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[aygomyownroad]

I await the Trinity PS5 or Smith PSVR2.

The waters are becoming less cloudy now. I am not sure I really care enough to buy this upgrade now. I was only going to do it to keep exclusive games for it but as they won't be doing that I think I'll pass.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Neo, Morpheus lol who the hell is obsessed with the Matrix at Sony

My long lost twin... that'd be cool .

 

[timetokill]

People are acting like Sony is gonna kick in their door and replace their current PS4 with a pile of shit or something.

The box in your house is the exact same as it was when you bought it. Why assume that every new game coming out will run like shit on the standard PS4? The 30-something million unit install base should be incentive for publishers and devs to make sure new games are running at least decently on the standard unit, no?

That's where the majority of people will be playing their games, why wouldn't devs ensure that they're getting a good experience?

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic but I just don't see games limping along on the standard PS4 being the norm seeing as how they will still be the biggest console user base.

Because tbh, most consumers are not discerning enough to tell the difference. If The Laster of Us: The Lastening comes out and runs at ~22fps on PSPoor then the mass market consumer isn't going to notice the difference. They'll look at the trailers (running on PS4 Neo) and see how awesome it looks, and buy the game even if they won't get the same product they saw in the video.

For hardcore gamers (the type that would post on a gaming forum like NeoGAF), the difference is such that it will bother them. Most enthusiast gamers don't like to get the "entry" model, and now it's going to turn out they got the entry model without even knowing it at the time.

 

[Zomba13]

100% not a fan of this. Especially as every game going forward will have a gimped mode and a proper mode.

At least when Nintendo does this shit the games are rarely worth it and the upgrades are few and far between (Like the exclusive Xenoblade that was better on the Wii, the better running Hyrule Warriors that looks better on the WiiU).

I bet they will just use the Neo Mode versions in marketing and make things look and run better with a little *Running on the PS4K when showing gameplay trailers and the like.


Also, everyone ready to jump in on this, I'd recommend waiting for the next revision where they phase out the PS4 and then Neo mode is the shitty mode and Super Neo Mode on the PS4-3 is the thing to get.

 

[SmoothRunningGun]

Seems like a minor upgrade.

 

[FyreWulff]

The thing that irks me is the 8GB unified RAM. I half way dont believe it. Sure it got an upclock it seems, but to stay at 8? Idontbelieveyou.jpg.

Sony trying to drop another Mic?

Developers can't even use all 8GB, more like 5GB, and developers haven't really been bottlenecked by it yet. If more RAM is coming, it'd be from Sony releasing it from the OS reserve.

 

[Brad Grenz]

No that's not what it's being used for. Did you read the article?

At least not by and large

I read the article. It's a system built around enabling higher fidelity games for 4K output. In realistic terms that is going to mean rendering at higher resolution and little else. They added just enough CPU, bandwidth and shader headroom to make taking a 1080p game to 1440p pretty easy. Expecting something else is asinine.

 

[Arxisz]

Those specs are highly disappointing.

 

[Eolz]

Just seen this thread, seems like Sony has no choice but to announce the thing in E3, I don't know specs too much, how much powerful NEO is compared to PS4?

Not powerful enough to be decently called PS4.5.
It's closer to GC-> Wii for example, or DS->DSi.

 

[AmyS]

I'll be shocked if Microsoft doesn't try their hardest to leapfrog this.

I'm counting on it, actually.

2018 - Microsoft releases a true next-gen Xbox that has 8-core Zen APU with Radeon Vega 10 GPU (formerly Arctic Islands "Greenland") with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2).

“I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers”

-- Phil Spencer

 

[clintar]

Win-win?

I can only imagine negatives coming from this for standard PS4 owners. The best case scenario is no adverse impact for the standard PS4. But it seems more likely to me that this will result in worst running games for that system as 1080p/30fps and 1080p/60fps become the 'Neo' targets, and regular PS4 games handle those same experiences at reduced resolutions or frame-rates.

You really think that devs are going to take the lower number of users on PS4K as their target, and say screw the large number of PS4 users? What incentive is there for that? Maybe once the ratio of PS4/PS4K switches, and I'd figure by a significant amount then devs might think that makes sense.

 

[-hadouken]

100% not a fan of this. Especially as every game going forward will have a gimped mode and a proper mode.

Offering a model with improved specs doesn't "gimp" your PS4.

 

[mrklaw]

The PC comparison is weird. PC owners aren't forced to upgrade, and neither are PS4 owners. While lots of PC owners do upgrade regularly, plenty of others pick a good bang for buck build and will sit on a good CPU or GPU for 4-5 years before upgrading.

This is not a black and white thing. Most of the population will buy the cheaper base PS4, some will buy the newer 'elite' one. not many will upgrade from their current PS4 - more likely early adopters will.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

100% not a fan of this. Especially as every game going forward will have a gimped mode and a proper mode.

At least when Nintendo does this shit the games are rarely worth it and the upgrades are few and far between (Like the exclusive Xenoblade that was better on the Wii, the better running Hyrule Warriors that looks better on the WiiU).

I bet they will just use the Neo Mode versions in marketing and make things look and run better with a little *Running on the PS4K when showing gameplay trailers and the like.


Also, everyone ready to jump in on this, I'd recommend waiting for the next revision where they phase out the PS4 and then Neo mode is the shitty mode and Super Neo Mode on the PS4-3 is the thing to get.

We will be waiting forever under your recommendation.3 years is not an unreasonable length of time to upgrade a piece of tech, especially when you don't have to do it.

I'm counting on it, actually.

2018 - Microsoft releases a true next-gen Xbox that has 8-core Zen APU with Radeon Vega 10 GPU (formerly Arctic Islands "Greenland") with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2).

“I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers”

-- Phil Spencer

And then 6 months later Sony leap frogs them again or maybe even releases at the same time. I have a feeling they have no intentions of ever giving Microsoft a competitive advantage like they had with the 360 again.

 

[Gurish]

It's like the DSi to the DS. Except developers apparently are not allowed to have games that only run on the newer refresh, unlike the DSi (and it'd probably have about as many as the DSi if it did)

Not powerful enough to be decently called PS4.5.
It's closer to GC-> Wii for example, or DS->DSi.

Thanks, not sure I would bother than.

 

[barit]

So it's true afterall? Awful Sony, really awful. Why not fucking wait another 3 years and bring out PS5? This will get such massive backslash among the mainstream. It will confuse the consumers and piss off early adopters (like me). They must really fear the fucking NX for some reason at Sony HQ or they really want to push 4K as fast as possible. Nethertheless I'm not happy with this.

 

[DJwest]

That NEO mode has me confused. Will the launch PS4 games need to be patched to be playable on Neo or will the Neo be able to play old PS4 games with no issues?

 

[filly]

Wait, isn't 60fps a gameplay feature?

 

[TAJ]

Supersampled yes, but if it outputs at 1440p and is then downscaled by a chip you are going to get artifacts.

What do you think supersampling is? What do you think is doing the downscaling on PC? Hint: The GPU is.

 

[Feep]

I read the article. It's a system built around enabling higher fidelity games for 4K output. In realistic terms that is going to mean rendering at higher resolution and little else. They added just enough CPU, bandwidth and shader headroom to make taking a 1080p game to 1440p pretty easy. Expecting something else is asinine.

Unless Sony specifically mandates this, uh, no. Probably fewer than 5% of PS4 users are currently displaying the picture on a 1440p+ capable monitor. It's much more likely devs will use the extra power on better IQ, which is one of the easiest things to increase without a ton of extra effort. It may be difficult to jump from 30 fps to 60 fps, but if that's possible, that would probably get priority over 1440p, as well.

And honestly, I'd rather have better IQ than a 1440p resolution, anyway.

 

[Skyo]

No exclusives for neo is an indicator that this is basically a PS4-slim. Slightly higher performance with the same ps4 games. Im down for that.

 

[tuxfool]

Ok yes I get this. They always test gpus this way as to avoid bottlenecks. And the amount of fps difference in these scenarios will not scale exactly as in the diagram. That is true.

My point that I feel is being missed over and over, is that people here are arguing the unconfirmed spec increase will make little to no difference in fps performance, when that is in my opinion just an obtuse view of it all plain and simple.

It is possible, probable even that doubling the gpu performance this way will get us to 60fps in most cases with the games optimized specifically for this set up in a closed environment.

What people are actually arguing is that 60fps will be on a case-by-case basis. That is it. The weak CPU definitely factors into this.

 

[Ozorov]

GPU is 4.2 TF According to thuway(?)

 

[Guymelef]

I continie reafing people tslking about disappointing upgrade. How so? What do uou spect? 4Ghz cpu?
That gpu on a fixed hardware could be a beast.

 

[JonathanPower]

My questions would be:

Will there be separate discs at retail for OG PS4 and NEO?
Would the game disc or download recognize that you are using NEO and turn on NEO mode or would you have to go into options and turn it on?

Not really. There will just be higher quality assets that will only be used in the NEO mode. Think about it like an upgraded Pc. And also for older games I expect them to run better as well even if they are not pached up.

I continie reafing people tslking about disappointing upgrade. How so? What do uou spect? 4Ghz cpu?
That gpu on a fixed hardware could be a beast.

I was expecting a Puma+ at 2.5GHz, but it's not that bad, especially if the price is the same. Obviously, I am expecting a price drop for the base PS4 model. They probably wanted to still use Jaguar to ensure a 100% backwards compatibility.

However, I don't see any mention of UHD, which was supposed to be one of the main new features of the PS4K.

 

[TheLegendOfMart]

What do you think supersampling is? What do you think is doing the downscaling on PC?

Rendering at higher resolution and scaling it down using the GPU. The PS4K GPU isn't anywhere near powerful enough for 4K so it will use a separate scaler to upscale.

Load an image in photoshop and do a bilinear or nearest neighbour downscale and see what happens.

 

[tuxfool]

Unless Sony specifically mandates this, uh, no. Probably fewer than 5% of PS4 users are currently displaying the picture on a 1440p+ capable monitor. It's much more likely devs will use the extra power on better IQ, which is one of the easiest things to increase without much extra effort. It may be difficult to jump from 30 fps to 60 fps, but if that's possible, that would probably get priority over 1440p, as well.

And honestly, I'd rather have better IQ than a 1440p resolution, anyway.

Downsampling 1440p is a good way to get better IQ.

 

[Mac@NeoGAF]

Well in terms of GPU upgrade, they've basically put in an AMD 390/Nvidia 970 class part in it.

Don't care what anyone says, doubling GPU performance but keeping that horrid little Jaguar CPU just increases the CPU bound nature of the PS4, even with a 500Mhz clock bump, in fact a x2 GPU capability paired with only a 30% CPU bump makes it even more unbalanced than before.

That Jaguar CPU needs to go.

 

[DieH@rd]

Supersampled yes, but if it outputs at 1440p and is then downscaled by a chip you are going to get artifacts.

PS4K will handle HQ downscaling/upscaling [same as it is already done on PS4/Xbone]. There is no sense in leaving TVs to manipulate size of gaming streams. Their job must be to get the signal and put it on the display as fast as possible so that latency will be low.

 

[FyreWulff]

Not really. There will just be higher quality assets that will only be used in the NEO mode. Think about it like an upgraded Pc. And also for older games I expect them to run better as well even if they are not pached up.

They likely won't. A PS4 Neo would downclock for older games as to not introduce bugs. Developers will have to set a flag in their executable manifest/somewhere to get the higher power mode, same as games that had enhanced modes on GBC, or GBA, or DSi.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Base + neo mode is sensible and I think what a lot of people were suggesting before. The more recent rumours of the ps4 version being 'significantly downgraded' never sounded right to me.

Double the CUs at a higher clock, plus decent CPU bump sounds pretty nice. Will probably grab one if they're the same price

I wonder if they'll redo the base PS4 with a shrink APU to bring costs down?

To be fair, optimising down costs money and precious time, is it that u reasonable that over time third party developers will get their intended visual target at 1080p working on NEO and letting the base mode linger back with a less than stable framerate as long as it is close to 30 FPS enough? I think it is the likely scenario in these cases. Why even coding for the new hardware or release it at all if you do not end up using its features to impress customers in videos and stills, of course people will use its power, but then what is the historic precedent that would make gamers feel safe that BASE mode games are not going to get less and less polish as time goes on?

 

[Feep]

Downsampling 1440p is a good way to get better IQ.

Supersampling is a pretty expensive way to increase IQ, though. If you're looking for "bang for your buck", anisotropic filtering, temporal AA solutions, increased shadow quality, and so on will likely yield better results.

Supersampling is likely the absolute easiest thing to do, though.

 

[Greddleok]

I'd be shocked if Nintendo doesn't have the exact same strategy with NX.

Consoles are going to be iterative moving forward. Best to accept it now.

Or just never buy a console again. Pretty simple. If they're iterative, they are finally just shitty versions of PCs with none of the upsides.

 

[TAJ]

Rendering at higher resolution and scaling it down using the GPU. The PS4K GPU isn't anywhere near powerful enough for 4K so it will use a separate scaler to upscale.

Load an image in photoshop and do a bilinear or nearest neighbour downscale and see what happens.

It's not going to have a dedicated scaler chip.
And I never mentioned upscaling but since you did... Xbox 360 scaled some games from 576p to 1080p on the GPU.

 

[Wollan]

The ~4.1-2TF GPU upgrade is very juicy. That's GTX 970 performance in a fixed hardware box.

 

[GamerMax73]

I'll be shocked if Microsoft doesn't try their hardest to leapfrog this.

You can't do the R&D on this kind of thing over night. If MS have any thing planed, then they also have had it in the planning for years. Guess what, aside from very minor last minute tweaks, what ever spec it is - is what ever spec they had planned - be that better or worse than Sony.

The only way MS can guaranty leap frogging Sony - unless they just so happen to have a better spec already in production - is to go back to the drawing board and swallow another year, give or take, with AMD coming up with a revised design.

 

[Dahaka]

people expect a substantial CPU upgrade für 399?
The rumor of 499 with better CPU I get but 399?

come on guys, staaaaaaaaaaahp.

Plus I believe some of the guys who constantly compare to the PC haven't realized why they want a console.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

If you own a PS4 and think these specs are not much of an improvement then that's a positive. It means you won't regret buying a PS4. I think these specs and perception of this new console is in about the right place at the moment.

 

[bitbydeath]

“I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers”

-- Phil Spencer

Therein lies the question.
They are still yet to show their end game in respect to the convergence of console and PC.

 

[ThirdEye]

Neo, Morpheus lol who the hell is obsessed with the Matrix at Sony

Ken Kutaragi in 2003: "Did you ever see the movie The Matrix? Same interface. Same concept. Only better."

 

[Alienous]

You really think that devs are going to take the lower number of users on PS4K as their target, and say screw the large number of PS4 users? What incentive is there for that? Maybe once the ratio of PS4/PS4K switches, and I'd figure by a significant amount then devs might think that makes sense.

I'm saying they'll want to use the extra graphical capabilities of the 'Neo', and that will manifest as using more demanding graphics technology techniques. Then the standard PS4 release would be kind of like a port of that, which would result in a butchered frame-rate and/or resolution to keep up.

It's either that or they focus on the standard PS4 version, and the 'Neo' version is an up-port from that.

 

[Jonnax]

Therein lies the question.
They are still yet to show their end game in respect to the convergence of console and PC.

"Every PC is an Xbox One!"
And then they proceed to launch a premium £1000 Xbox One.

 

[Aztechnology]

I'd never seen this. This is fantastic.

 

[Eolz]

I continie reafing people tslking about disappointing upgrade. How so? What do uou spect? 4Ghz cpu?
That gpu on a fixed hardware could be a beast.

Jaguar will always be a bottleneck, no ram added, and we don't know enough about the gpu to say that.

 

[filly]

When this generation of consoles came on the scene we were all scrambling to justify what was truly next gem about it. Trying to find out what wasn't possible gameplay wise in the generation before.

It turns out that not much is. But we have all mostly screamed out for higher frame rates in this gen.

They are also dealing with the issue that is yet to exist.
PSVR needs a fighting chance and currently all that can be done is flat textures/low res.

This could make a difference in the speed VR is adopted and as such despite loving the buy one your sorted attitude to consoles, I have to support this for the sake of the success of VR.

 

[kadotsu]

I wish they went with SATA III, too. The loading times are still ridiculous. Maybe the new CPU can somewhat mitigate this a bit since decompression is now faster.

 

[spons]

Or just never buy a console again. Pretty simple. If they're iterative, they are finally just shitty versions of PCs with none of the upsides.

Except exclusive titles, not having to tinker with graphics settings, the initial price of purchase and not having to build your own system unless you want to shell out more money for a pre-built computer.

I get that PC gaming is great, but there are arguments for consoles, and people too easily forget this.

 

[Possumowner]

"There will be no exclusive Ps4k games". Now as much as I think that would be fantastic and the right move,I can't fully believe that.At some point im sure somebody WILL develop a game directly for Ps4k.

As for the name,I actually like that.

 

[EatinOlives]

SE will just use that extra power for 30fps, better effects and brute force it .
And for me and others that well worth the money (will sell old PS4 and buy a new one).
FFXV on current gen could really use better frame rate and AA.

Again, for companies like SE where just shipping the product is enough of an ordeal, chances are you'll have to wait for a post-launch patch. Especially since it won't really harm them of they don't make a Neo profile, and won't benefit them if they do.

I mean all the more power to you if you really value an incremental upgrade that much, but it won't have universal appeal.

 

[Ozzykamikaze]

What? The numbers will obviously vary per game; my post merely gave an example. Some games will go from 2 --> 4 players and some 4 --> 8. Some will upgrade to locked 30fps some will be upgraded to unlocked 60fps, etc.

The "better console" is not the same price as the ps4, it's $100 USD more expensive. (Or will be at launch). We're pissed because of this AND because we don't want consoles to go the way of PC in that we get marginal upgrades every couple months/years.

As per the original post, I doubt there will be more players in games on the 4K. They said they would not allow additional features to be included with the "Neo" version of the game, not included with the original PS4 version.

As for the framerate, that is likely, and I would think a reasonable tradeoff for the price.

Of course it will be more expensive, and presumably be a better experience. But it's not looking like an extreme difference, and certainly won't be preventing anyone from playing anything they otherwise would have been able to.