Sony PS4
Sony Computer Entertainment America President and CEO Tretton addresses the Sony news conference show on the eve of the opening of E3 in Los AngelesReuters

Sony is tight-lipped on the release date of its next-generation gaming console - PlayStation 4 (Sony PS4) - despite showcasing it at the recently concluded E3 press conference held in Los Angeles but online retailer Amazon has put the release date as 31 December.

The announcement came just a few days after the Japanese electronics giant revealed that the gaming console will happen in the US this holiday season. Sony revealed the price, looks and launch information of PS4 at the E3, the world's premier trade show for computer and video games held last week.

Sony chief executive Andrew House described the next-generation gaming console as "unparalleled power" at the unveiling event. It will cost $399 when it hits the market, $100 cheaper than Microsoft's Xbox One, which will cost $499 when it is launched in the US this November.

The Japanese electronics giants will allow owners to trade their PS4 game discs, allowing gamers to buy cheaper pre-owned games, and players don't have to sign in online to play.

The Japanese electronics giant also revealed the look of the console at the press conference. It is black in colour with sharp angles.

Sony had earlier revealed some specifications of the new console at an event in February, followed by revelation of the 'mock-up' designs of the PlayStation 4 (Sony PS4) controller and eye at the Games Developers Conference (GDC) 2013 in San Francisco, California.

The new gaming console is powered by single-chip custom processor and x86-64 AMD "Jaguar" 8 Cores. It features 18 "compute units" capable of cranking out 1.84 TFLOPS and AMD next generation Radeon based graphics engine. The console will also have a memory of 8GB GDDR5 RAM capable of 176GB/sec of bandwidth.