Short answers, pulled from the story.
The PlayStation 4 launched on the 15th of November 2013 in North America, on the 29th of November 2013 in Europe, South America, and Australia, and on the 22nd of February 2014 in Japan. The initial recommended retail price was $399 in North America, €399 in Europe, and £349 in the UK.
Mark Cerny served as lead architect of the PlayStation 4. According to Cerny, development began as early as 2008. Sony also worked with software developer Bungie on the design of the DualShock 4 controller.
The PlayStation 4 sold 106 million units worldwide as of the 31st of December 2019, making it the second best-selling video game console of all time behind the PlayStation 2. By the 22nd of March 2022, lifetime shipments had reached 117.2 million units.
The PS4 uses a custom AMD APU combining an eight-core x86-64 CPU and a GPU with a theoretical peak of 1.84 teraflops, alongside 8 GB of GDDR5 memory with a bandwidth of 176 GB/s. AMD described it as the most powerful APU the company had developed at the time.
The PlayStation 4 Slim, model CUH-2000, is 40% smaller than the original and launched on the 15th of September 2016 at the same price as the original. The PlayStation 4 Pro, model CUH-7000, launched on the 10th of November 2016 and features an upgraded GPU delivering 4.2 teraflops, hardware checkerboard rendering for 4K output, and a higher CPU clock rate.
A global chip shortage lasting from 2020 to 2023 made it difficult for Sony to produce enough PlayStation 5 units to meet demand. According to a Bloomberg News report from January 2022, Sony had planned to end PS4 production at the close of 2021 but instead continued manufacturing it to help offset the PS5 shortage and maintain component supply agreements.