I pulled a hot take on this earlier today (on twitter) and assumed all these rumblings were actually about PS5, Patrick actually replied to me saying his sources stressed that this is it's own project.
After a brief thought on it , things kind of make sense.
Let's break down a few things quickly -
1) The PS4 will be going into it's 4th holiday season this year
2) certain aspects of it's internal design are a bit under-powered , namely the CPU
3) Sony is banking a ton on VR
4) Sony is also still making TVs and need a reason to get people to upgrade to 4K
5) PSVR , neat as it may be , is still 400$ and requires it's own box to process head tracking AND a camera peripheral
Okay, so let's put all of this together now and assume that Sony is looking at it's PS4 numbers worldwide imagining how they can keep profits high, in order to keep selling PS4's at a decent clip they will probably have to drop the price every christmas going forward , Last year was the first one - 50 USD, I predict this year it will hit 299.99 USD , 2017 249.99 , 2018 199.99 and more than likely , it will bottom out at 149.99 in 2019 until the end of it's life (2023?). I had assumed a 2018 launch for PS5 , but maybe releasing this stop gap halfway there console buys them another few years ? Perhaps the actual PS5 is planned for 2022 to make sure it's a huge leap forward but this PS4K keeps things current until then ?
So imagine , you're sony and you obviously know all of the above points. The current PS4 can do 4K bluray playback with a firmware update but perhaps only just barely and with a few compromises so instead a hypothetical model is made that can handle 4K bluray more easily out of the box - and hey if that exists, why not make a model that can process PSVR without needing the PSeye / motion box to help out ? Oh, in the process of doing that the CPU just got 2 times more powerful and the GPU (thanks to die shrinks) is also a full step ahead of what's in a PS4. Hey, maybe , just maybe this hypothetical box can be marketed as a higher end PS4 - not a full generation ahead but a stop gap - it can play 4K bluray out of the box , it supports PSVR 2.0 (the 2017 model) and as a side effect , exclusive to this box - if you have the required home theater setup , 4K gaming at 30 fps OR another bonus - all those games that can't quite hit 60 fps at 1080p can do so (with a developer offered patch) AND since it's still a PS4 , anything that doesn't receive an graphical tweak update (which could be offered for free) will still run at least the same as a standard PS4.
In this way, no one really loses out, current owners can keep their systems and play PSVR with all the extra boxes and cords and people that want to upgrade can buy the newer model - perhaps if you own a PSVR , the new model PS4 simply has a PSVR cable hook up to bypass the extra box altogether ? With the right marketing and messaging the high end enthusiast market might just bite on this. Especially if sony gets it out the door for no more than 399.99 again - you have maybe a 1 TB model for that price , or if you're feeling really ridiculous the PS4K + VR package for 599.99 and at the bottom end for 299.99 the standard regular ass PS4.
A simple solution going forward is that there won't be any exclusive PS4K games, instead PS4 titles would be allowed the option to have PS4K modes - such as 4K gameplay or even 60 FPS at 1080P. No matter the case , the core gameplay of these titles would be exactly the same outside of minor graphical improvements.
Really, to those out there saying this might negate the advantage of consoles , ehh, spending 300-400$ every 3 or 4 years is still better than the PC by a fairly substantial margin. You need to buy a new GPU every 2 years in the PC world to stay up to date and those cost 500-1000$ depending on what you want, that's comparing enthusiast to enthusiast.
Above I list a price decrease scheme , what if , 2018 becomes the last year for standard PS4 sales to keep the price tag at 199.99 ? and then by 2020, the PS4K model follows suit AND in 2019 we still get a PS5 with full backwards compatibility , the key difference being that PS5 games wouldn't have to work on a PS4 unlike PS4K modes.
Really, this is an interesting idea but I expected microsoft to pull something like this off first , that's the only surprising aspect of all this news.
