford, Shropshire.

Experts plan to spray the wings and fuselage with water and a combination of citric acid and sodium hydroxide in an attempt to halt corrosion.

China banks on desalination to help ease water woes - BBC News

10 June 2013 Last updated at 22:58 ET By Celia Hatton BBC News, Beijing

It is 11:00 in the village of Nanxinzhuang, in the mountain range just west of Beijing. In the centre of the village, a group of young men are relaxing in the sun and chatting with passing schoolchildren who are heading home for lunch.

But nearby, farmer Wang Yongxian does not have time to relax. A severe shortage of water in the village means that tap water is provided for just four hours a day.

Mr Wang must fill pots and buckets with enough water to for his wife and four-year-old granddaughter to use. He also needs water to irrigate his small patch of land, where he grows onions.

"When I was young, we had spring water to grow walnuts and pears," the 60-year-old explained. But that changed when the spring dried up in the 1980s. Since then, the village's ground water has also started to dry up, shrinking from seven wells to two.

"Drinking water has long been a problem for us, and we can't grow crops. We're dependent on the weather," he explained.

Parched land

Wang Yongxian's village lies in the heart of a large region of north-eastern China that is growing more desperate for water every year.

Millions are pouring into the capital, Beijing, and the neighbouring metropolis of Tianjin, leaving the provinces around those cities bone dry.

This arid region is on a par globally with chronically dry countries like Syria and Jordan, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

China's central government is hoping to ease the region's water woes by turning to a resource right on their shores: salt water from the Bohai Sea.

Over the next five years, at least $3.3bn (£2.1bn) will be used to build desalination plants along the eastern coast.

The Chinese government has already invested tens of billions of dollars in other plans to solve the drought crisis, even redirecting water from China's wet south to the parched north. However, that plan will only address part of the problem, leaving the authorities to search for additional fixes.

Desalination will triple the amount of processed seawater available for human use by 2015.

In a new industrial zone just outside Tianjin lies a desalination plant that is said to be a model for the rest. Built on the water's edge, it is a hybrid desalination plan and power generator, both fuelled by coal.

At the moment, the desalination plant is only processing a fraction of what it could. Desalinated water from the plant costs 30% more than regular city water. Municipal buyers are not lining up to buy the plant's water, though that is a temporary problem, explained Guo Qigang, the plant's manager.

"Fresh water is one of our most important natural resources. If it is very scarce, it becomes indispensable," he explained.

Tianjin, Beijing and the surrounding regions are so desperate for water, the reasoning goes, that it is inevitable that desalinated water will be necessary. The billions already spent on this plant are not a gamble, they are a sure-fire investment.

'Quick fix'

And that is a disappointment to environmentalists who are critical of the concept of desalination.

Celia Hatton reports from Tianjin in China

"Desalination uses lots of energy to produce filters, and then to process and transport the clean water," argued Zhang Junfeng, a Beijing environmental activist.

But the Tianjin plant is relatively environmentally friendly compared to other desalination technologies, said plant boss Guo Qigang.

"We produce drinkable water with a kind of recycling model," he said. "Desalination uses the remaining heat from the power plant, so that it makes use of waste energy."

Highly-concentrated salt water is usually a nasty by-product of the desalination process, but Mr Guo says that in Tianjin, the salt is processed into industrial grade salt.

But those green credentials don't impress the environmentalist, Zhang Junfeng. Beijing and the surrounding region struggle with thick smog caused, in large part, by coal-fired power plants, so the prospect of new coal-dependent desalination plants along the coast is not a welcome one.

"Desalination is a quick fix solution," he argued. "It is not encouraging people to conserve resources, but to find out how we can meet the consumption of resources."

The farmer, Wang Yonglin, shrugs his shoulders when asked about the government's plans to solve the water crisis. "I'm just an ordinary person," he explained.

However, it is clear that he expects the officials at the helm in Beijing to address the resource crisis that is threatening his way of life.

For Mr Wang, and millions like him, the pressure is on the government to come up with a quick solution. Perhaps, then, it is no wonder the Communist Party has seized on desalination as a partial, albeit imperfect, solution.

Syria troops 'preparing for Aleppo assault' - BBC News

10 June 2013 Last updated at 14:19 ET

Syrian government forces are reported to be preparing for a major offensive on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo and its surroundings.

A Syrian security source said it would start "in the coming hours or days".

Opposition activists in the city told the BBC that military reinforcements, including Hezbollah fighters, had been sent to parts of Aleppo.

Government forces backed by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Islamist group, last week recaptured the town of Qusair.

On Sunday, they retook the last remaining rebel-held villages in the strategically important area, which lies between the Lebanese border and the central city of Homs.

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"Start Quote

The regime considers that it has received a shot in the arm after the Qusair battle, but they will find that it will not be easy to advance in Aleppo"

End Quote Brig Gen Mustafa al-Sheikh Rebel commander

In view of the Syrian regime's rapid advance, Washington could decide this week at meetings involving top security officials to start arming the rebels, US officials say.

A State Department spokeswoman said on Monday that the US would "continue to look for ways to help the opposition and increase aid... The president has talked about how boots on the ground is not an option - so all options short of that".

'Northern Storm'

Much of northern Syria has been controlled by rebel groups since last year, and the front lines inside Aleppo have been largely static for months.

However, the fall of Qusair last Wednesday has reportedly been seized on by the military leadership in Damascus as a decisive victory.

On Monday, opposition activists in Aleppo told the BBC that military reinforcements and weapons had been sent to militias loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in north-western parts of the city.

The army would be trying, they said, to recapture towns in the northern and southern countryside of the city to control vital supply lines from Turkey.

The activists added that the ultimate goal was to fully control the heart of Aleppo.

An article in the pro-government Syrian newspaper, al-Watan, said earlier that the army was now "deploying heavily in the countryside near Aleppo in preparation for a battle that will be fought inside the city and on its outskirts".

"Besieged areas will be freed in the first stages and troops which have been on the defensive will go on the offensive."

It added: "The Syrian army will take advantage of its experience in Qusair and Eastern Ghouta [near Damascus] to advance in the provinces of Hama and Homs."

Meanwhile, the Syrian security source also said the government's next target was Aleppo.

"It is likely the battle for Aleppo will start in the coming hours or days, and its aim is to reclaim the towns and villages in the province," the source told AFP news agency.

The planned offensive is reportedly named Operation Northern Storm.

On Sunday, fierce fighting was reported in Nubbul and Zahra, two villages on the outskirts of the city that are predominantly Shia Muslim.

A rebel commander and former senior military officer, Brig Gen Mustafa al-Sheikh, said the government had been using helicopters to reinforce its positions with loyalists, including Hezbollah fighters and Shia from Iraq.

"The [army's] aim is to use the two villages as forward bases to make advances in Aleppo and its countryside," he told Reuters news agency.

"The regime considers that it has received a shot in the arm after the Qusair battle, but they will find that it will not be easy to advance in Aleppo."

Local activist Abu Mujahid said troops backed by Hezbollah militants had attempted to break a rebel siege of a military airport in the town of Minnig, near Zahra and Nubbul, and that the rebels were monitoring activity at the nearby Salamiya army base.

Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared at the end of May that the group had sent fighters to Syria to assist forces loyal to President Assad, and vowed to fight to the end to defeat the rebellion and defend Lebanon from jihadist extremists.

'Public execution'

In a separate development on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that Islamist rebels in Aleppo had executed a 15-year-old boy in front of his parents as punishment for what they regarded as a blasphemous comment.

The UK-based activist group said Mohammed Qataa was shot in the face and neck a day after being seized by the rebels, who allegedly overheard the teenager tell someone: "Even if the Prophet Muhammad comes down [from heaven], I will not become a believer."

Before executing the boy, one of the rebels reportedly told onlookers: "Disbelieving in God is polytheism and cursing the Prophet is polytheism. Whoever curses even once will be punished like this."

The SOHR published a photograph of what it said was the boy's face, which bore gunshot wounds to the mouth and neck. Its director, Rami Abdul Rahman, said it could not "ignore these crimes, which only serve the enemies of the revolution and the enemies of humanity".

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Coalition, said that if the reports were true, it "would constitute a crime against humanity and those responsible must be brought to justice".

"The Syrian Coalition expects those taking part in the revolution to abide by the ideals and principles of international covenants and treaties," it said in a statement.

It blamed the alleged killing on "extremist factions" and urged people to support the main rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, saying it had "committed to adhering to human rights laws".

US spy leaker Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong - BBC News

10 June 2013 Last updated at 22:29 ET

Ed Snowden explains why he became a whistleblower (Video courtesy of The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)

An ex-CIA employee who leaked details of US top-secret phone and internet surveillance has disappeared from his hotel in Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden, 29, checked out from his hotel on Monday. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be still in Hong Kong.

Earlier, he said he had an "obligation to help free people from oppression".

It emerged last week that US agencies were gathering millions of phone records and monitoring internet data.

A spokesman for the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the case had been referred to the Department of Justice as a criminal matter.

Meanwhile a petition posted on the White House website, calling for Mr Snowden's immediate pardon, has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

However an opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post suggests a majority of Americans think government monitoring of phone records is acceptable if the aim is to fight terrorism.

Transatlantic fallout

Hong Kong's broadcaster RTHK said Mr Snowden checked out of the Mira hotel on Monday.

Reuters news agency quoted hotel staff as saying that he had left at noon.

Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, told the BBC he believed Mr Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

The Chinese territory has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

Mr Snowden was revealed as the source of the leaks at his own request by the UK's Guardian newspaper.

He is believed to have arrived in Hong Kong on 20 May. A standard visa on arrival in the territory for a US citizen lasts for 90 days.

His revelations have caused transatlantic political fallout, amid allegations that the UK's electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, used the US system to snoop on British citizens.

Foreign Secretary William Hague cancelled a trip to Washington to address the UK parliament on Monday and deny the claims.

Mr Snowden is described by the Guardian as an ex-CIA technical assistant, currently employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a defence contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA).

He told the newspaper: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

Mr Snowden said he did not believe he had committed a crime: "We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me."

Vatis: NSA's Prism 'fully authorised by US law'

But he admitted that he could end up in jail and feared for people who knew him.

'Core values'

In a statement, Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed Mr Snowden had been an employee for less than three months.

"If accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement said.

At a daily press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he could not comment on the Snowden case, citing an ongoing investigation.

The first of the leaks came out on Wednesday night, when the Guardian reported a US secret court ordered phone company Verizon to hand over to the NSA millions of records on telephone call "metadata".

The metadata include the numbers of both phones on a call, its duration, time, date and location (for mobiles, determined by which mobile signal towers relayed the call or text).

On Thursday, the Washington Post and Guardian said the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a programme known as Prism.

All the internet companies deny giving the US government access to their servers.

Prism is said to give the NSA and FBI access to emails, web chats and other communications directly from the servers of major US internet companies.

The data is used to track foreign nationals suspected of terrorism or spying. The NSA is also collecting the telephone records of American customers, but said it is not recording the content of their calls.

US director of national intelligence James Clapper's office said information gathered under Prism was obtained with the approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (Fisa).

Prism was authorised under changes to US surveillance laws passed under President George W Bush, and renewed last year under Barack Obama.

Mr Obama has defended the surveillance programmes, assuring Americans that nobody was listening to their calls.

E3: PlayStation 4 console priced cheaper than Xbox One - BBC News

11 June 2013 Last updated at 00:31 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Andrew House, Sony: "This is a completely new platform and in many ways represents a completely new PlayStation"

Sony is set to sell the PlayStation 4 for a cheaper price than Microsoft's rival Xbox One.

The Japanese firm announced at the E3 trade show that its machine would be sold for £349 in the UK, $399 in the US and 399 euros across Europe.

It added that it would not impose restrictions on second-hand games.

Sony also unveiled what its box would look like, having previously kept the design under wraps at its February PS4 press conference.

For many in the audience at the Los Angeles event, the scale of the price difference came as the biggest shock.

Earlier in the day Microsoft had revealed its new console would cost £429 in the UK, $499 in the US and 499 euros.

"Clearly the big headline is that the PlayStation is going to be $100 less than the Xbox One when they come out in the US," Stephen Totilo, editor-in-chief of the gaming news site Kotaku, told the BBC.

"Microsoft is going to need to look again at its price or explain why it offers better value, such as the inclusion of its Kinect sensor.

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Analysis

If console battles were decided by the frequency and volume of whoops and cheers from excitable gaming fanatics, then Sony has won it hands down.

The biggest of all was about price. The PS4 will cost $499 or £349, a price point which drew gasps and then cheers from the audience in Los Angeles.

Cost aside, it was Sony's stance on DRM - digital rights management - which also drew huge applause.

"PS4 will not impose any new restrictions on your use of PS4 game discs," said Jack Tretton, boss of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

It was a cheer for what his audience saw as basic right.

Unlike Microsoft, however, Sony has still to provide a launch date, indicating only that the PS4 would be released by the Christmas season.

"Of course, in the short-term it may not matter too much because when new consoles launch supply is typically limited and hardcore gamers will pay anything to snatch them up. But six months or a year later on it will make a difference and Microsoft may feel at that point that it needs to match price with Sony."

Second-hand games

Sony also sought to distinguish its games machine by announcing it would not introduce any new restrictions on pre-owned disc-based game bought from friends or retailers, nor would it require users to regularly authenticate their machines via the internet to allow games to continue being played.

By contrast, Microsoft has introduced limitations on who consumers can buy second-hand titles from and has introduced a requirement to connect to the net once every 24-hours to play games on the Xbox One.

"With Sony continually pushing their gaming credentials and the development of the PlayStation brand for gamers throughout their presentation - it has very publicly slapped Microsoft across the face," said Alex Simmons, UK Editor-in-Chief of news site IGN.com.

"Talk of restrictions on the sale of pre-owned games and a requirement for an internet connection have been two of the largest consumer concerns surrounding the next-generation consoles."

'Pole position'

Sony's gaming division accounted for $7.5bn (£4.8bn) worth of sales in its last financial year, representing just under 10% of its total revenues.

The PS4's predecessor, the PlayStation 3, beat the Xbox 360 in terms of global shipments but was in turn outsold by Nintendo's Wii, according to market research firm IDC.

However, the Wii U - which launched in November - has failed to meet its sales projections, something Nintendo has blamed on delayed games releases.

"It's a big opening, the Wii U hasn't performed up to Nintendo's expectations or that of the broader industry" IDC's gaming analyst Lewis Ward told the BBC.

"You only get about once a decade to reset expectations around what a platform will be, and therefore the launch of the PS4 has the potential to move Sony back into the pole position it was at with the PS2."

New games

Sony said that 140 PS4 games were in development, 100 of which should be released within its first year.

Among the titles that will be exclusive to the PS4 which had not previously been revealed was The Order: 1886, a steampunk-styled shooter set in the 19th century.

In addition. Square Enix announced that it was bringing Kingdom Hearts 3 - a role playing game involving locations and characters from Disney cartoons - to the platform.

Sony said it also wished to make the PS4 the most "open and inclusive" platform to independent developers and highlighted a range of titles from the sector including a remake of 1997's Oddworld.

One expert suggested this was a deliberate effort to take advantage of the fact several small studios had complained of experiencing problems when trying to release titles onto the Xbox.

"While Microsoft has found itself incurring the wrath of many indie developers, Sony has taken the opportunity to reach out to the sector earning it access to great games and also a great deal of goodwill." said Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of games news site Polygon.

"But while Sony says that it allows 'self publishing', it's not the kind of open market we might think of when we hear the term in association with smartphone platforms like iOS or Android."

Vita lives on

In addition to the PS4 news, Sony also talked up the PS Vita.

It has previously acknowledged that the handheld console's sales had fallen behind expectations.

But at E3 it stressed the machine was still "just beginning its life cycle".

It said that 85 titles were coming to the platform this year including Batman Arkham Origins, Killzone Mercenary and a new episode in Telltale Games' The Walking Dead series.

It also described the Vita as "the ultimate companion device" to the PS4 since the handheld can stream the bigger machine's titles.

Console competition

Despite the PS4's price advantage, one observer at E3 said it was too soon to assume it would outsell the Xbox One.

"You don't get the Kinect with the PS4 - Sony's Eye camera isn't as powerful and may be sold separately - so Microsoft can push the fact its sensor is worth the extra £80," said Stuart Miles, founder of the Pocket-lint gadget review site.

"The other thing is that the Xbox One games line-up seems to be stronger at launch.

"A lot of the games announced at Sony's event have been given a 2014 date and its Gaikai cloud streaming service won't start offering PS3 titles to the new console until next year as well."