PlayStation 4 Pro in-bound

Random Guy · 19 Apr 2016 at 16:47

ic1male said:
Why? Is your PS4 going to suddenly stop playing games or something?

Um, I didn't say that now did I?

New/recent PS4 owners who had no idea about this hardware revision could be justifiably annoyed about it though. However, it does depend on how the pretty significant upgrades to the internals are going to make themselves felt. If it moves this new PS4 to 1080p 60fps capability across the board, I think that is a pretty big step. If the new GPU adds slightly better features etc.

almoststew1990 · 19 Apr 2016 at 16:49

I can't see amd squeezing 390 performance out of an APU- where does all the electricity come from? Where does all the heat go? I doubt there is physically enough space for two chips of that size...

It would also be a bit of a waste as I assume the GPU only gets a proportion of the 5GB of RAM games can use, say 2.5GB. It will surely run out of RAM long before it reaches its max potential at 1080p.

antijoke · 19 Apr 2016 at 16:52

ps3ud0 said:
Its included, Sony dont give dev kits to developers to watch movies

ps3ud0

How do you know it's included?

Clarkson · 19 Apr 2016 at 17:13

Had my ps4 since launch day and even if it were possible to know at that time that a 'new one' would be out a few years later I wouldn't care. Some people would seriously deprive themselves of something, they supposedly enjoy, for several years just to wait?

=XDC=FluphyBunny · 19 Apr 2016 at 17:13

There will be no games exclusive to the Neo model, every title will be available on both, and there's no suggestion of VR-exclusive Neo modes at this point. Developers are prohibited from creating Neo-exclusive gameplay features, and enhancements are expected to be graphical and performance-based in nature. Gamers on both systems will be tied into the same ecosystem, meaning that users of both models will be competing against one another in online games.

Having playing online games on a lower specced PC than many, if I was a fps ps4 player this would concern me.

If I was a potential neo (geo!) owner I would be annoyed that:

Developers are prohibited from creating Neo-exclusive gameplay features

It just looks like it will potentially annoy both sets of ps4 owners.

edit:

there are no indications of any changes to the Blu-ray drive. This is surprising, as we would have assumed that Sony would take this opportunity to support the new UHD 4K movie standard,

erm okay

ps3ud0 · 19 Apr 2016 at 17:27

anticonscience said:
How do you know it's included?

How do you know its not?

. Theres no reason to put it into a dev kit when the gaming side has no additional requirements from the BD drive (especially since game data is fully installed to HDD) to ensure a new game works fine in both this PS4 Neo and the existing console.

Ever since they dropped the idea that this type of console might exist (6months+ ago) they pointed to supporting UHD BDs as the main feature.

ps3ud0 :cool:

antijoke · 19 Apr 2016 at 17:34

Cost.

The cost of that plus the other upgrades will put a very hefty price tag on this.

ps3ud0 · 19 Apr 2016 at 17:42

Well its a smaller cost than the (ludicrous?) possibility of having a cut down R9 390 thrown in, with or without a new BD drive.

From what I can see its requires a new laser to read more than dual layer and a new HEVC decoder for 4K. Cant be that expensive, though while UHD BDs are new theres a nice amount of price gouging of early adopters...

ps3ud0 :cool:

mmj_uk · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:03

Having seen the rumoured specs it's massively underwhelming imo.

It's the same AMD Jaguar CPU only 30% faster, it's basically just a massively better GPU to cope with the demands of 4K, it's just going to be like Xbox One v PS4 with frame-rates being equal due to CPU bottleneck but it handling the higher resolution much better. It's not like games are suddenly going to go from 30fps to 60fps and I wouldn't be surprised if they employ some kind CPU throttling to reduce it down to 1.6ghz when running in the lower resolution mode so that PS4.5 owners don't get any advantage over normal PS4 owners.

sityeuropa · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:04

Maybe Sony had to. They couldn't have Nintendo being the beastly console this fall.

sityeuropa · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:06

mmj_uk said:
Having seen the rumoured specs it's massively underwhelming imo.

It's the same AMD Jaguar CPU only 30% faster, it's basically just a massively better GPU to cope with the demands of 4K, it's just going to be like Xbox One v PS4 with it handling the higher resolution much better. It's not like games are suddenly going to go from 30fps to 60fps, particularly if they employ some kind CPU throttling down to 1.6ghz when running in the lower resolution mode.

There can't be a gigantic leap because of alienating the base model. It's perfectly reasoned.

It needs to be the sweet spot between making new Neo buyers think it's worth the extra and the base model not seeing a big enough gap to be ******d off.

V F · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:17

Random Guy said:
If I was an original PS4 buyer who was taken in by the hype, I would be preeeetty ticked off right about now, seeing my couple-of-hundreds being made obsolete. Perhaps early adopters not so much, but still...

I'm starting to feel that now after only having the console for 4 months even though I've had fun but still... If I had known what I know now, I would have waited.

There is always going to be several revisions with Sony but the CH1200 series being the 3rd, I thought that was it. It isn't like they can make a super slim out of it...
Though I'd rather buy a PS5 than a PS4 Ti 500. As surely most know when the PS5 gets nearer most will be offloading their PS4.5's.

Looks like the iterative hardware update that is normal for the PC is bleeding over to PS4/XBox. I think the driver for viewing this as a "good business decision" is from the home-electronics/prosumer/mobile phone markets, where frequent upgrades are seen as much more common (and acceptable).

Throw away society. No value in things nowadays.

spookywillow · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:20

I've had my ps4 since launch, I will be buying the new one.

I used to upgrade gfx cards pretty much every year, Upgrading a console every few years is nothing on the cost of gfx cards.

FutileBreadMachine · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:27

All I can say is that this is absolutely mental and I did not see it coming.

BubbySoup · 19 Apr 2016 at 18:59

I'm really not sure why people are getting so upset about this. The progress of technology marches on and this is just a side effect of that. Push yourselves 10-15 years into the future - would you still be expecting new consoles to be a fixed spec system for what, 6-8 years? Would you expect them to always stay like that regardless of what happens around them? At some point things were going to change.

We seem to be at this point now.

Matson · 19 Apr 2016 at 19:03

From my own view I think this is a great idea and the spec increase is just the icing on the cake.
Clearly the main reason Sony are doing this is for it to be a 4K player and better for PSVR. The spec increase on normal games is just an added bonus.
If this turns out to be a brilliant 4K bluray player its day one for me as 4K is only getting stronger and stronger this year and clearly they don't want to fall behind.
When you consider the cost of 4K players this could be a bargain.

More comfortable VR experience.
More fps and higher fidelity normal games.
4K and HDR blu ray playback.

Sign me up.

TheVoice · 19 Apr 2016 at 19:09

BubbySoup said:
I'm really not sure why people are getting so upset about this. The progress of technology marches on and this is just a side effect of that. Push yourselves 10-15 years into the future - would you still be expecting new consoles to be a fixed spec system for what, 6-8 years? Would you expect them to always stay like that regardless of what happens around them? At some point things were going to change.

We seem to be at this point now.

No, I'd expect a new console in 2-3 years offering a fresh experience and enabling some new innovation in gaming rather than the same thing I've got now but a bit faster for the same money as a new-gen console.

All this does is extends the PS4's lifecycle, which means by the end of it the 'base' model is going to be looking very tired indeed.

I'd rather developers were held to account for poor-performing games on the current specs than given another platform to have to target. A poorly-optimised game will perform badly on either spec; it's not going to be the miracle fix people seem to want it to be.

regulus · 19 Apr 2016 at 19:13

ic1male said:
Why? Is your PS4 going to suddenly stop playing games or something?

It's the internet. Home of extreme behaviour and crying akin to a little girl that fell off her bike and scraped her knee. Of course this 'news' will leave some grown 'men' on the edge of hysteria.

Saying that, my PS4 is going up for sale after finishing Uncharted 4. May as well grab some value from it while I can. No other interesting looking games coming out this year bar Horizon: Zero Dawn. There's no release date for that as far as I can tell.

iv-tecman · 19 Apr 2016 at 19:40

spookywillow said:
I've had my ps4 since launch, I will be buying the new one.

I used to upgrade gfx cards pretty much every year, Upgrading a console every few years is nothing on the cost of gfx cards.

That is pretty much it, folks that are serious PC gamers have no issue spending £300 + on GFX cards, I too myself have done this in the past.

I don't see any harm in having a newer slightly more powerful games console every 3 years - its happening all the time with mobile phones at the moment, and PC gamers have upgraded their systems for years for an increase in fps.

Its not new, this is tech. I'm glad we might not be facing the protracted long life cycle we had last generation.

i didn't buy my PS4 thinking oh better not buy this as a newer one will come out eventually. If we all thought like that we'd not have the progress in tech we have today, as if no one purchased the newer more powerful tech then all the money companies pour into R & D wouldn't be recouped. So less spent on R & D - and slower progression in tech - so its a balance.

and I do remember back in the 1990's PC gaming was at its best years - and this was when GFX cards were increasing in power so quickly that by the end of 3 months your £300 technical marvel was outdated. But man , was that a ride watching games just get bigger and better GFX , many PC gamer was raking up credit card bills beyond belief in pursuit of better fps.

Thankfully it did slow down, and I think 3 years between iterations of tech is perfectly acceptable. But then I guess some don't.

mid_gen · 19 Apr 2016 at 19:42

Writing has been on the wall a while. Now x86 is the de-facto architecture there's no need for these huge expensive R&D projects a la Cell...now the console industry can move to a more fluid lifecycle with hardware refreshes on a shorter timeframe.

Good in my books, will be nice to have more horsepower in the console, and I'm happy to pay for the updated version. Or if I'm skint I can just play the same games on the older gen.