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[Conduit]

I really hope Sony doesnt react to MS's bait and increase the power because that would only increase the price. Right now a 4.2 Tflop console is looking good for a $399 2016 release, but anything more could either increase that to $499 or push it back to 2017.

Sony's biggest advantage here is that they would have beaten Microsoft to the market by a full year. No matter how powerful the Scorpio is, people who want to play Battlefield 1 at 1080p 60 fps, CoD at 1440p 60 fps, Mass Effect at 60 fps, Uncharted 4 at 60 fps, FFXV at 60 fps would've already bought the Neo by then.

I am sure some MS fans would wait it out but looking at the MS userbase, those are not people Sony should be concerned about anyway.

A 4.2 Tflop console is just fine for the rest of this gen. 99% of PS4 games already run at 1080p 30 fps. They should just focus on making them run at 60 fps and maybe fix some of those AA and AF issues. No need to worry about 4k when barely anyone even has 4k.

I hope this won't happen. 4.2 TF is just fine!

 

[Marlenus]

I hope this won't happen. 4.2 TF is just fine!

It is entirely possible that Sony can increase clock speed of the GPU without increasing power usage if the node has improved enough.

At best I can see Sony making the GPU 1-1.1 GHz which would be between 4.6 Tflops and 5 Tflops.

There is a very very slim chance that they are getting better than expected yields so if they have unused CUs in the design perhaps they will enable 38 instead of 36 units. At 911 MHz that would be 4.4 Tflops and at 1.1 GHz it would be 5.3 Tflops.

I doubt very much that they will enable more compute units though and a small up clock is much more likely.

 

[DieH@rd]

They don't need to change a thing. Only come out asap.

I also think this. Original specs in the SDK leak are IMO totally fine for a "premium PS4" [if priced right]. Devs would however most likely want more ram [and Sony can add it easily via clamshell mode].

 

[gundamkyoukai]

There won't be any need to "push" the new hardware, because it's still the same ecosystem. You don't need to quickly establish a critical mass of users, because you already did that some years back. Now you just make new hardware available, and users will buy it when they decide it's time. If it takes a while for the bulk of the user base to transition to the newer hardware, no matter, because you're selling them the same software either way.

Of course they will be a push to sell new hardware it's even better for them now since they not selling at a lost .
After a while selling old hardware becomes expensive cause parts are outdated .
Plus the more hardware you sell the better deals you get from vendors .
Also you want impress people and having games base around 8 year old tech not going to do that .

 

[John Wick]

To be clear does this mean changes from Jaguar/4.2TF and they would be relatively small?

It all depends on how many designs they were working on concurrently. If they had other designs then a decent power increase could happen. If it's just the one design then there's only so much they can do with it

 

[serversurfer]

1) You're looking at a response to someone who asked what would make more money. Which is why I mentioned sales for the new hardware. I was saying it's not a clear cut case of what would make more money, especially if the new system had BC.

Ah, right on. Neo will likely be more profitable than PS4, but that's more the nature of premium items than anything else, I'd say. I don't think they'll be looking to Neo as a primary revenue driver. More of a boost at launch, as I think the price to come down comparatively quickly; it needs to hit mainstream pricing in roughly three years, after all. Meanwhile, I expect PS4 pricing to become more aggressive. Perhaps they'll use Neo profits to counter a small loss on PS4. /shrug

Look at shadow of mordor, the ps3/360 ports had a shell of a nemesis system that the ps4/xbox one/pc versions had because they couldn't handle it. If PS3/360 were FC with PS4/XB1 at the time, the ps4/xb1/pc versions would've had that scaled back version of the nemesis system instead of the advanced one that they got. I haven't seen a single case of a PC game having significantly different gameplay systems when running on a lower end machine and a higher end machine. Only performance and graphics are typically the thing that are different (now I'm not saying there aren't any, but if there are, they are far from the norm).

So is this the crux of it? You're concerned that if consoles become too PC-like, they won't continue to get "special treatment," where devs take the time to make full use of the hardware in question?

That's certainly a reasonable fear, but I think they've been careful to avoid such things. As I said earlier, you'll only have a single new spec every three years to deal with, as opposed to the dozen products from three different manufacturers you see annually on PC. They've been talking to AAA devs, who apparently agree that three-year refreshes strike a good balance; allowing them to make use of newer tech while creating minimal additional work for them. Yes, believe it or not, many devs are even bigger technophiles than we are, and they're eager to get their hands on new tech as well.

With that in mind, they'll happily continue optimizing for consoles for the same reasons they always have — a) they want people to be impressed with their work and it's super easy to hit a stationary target, and b) they know consoles are where their bread is buttered.

The latter is why AAA PC development is tied to console advancements as you noted. The console users are the ones paying the bills, and artists are tasked accordingly. Rather than a bane for console players, this is actually a boon for PC players, as the devs have basically agreed to start bumping their visual targets every three years rather than every six as they do now. The baseline will shift more often, rather than less often as you feared, because they'll always be creating assets suitable to the current n console before scaling them back for n-x and lower end PCs.

But yes, Mordor is actually a good example of how gamers benefit from this transition. Let's say Cell had become a viable platform as Ken hoped, and they were able to begin this transition last generation instead. You pick up a launch-day copy of Mordor for the PS3 you've been rocking since 2010, and play through it with the pared down Nemesis system. This holiday you have the same realization everyone eventually has — "Man, I've had this thing for six years…" — and see PS4 has finally dropped to the reasonable price of $299, so you pick one up. Lo and behind, you already own the remastered edition of Mordor for PS4, complete with the greatly improved Nemesis system. Hell, that's good news that may even be worthy of some DLC love. I wonder how much that season pass is now…

Regarding games being held back by older hardware, it's likely they won't mandate support any further back than the current n-1 policy, as that fulfills the expected, six-year product lifetime they've promised to maintain. That means your game is never being held back by hardware any more than three years older than your primary target, which itself is now no more than three years old rather than as many as six. That doesn't strike me as particularly onerous, and everyone apart from first party will likely target at least n-2 anyway, to ensure they recover their investment. Remember, BLOPS3 launched on ten year old hardware, and that required maintenance of an entirely separate code base. In some ways it's actually preferable to the current situation, because you have the same requirement to support hardware as much as six years old that you've always had, but now you also have access to hardware that's three years newer, where you can show off a bit more.

Can devs simply dial back simulation like that without completely changing the game itself? As you said, they were able to scale down Nemesis to get it running on hardware nearly a decade old, so doing the same for hardware three or even six years old will be that much easier for them. Devs like easy.

What you are losing are “early” exclusives which are free to make full use of the newest hardware, but you're not really losing as much there as you might think. First, the cross-gen games we’re used to now are being held back by hardware 6-10 years older than the current hardware rather than a mere 3, making them that much more of a millstone. Neo support in 2019 won't be any more of a burden on Trinity development than the need to support PS4 burdens Neo in 2016.

Perhaps more importantly though, no game has ever made "full use" of new hardware, because it takes a few years to get up to speed on a new platform, especially if you've got a large suite of tools to migrate. Because of that, if you’re really looking to wring every drop of power out of a completely novel 2019 PS5 — i.e. a traditional generational transition where you start with nothing but your wisdom — you wouldn’t really be getting up to full speed on the new platform until ~2022, when it’s now scheduled to become n-1 and the new minspec anyway. Sounds more like perfect timing than an undue burden.

Furthermore, providing developers with software continuity over the top of iterative hardware improvements means they can adapt to the latter in a fraction of the time that they would traditionally. That means launch-era PS5 games should actually look better than they would've in generations past, even if they are saddled with PS4.5 support. Look at an early PS4 game like inFamous compared to upcoming games like Horizon. That's what a few years creating and refining an entirely new process gets you — a few years before you're really hitting your stride. By allowing devs to carry on working seamlessly as the hardware evolves underneath them, that means you'll be getting sophomore-quality releases for PS5 just after it launches in 2019 and 2020, rather than having to wait until 2022 or later. And yes, it'll still be totally amazing even if it supports PS4.5 too, because the latter will provide hardly any limitations and even fewer distractions to devs.

But couldn't the game be simply that much better if it did skip supporting PS4.5? Sure, in theory, but in practice, not so much. As we're seeing from the leaked specs, three years doesn't produce a particularly large performance delta. We're wondering whether Neo will see a bump of X or Y, and in three years we'll be wondering the same about Trinity. But more importantly — and what everyone seems to be missing here — is that it will be exactly the same game. It doesn't require a port to an engine running on a completely different architecture. It's all the same code, with assets and simulation dialed back just enough to not bog down on hardware just three years older. Rather than a compromise to the game's integrity, it's a comparatively trivial optimization step for the devs in question; way less work than porting all of the Mordor code to PS3 and then dialing down Nemesis, for example.

So while it's technically possible to cut PS4.5 owners off from a PS5-targeted game, in almost all situations it would be a fairly arbitrary decision, rather than one born of true hardware restrictions. Plus, it's just kind of a dick move to tell PS4.5 buyers their hardware just won't cut it for “modern” games when just a few years ago you were assuring them they were paying top dollar because cutting edge tech.

And the least risk/makes more money thing isn't as clear cut as you are trying to make it seem.

It’s pretty clear cut, actually. The risk comes every time you tell your users their hardware isn’t good enough to play the new games, because there’s a chance they’ll go buy your competitor’s hardware instead. Sure, letting them play their PS4 games on their PS5 helps reduce that risk, but letting them go ahead and start buying and playing PS5 games on their PS4 today reduces that risk much further. Edit: Having only half of them looking to upgrade at any given time, further stil.

You make more money by reducing your development costs — which also reduces the developer’s risks — and you do that by simply not spending untold man-hours recreating all of your perfectly good dev tools on a completely new platform, and then spending the next few years making all of your games for two platforms simultaneously, and then repeating that process every 5-6 years. Instead, you make your games for one platform, and every three years you simply check the change log for the new hardware and make the appropriate tweaks to your tools, then you get back to making games. Devs like easy.

I've already argued with Server on that, and i still strongly disagree that anybody thinking platform holders arbitrarily locking developers to perpetual forwards compatibility is the future is kidding themselves.

They will sooner focus all of their powers on full backwards compatibility and ecosystem compatibility. THat is what i expect

Indigo.gif

Seriously though, no more talk of backwards and forwards compatibility until you can explain what it’s going to be compatible with, ’kay? El Capitan isn’t “backwards compatible” with Yosemite apps; they’re the same apps, on the same platform. Before things like backwards compatibility are even a consideration, you first need to make the case for discarding their perfectly capable BSD/x86 platform and replacing it with … what, exactly? What new software or hardware paradigm is coming in a few years that can’t be incorporated in to their OS designed specifically to take such shifts in stride?

What will make PS5 incompatible with PS4, and why? The “5” doesn’t do it on it’s own, you know.

This is probably the last time this will ever matter, if at all, all things considered.

Due to this

You should probably be aware the picture isn’t nearly as rosy for MS, as they don’t have a “big success” to build on here like Sony do. Bone got off to a decent start thanks to unusually high pent up demand, but PS4 outsold it by 40% just in the launch quarter, and its sales have been flagging* ever since. At this rate, Bone will barely best the four-year sales of the original XBox, and they abandoned those users without a second thought. You can bet your sweet bippy that MS will abandon their current users similarly quickly if Scorpio takes off with any gusto, but with Sony firing on all cylinders again, there’s little chance of that happening anyway. I don’t see a few FLOPS luring any significant numbers over to Team Green; Scorpio buyers will probably be mostly the faithful, flipping their Bones. Guess we’ll see though.

*Yes, if you try to tell me how well their fire sale went in July, I’m going to ignore you, because we’re talking about sustainable businesses here.

Of course they will be a push to sell new hardware it's even better for them now since they not selling at a lost .
After a while selling old hardware becomes expensive cause parts are outdated .
Plus the more hardware you sell the better deals you get from vendors .
Also you want impress people and having games base around 8 year old tech not going to do that .

I don’t think PS4 is selling for a loss; likely a tidy profit instead. Also, nobody here is talking about basing games on eight year old tech. Rather, we’re talking about basing games on “the latest” tech, while still supporting anyone with hardware that came out less than three years ago, so as not to be greedy, insensitive pricks.

 

[MilkyJoe]

You should probably be aware the picture isn’t nearly as rosy for MS, as they don’t have a “big success” to build on here like Sony do. Bone got off to a decent start thanks to unusually high pent up demand, but PS4 outsold it by 40% just in the launch quarter, and its sales have been flagging* ever since. At this rate, Bone will barely best the four-year sales of the original XBox, and they abandoned those users without a second thought. You can bet your sweet bippy that MS will abandon their current users similarly quickly if Scorpio takes off with any gusto, but with Sony firing on all cylinders again, there’s little chance of that happening anyway. I don’t see a few FLOPS luring any significant numbers over to Team Green; Scorpio buyers will probably be mostly the faithful, flipping their Bones. Guess we’ll see though.

*Yes, if you try to tell me how well their fire sale went in July, I’m going to ignore you, because we’re talking about sustainable businesses here.

This starts as one of those if you are not 1st you fail posts. That's not how business works I'm afraid. Then it just goes down hill, not really understanding the business model*

*The console is kind of like being seated at a restaurant, then you pay for what you consume off the menu.

 

[Realplumpbox85]

I thought Neo dev kits have been out since earlier this year. How could they significantly increase power now?

I know they said on the latest Beastcast that final dev kit swill be going out with the announcement. I guess you can take that for what its worth.

 

[MilkyJoe]

I know they said on the latest Beastcast that final dev kit swill be going out with the announcement. I guess you can take that for what its worth.

Locked spec?

I'm told QA kits have been out since the beginning of July if not earlier.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

Interesting to see what it eventualy weighs in at.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

So at the event they will reveal the final specs or still not sure?

 

[Oni Jazar]

seriously did not need to bump.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

seriously did not need to bump.

I didn't keep up with the PS4 Neo news and rumours to know the latest infos so I didn't know where to look up. I wanted to know if the increase in power is still real.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

So at the event they will reveal the final specs or still not sure?

Expect learn the full plan including specs.

seriously did not need to bump.

Not sure why these old Neo topics are getting bumped with nothing new to share.

 

[Adam M]

I think for $400 the PS4 Pro is not bad at all and this spec bump still can happen, let's say next september with 4K Blu-ray player as well to compete with the Scorpio.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

I think for $400 the PS4 Pro is not bad at all and this spec bump still can happen, let's say next september with 4K Blu-ray player as well to compete with the Scorpio.

That would seriously piss off the early adopters though, no?

It should have had a UHD drive from the start.

Maybe there's a slim chance of them doing yet another model. But I think more likely they will just ride it out until PS5 in 2020 or so.

 

[Colbert]

I think for $400 the PS4 Pro is not bad at all and this spec bump still can happen, let's say next september with 4K Blu-ray player as well to compete with the Scorpio.

the price for the console is indeed okay but skipping the uhd drive is not.

 

[The Hobo]

I think for $400 the PS4 Pro is not bad at all and this spec bump still can happen, let's say next september with 4K Blu-ray player as well to compete with the Scorpio.

That would be an incredibly dumb move on Sony's part.

 

[mankoto]

I think for $400 the PS4 Pro is not bad at all and this spec bump still can happen, let's say next september with 4K Blu-ray player as well to compete with the Scorpio.

A PS4Pro+ would make consumers angry unless Sony personally offered some sort of deal.

 

[Adam M]

That would seriously piss off the early adopters though, no?

It should have had a UHD drive from the start.

Maybe there's a slim chance of them doing yet another model. But I think more likely they will just ride it out until PS5 in 2020 or so.

the price for the console is indeed okay but skipping the uhd drive is not.

That would be an incredibly dumb move on Sony's part.

A PS4Pro+ would make consumers angry unless Sony personally offered some sort of deal.

I did not say that this is a good thing, just saying that this is a possible next "slim" edition like the Xbox One S which was also updated the disc drive (though the first chance to include the new drive was this summer).

But I agree that including the new drive should be basic.

The problem is that it's advertised as a "Pro" console, Pro should include everything, I would say even an SSD or SSHD and sell it for $500 (and with that the new slimmer base model would make more sense) but they really wanted to keep the standard $400 price tag so they thought that it's better to downgrade a bit.

People are saying that they are not upgrading because of the lack of the UHD drive and the 6 TFLOPS but those are not that many people, I'm pretty sure that not all the 40 million owner would rush to the store to pick the new one. And Sony knows this and that's why they did this release like this.

Scorpio is not even out and people are tend to call a winner but Sony has 1 year exclusivity at the "4K" ("" because it's not a true 4K in most cases) console market and this is a big advantage and even if they won't update the specs just add the UHD player to the next revision and sell it for $350 and MS for 450 or 500 then the average consumer will just understand that both are 4K and the Sony one is cheaper.
I think both will sell well, and both companies are doing a great job and we can be happy because we have good consoles to pick

 

[Palmer27]

Sincerely hope so:
I would be convinced to buy a ps4 pro by more power and more options. I want a choice, more settings, for where to allocate the extra resources. Choosing to lock or unlock the frame rate, setting the resolution and image quality - not just two or three presets. Options closer to a pc, on an upgraded ps4, would convince me to buy one for £349.

 

[Eolz]

I think for $400 the PS4 Pro is not bad at all and this spec bump still can happen, let's say next september with 4K Blu-ray player as well to compete with the Scorpio.

The spec bump won't happen. Honestly no point in this thread anymore.

 

[LowSignal]

The spec bump won't happen. Honestly no point in this thread anymore.

Who would have thought the OG PS4 was upgradable to HDR? anything can happen

 

[Enter the Dragon Punch]

Who would have thought the OG PS4 was upgradable to HDR? anything can happen

They're not upgrading the Pro

 

[AbandonedTrolley]

Who would have thought the OG PS4 was upgradable to HDR? anything can happen

It's not being upgraded as such, it's being enabled, there is a difference. The PS4 is still the same machine and the PS4 Pro won't be getting any upgrades before launch.

 

[Deleted member 465307]

I did not say that this is a good thing, just saying that this is a possible next "slim" edition like the Xbox One S which was also updated the disc drive (though the first chance to include the new drive was this summer).

But I agree that including the new drive should be basic.

The problem is that it's advertised as a "Pro" console, Pro should include everything, I would say even an SSD or SSHD and sell it for $500 (and with that the new slimmer base model would make more sense) but they really wanted to keep the standard $400 price tag so they thought that it's better to downgrade a bit.

People are saying that they are not upgrading because of the lack of the UHD drive and the 6 TFLOPS but those are not that many people, I'm pretty sure that not all the 40 million owner would rush to the store to pick the new one. And Sony knows this and that's why they did this release like this.

Scorpio is not even out and people are tend to call a winner but Sony has 1 year exclusivity at the "4K" ("" because it's not a true 4K in most cases) console market and this is a big advantage and even if they won't update the specs just add the UHD player to the next revision and sell it for $350 and MS for 450 or 500 then the average consumer will just understand that both are 4K and the Sony one is cheaper.
I think both will sell well, and both companies are doing a great job and we can be happy because we have good consoles to pick

A SSD, especially at 1 TB but also at 500 GB, would increase the cost a fair amount, regardless of any other tech upgrades. I also really can't imagine Sony updating the PS4P again before PS5. As you pointed out, they called it a "Pro." There'd be more backlash if they make the "Pro" model no longer the best after a year. And then, let's say they wait two years instead...you're starting to get into PS5 territory (unless this gen lasts like last gen). Maybe we'll see a Super Slim of PS4 and a Slim of PS4P in two or three years before PS5 launches if this gen ends up being particularly long, but I think the Pro is what it is. If UHD drives are in high-demand in 2 or 3 years, maybe you'll see that get added to a Pro revision, but I get the feeling disc drives will become less and less important.