The rumored and much-awaited Sony event is nearing, so it's not surprising that the world of gaming is already at the heels of talk, speculation, hand-wringing, and a lot of wondering on what Sony has in store for the year.

According to The Guardian, Friday's event can go in several ways, with the most possible (and hoped for) being the announcement of the release date of the PlayStation 4.

Of course, for gamers, this doesn't stop them from speculating or looking for rumors on what they should expect when the actual next-gen console comes out in the market. Here's a roundup of the specs and updates on the PlayStation 4.

The name

Even the official branding of the new console has been speculated upon. In the Japanese language, four is translated to "shi," which also means death. This is the reason why some infrastructures in Japan don't have the fourth floor in them, as it is considered unlucky.

The trend has, so far, skipped the gaming industry, but with the solution of labeling it as "4" instead of the kanji equivalent.

GamesRadar points out that skipping the name trend for the console may result in failure to translate to an improvement in potential users eyes, since the number progression connotes the version and upgrade of the next-gen console.

The specs

As mentioned before, the PlayStation 3 has already made a name for itself in terms of performance compared to its competition, and according to Digital Trends, it is for this reason that there may not be too much of a difference for its successor.

After all, why fix what isn't broken? That doesn't mean that improvements won't be made. The CPU behind the next-gen console has not yet reached a definitive answer as to what may back the PlayStation 4. However, gaming blogs seem to agree on the magnified power of the CPU for up to eight times.

But as for the other specs, developer PlayStation 4 kits contain an 8GB of system memory, a 160 GB hard drive (speculated to be made exclusively for the developer version), and a 2.2 GB video memory.

What it needs

Aside from the specs that gamers are looking forward to, there are also a couple of things worth noting about with the PlayStation 4. It takes off from a pretty successful platform made by the PlayStation 3, which has been a huge improvement in the now phased out PlayStation 2.

According to CNet, what the fourth version should do is to make sure that the exclusivity in games lives through to the next-gen. This was the main issue of the PlayStation 3 when it was starting out, and it can be great if the next-gen can deal with this situation a little earlier.

CNet also reports that another improvement could be done in the system patches, so that the waiting time for playing a game can easily be eliminated. If this can be done the same way programs are installed din other devices (via caching) but without the need to limit the capabilities of data storage, it can best its predecessor by a good mile.