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Sony's Play Station 4 keeps up with Microsoft's Xbox One

The electronics manufacturer announces a 1-terabyte version of its video game console.

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Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
A Sony PlayStation video game logo is seen at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 17.

The latest battlefront in the console wars concerns memory. Bigger games require bigger hard drives, and a week after Microsoft officially announced it is releasing a new version of the Xbox One with 1 terabyte of memory – double the standard 500 gigabytes of storage in a traditional Xbox One – Sony responded Monday that a 1-terabyte version of the PlayStation 4 will be released in Europe, Asia, and Africa next month.

The expanded memory and storage will allow gamers to play with higher resolution graphics, download more games and add-on content, and save and share more personal highlights, Sony said on its PlayStation blog.

CNET reported that, as both digital and disc-based games are getting larger and more complex, “hard-core gamers who have a huge collection of titles can more easily run out of space.” Typical digital download PS4 games take up at least 40 gigabytes of space, meaning that it would only take 10 games to fill up most of the memory in a 500GB hard drive, according to Geek.com.

The PS4 has been “clobbering” the Xbox One in sales, according to CNET, but Microsoft stole a march on Sony last week when the company unveiled its 1TB console ahead of last week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo – also known as E3, the video game industry’s biggest conference – and then used the Los Angeles conference to talk up the console and a raft of other new features the company is introducing, including a newly-designed wireless controller.

As of March 1, Sony had sold 20.2 million PS4 units, the International Business Times reported, while Microsoft had sold 10 million Xbox One units.

The new 1TB PS4 is being released in Europe, Asia, and Africa because those regions use the PAL video standard. North and South America use a standard known as NTSC, according to CNET.

Sony hasn’t said when the 1TB console could debut in the US, but Geek.com reported earlier this month that the company had filed to certify both the 500GB and 1TB consoles with the US Federal Communications Commission, "which suggests the console might also launch stateside," according to PC Magazine.

[Editor's note: This original version of this article incorrectly identified the North and South American video standard. It is known as NTSC.]

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