Features

It's has been speculated about and anticipated for the past few months, Apple have now revealed the fourth generation iPod Touch models.

Speaking on a live online stream, main man Steve Jobs gave details of the new model, which will allow for HD video capture, as well as including a front-mounted camera, plus the retina display and gyroscope that were recently added to the 4th-gen iPhones. The device will come, like the last-gen models, in 8gb, 32gb and 64gb varieties, which are set to retail for £189, £249 and £329 respectively (which presumably means we won't see any price drops on the older models just yet).

To go with the new model, there will be a firmware revision next week - version 4.1 - which also introduces Games Center, which is being described as the iPod/iPhone's answer to Xbox Live. It will be used for multiplayer match-making, leader boards and, perhaps most importantly of all, achievements!

The arrival of Games Center, along with the debut of the Unreal Engine 3 (a free tech demo called Epic Citadel is available now), on the system has furthered Apple's plans to become the dominant force in the hand-held gaming market. Jobs went as far as to call the iPod Touch "the number one portable games player in the world". Clearly he's never seen the Quickshot Supervision.

Jobs also pointed out the 1.5 billion game and entertainment titles sold for the device, while making the especially bold claim that the Touch "outsells Nintendo and Sony combined". You can probably expect one of those two to point out that this might have something to do with the DS and PSP not having a range of 59p games.

For full details on the new model, visit Apple's official site. Meanwhile, the rest of us can go look at our now-obsolete £300 media players and sigh.