Sony Playstation 4 Goes On Sale In The U.S.

Sony's newest gaming console PlayStation 4 (PS4) hit U.S. stores on Friday (November 15) on midnight.

The Japanese tech giant held an official launch party in New York at the Standard Hotel in the trendy Meatpacking District. Hundreds of fans lined up for hours to get their hands on what Sony calls "the most powerful gaming console to ever hit the market."

Among them braving the cold was Miguel Alonzo, who said that he was a loyal Sony customer.

"Sony has done so many great things for me for every gamer to not be excited - you've got a whole bunch of things that are coming with the PS4 and it's just here. Finally."

The PS4 comes with an AMD Radeon Graphics Core, 8GB of RAM and an 8-core processor and has a slew of exclusive video games. It also has better streaming capabilities for online gaming, and has features linking the device with social media so that users can share game play video and images with their friends.

Joey Chiu was the first to buy the console at the official launching event. He said that he was very happy about his new purchase, "just as about happy as everybody else here at this launch event who is getting their PS4 for the first time."

The PS4 is priced in the U.S. at $399 (£349 in the UK). After Friday's North America launch, the PS4 will go on sale in other regions including Europe, Australia and South America from November 29 - all in time for the busy pre-Christmas season. The device will be released in Japan in February.

Rival Microsoft's latest console Xbox One will go on sale next Friday (November 22).

Sony said that it has received more than 1 million advance orders for the PS4 while Microsoft has revealed only that advance orders for the Xbox One exceeded those of its predecessor, the 360, eight years ago.

Presented by Adam Justice