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Kotaku: Sony is working on a ‘PS4.5; briefing devs on plans for a more powerful PS4

J

jon bones

hot hot hanuman-on-man action
thuway said:
2016 is not happening.

1. AMD Zen chips haven't launched yet.
2. The first 14 NM card's havent shipped
3. HBM is still in its infancy, with Fury X suffering a 4 GB cap.
4. Launching Q4 2016 would put PSVR in direct competition with PS4.5.
5. It's MARCH, and we've yet to hear a single announcement.
6. Developers are JUST now hearing about it. Sounds like devkits haven't even SHIPPED.



Conclusion? 2017/8 sounds realistic. More 4K televisions will be in consumer hands, 14nm GPUs will have ironed out any superlative yield issues, and enough PSVR headsets will have sold to consumers to start speaking about new hardware.
Click to expand...

sounds pretty reasonable
 
G

Gemüsepizza

Member
Sigh. A more powerful version of the PS4 will not run all games in 4K. You would need a GPU that is more powerful than a R9 Fury X, which fits in a very small form factor, for a competitive price. This isn't really possible right now. Probably not even with Polaris. Maybe later.

Also, 4K TVs are not relevant in any way at this point. There are still only very few 4K TVs out there. I don't even think the PS5 will be focused on 4K gaming.

If I had to guess...

CPU:
Either just a very small upgrade to make framerates more stable, or twice as fast so you can have 60 fps in specific 30 fps games, for example. Everything else doesn't make much sense.

GPU:
Could see a noticable bump, but not 300%. With this they could make sure that every game runs at 1080p, and also implement some nice, new effects. They also could use some of that power for downsampling from slightly higher resolutions to 1080p, or for better anti-aliasing. But again, I don't think we will suddenly see any AAA 4K games.

RAM
Maybe slightly higher frequencies. Changing amount or speed may not be that easy, because they would have to change the bus or double the size of the RAM chips.

But it's very interesting to see this potentially happening. This is only possible because console makers abandoned their exotic in-house chip development, and switched to using typical PC components. Because this way they can leverage the continous development efforts of companies like AMD for their own products.
 
S

Sorral

Member
They are going to throw away a lot of the goodwill they built with the PS4 if they do half-assed 4.5 upgrade especially if it affects the games.

Just make the PS5 in 2-3 years instead and do it right with HBM2 and so on.

If this turns out to be just 4k video upgrade + slimmer design + USB in back(lolprobably not this one), etc then fine.
 
Coulomb_Barrier

Coulomb_Barrier

Member
orochi91 said:
Wholeheartedly agreed.

The coming line-up from AMD and NVIDIA are rumoured to have high-end GPUs that could be pushing double-digit Tflops.

PS4's 1.81TF just seems so....pedestrian in comparison.
Click to expand...

Nothing releasing this year from AMD will have that many TFLOPS, aside from their dual-GPU Radeon Pro Duo, which is based on last years' tech and wholly unsuitable for a console. Polaris cards this year are more power efficient than TFLOPs beasts. Nvidia will likely have the same release schedule with lower power, high efficiency pascal cards releasing in 2016 and flagships rekeasing 2017. 2017 is way too off of a time-frame for any 4K PS4 machine releasing as late as early 2017 even.
 
M

Mathieran

Banned
I hope this isn't true. I'm telling myself I won't buy it if it comes out, but I will probably cave. Hopefully ps4 trade in would cover most of it or at least half.
 
G

Goofy

Member
Pretty sure there is going to be a lot of extra 28nm capacity - considering its been around for so long.. Flagship products are all transitioning to 14nm, so I can see Sony getting a great deal on a 28nm product that makes an affordable 4k box feasible.
 
M

Man

Member
Sony said they deliberately changed to a profitable hardware model starting with PS4. Definitely needed if they are going to be doing gradual updates like this.
 
I

ivanalexander23

Banned
I anticipated this so I sold my PS4 after completing The Taken King content. I imagine this will be announced for Holiday release (along with Microsoft's upgraded console and Nintendo's NX) and those with regular PS4 will have the ability to trade theirs in for a price or can go without if they don't care about 4K and playing games on ultra high settings. I don't think it will have 4K video game playback but will be able to play 4K Blu Ray and stream 4K. With a small GPU boost it will then be good until the PS5 hits.

People were predicting this for last Holiday season so to some of us it is a surprise it's taken this long.
 
A

ArchedThunder

Banned
zsynqx said:
How do you know that current PS4 games won't be gimped?
Click to expand...
Why would they be? They won't be gimped, they'll just look or run better on the new hardware.
Beartruck said:
Screw it, the next game machine I'm spending money on is a PC. Why bother getting a console anymore if you gotta update every year like with PC's?
Click to expand...

This would likely be an upgrade every 4 or 5 years and you wouldn't have to actually upgrade right away.
 
D

DangerMouse

Member
cpp_is_king said:
Man I find it strange that I find myself hyped to hell and back over this, and everyone is saying no no. Why would anyone want to wait another 7 years for a hardware upgrade? Faster CPU, better graphics, bigger hard drive, all while being forwards and backwards compatible? WTF is not to like? Sounds freakin amazing.
Click to expand...

I don't find it strange that people would want more than just one game from a dev per cycle when it takes 4+ years to make a sizable game these days. Games take a really long time to make now.
Devs that made launch games haven't even made their second title yet in a lot of cases. And some are just now finishing their first.

Patrick Klepek said:
A mixture of confusion and "well, this is how other tech works." I don't know that there's enough information to understand what this means quite yet. It's a huge shift. Between this and VR, things are weird.
Click to expand...

That's pretty sad if people in all these companies are actually only using the same terrible comparison that gets ripped to shreds on mere forums when people compare "100% necessary" purchases like cell phones to entertainment consoles. If they don't even have better reasons than just that.

RiccochetJ said:
So? What'll be the difference? So what if the developers now have to account for a higher end console? They have to do that for an insane amount of permutations for PC's right now if they're releasing the game there. So now they have to account for 2 or 3 hardware revisions for a console.
Click to expand...

This is ofcourse also why more games than ever release with bugs and issues that would seem to be pages long in some cases. And you want to add yet more variations for them to have to test? Getting as much away from this stuff as possible (and even consoles are being hit with them more than ever) is why numerous console gamers just go with consoles since everyone who owns the same hardware as them get the same performance (and issues to deal with).
 
G

Gurish

Member
orochi91 said:
Exactly.

All of this sounds insane.

Mods, save us!
Click to expand...

I say stick to the Kotaku article for now, it seems very legit.
Take insiders nonsense with a big grain of salt.

All we know is that Sony is making a more powerful PS4 that will run games better.

It will support 4K, doesn't mean modern AAA games will run at 4K (Sony presented PS3 as a 1080P machine as well and we all know it's bullshit) , most probably it won't release this year, we have no idea about price.
 
H

HomerSimpson-Man

Member
vcc said:
This strategy is just a little younger than video games. Atari tried it out and found all of the game makers just targeted the larger install base of the 2600/2800/5200/7800. The console exclusives and the platform holder push to the next one was pioneered by Nintendo and the console market as we know it was semi-created by them.

Other attempts at base hardware upgrades were the SG-1000/SC-3000/SG-1000 II (sega), the 32x/SegaCD, TG16/Duo/PC Engine SuperGrafx/, 3DOs general intent, GB/GB color, DS/DSi, 3DS/NEW 3DS.

Video game history is littered with attempts at this that failed.



It costs money. No one wants to be second class, especially if they just bought this thing 1-2 years ago. 5-8 years, that's just time passing. More mentally acceptable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mid upgrades have one hell of a history. Try, try, try, try again I guess. Sony lost a lot of money last generation and managed to turn the PS3 around and when they are back on top in a good place financially not losing money per console sold, they are going to try this and in the release window quarter of the PSVR too? Yeesh.
 
RiccochetJ

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
Hypereides said:
Thats not exactly what I'm saying, and I don't even have a PS4 for the time being.

However, the concept implies that you'd have to buy every new rendition of the hardware just to keep up. It will most definitely benefit the developers, but doesn't sound like a convenience to anybody, other than the manufacturer.

If they were releasing an entirely new console it'd be a completely different talk.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. Sony has to guarantee that games that come out after this revision will still work on current consoles for a period of time. They have to mandate it. After 4 or 5 years? Sure. I can see them saying that your OG console can't run the newest and greatest at a sufficient level to charge money for it.
 
P

phanphare

Banned
Psychological Intellect said:
WHEW

FLEX ON EM ZOETIS
tumblr_met0nhkZh51ro90kmo4_250.gif
Click to expand...

GAF sweatin' too
 
R

RootCause

Member
ExVicis said:
Also hate people just saying "It's just like the apple iPad iPhone cycles" as of that is anything to brag about.
Click to expand...
Yeah, because Apple created that. I swear some of you have been living under a rock. I guess car manufacturers, TV manufacturers, other cellphone makers take a 5 year break after they release one of their products.

You can have your bias, just don't make shit up. It's embarrassing.
 
T

thuway

Member
DieH@rd said:
Just of the top of my head... PS4 with 28nm AMD APU has 1.8TF with ~115 Watts under load now [it was ~150-160W with launch version of console]. AMD openly promotes that 14nm Polaris architecture can achieve up to 2.5x power per watt peformance gain. If new console remains on 115W, that would be a bit over 4TF. If they go with 150+W, that's easily over 5TF. Just with a switch to a newer APU. They could also offer higher clock for a memory, or add a bit more [there is 8 empty slots on the back of the mobo now after all] if they want.

These are not earth-shattering gains, but they are enough to give PS4 very nice boost without creating a brand new console.
Click to expand...

Good post.

This will make a great machine and if they combine this with HBM 2.0, and Zen- BUT!!! The timeline of CPU/GPU tech and Sony's own release schedule for PSVR makes this sound like a disaster of poor yields, expense, and canibalization.
 
S

Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew

Banned
On Demand said:
Why would you fuck with 36 million owners?
Click to expand...

There will be no fucking with 36 million owners. They just cannot. It's a hardware suicide that send people to it's competitor or PC market. PS4 games will continue to work on both consoles!

DieH@rd said:
Well... Sony did swich from 16 512MB GDDR5 chips to eight 1GB ones. There are now eight empty spots on the mobo... just begging to be used. :D
Click to expand...

Mother of GOD!
 
P

pitchfork

Member
Just got home from work and seen this

So there's a good chance we're getting a hardware smackdown at E3 this year right?

NX, PS4.5, Xbox 1.5
 
B

BY2K

Membero Americo
If AAA games have to work across all version of PS4 and Xbox One it's gonna be a freaking nightmare for devs. Like a permanent cross-gen.
 
G

GillianSeed79

Member
So both MS and Sony want me to sell my consoles. Got it. I mean I have a 4k TV and plan on getying PSVR so I might be in for a PS4.5 but why the fuck should I buy any new consoles going forward if they are going to be obsolete in less than 4 years? At least release more first party titles before trying to get me to upgrade. If Sony releases there games on PC, I'd have no reason to ever buy another console again.
 
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