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PS4 Pro: Was the lack of a UHD Player Strategic?

pa22word

Member
UHD would have been the only thing that would have brought me on board. My PS4 is already a dedicated Bloodborne machine at this point, and nothing out of sony's first party stuff is really that interesting other than Spiderman and maybe God of War. Neither of the latter two are really interesting enough to justify 400$ for slightly prettier graphics. UHD would have tipped the balance for me as it would have given me something that I wouldn't have had otherwise when I eventually jump to a 4k monitor for my PC. At this point there's no reason to upgrade for me. My stock PS4 will continue to play BB and Spiderman/God of War when they come out just fine.
 
I honestly didn't know what UHD was until today.

Somewhat this, UHD really wasn't on my radar until I heard people complaining about the PS4 Pro not having it.

I enjoy my bluray movies but I don't have a 4K TV and it seems that UHD content isn't in the public eye. It doesn't make that much sense to increase the cost of the console to facilitate a small number of consumers.

You can argue that 4K UHD content will be a bigger feature of our entertainment catalogue in the near future, but at the moment it just isn't. I don't see UHD movies on sale, or even advertised. Most of the people I know still watch standard definition content on DVD, broadcast and streaming services, more so than HD content via bluray. Only a fraction of those who already care about HD content are going to make any transition to UHD.

All the while bluray and DVD sales are falling and sales of digital content are rising. I think the lack of a UHD drive just emphases Sony's awareness of that shift in the market. Regardless of whether you want to argue that streamed 4k features lower quality due to compression, for the most part it seems that the typical consumer does not care. Additionally, network infrastructures will in time, catch up to capably stream 4k content equivalent to that from a physical disc.

Sony aren't pushing UHD into our homes because the significant growth of adoption of streaming media, and streaming 4k services points towards those services dominating the future of entertainment distribution, not UHD blurays.
 

SenkiDala

Member
Sony aren't pushing UHD into our homes because the significant growth of adoption of streaming media, and streaming 4k services points towards those services dominating the future of entertainment distribution, not UHD blurays.

Yeah, this, and there's nothing to add (but still I'll add my opinion :D).

Except in USA BRs are almost not selling at all, DVDs are still selling 10 times more (A LOT cheaper, enough for most people) and people are gettings used to streaming VOD/SVOD things), so... If Sony, the creators of BR discs don't support UHD BR so much, I think there's a message in it... Streaming/SVOD is winning. To me the only downpoint of VOD is the lack of multilanguage tracks. I'm French and when I want to buy/rent a VOD movie I don't do it because I've to chose to buy the French version or the version with subs, it's a big downpoint and they should fix that ASAP, exept that, streaming is the future and Sony knows it. They have their own VOD service (PS Vue, etc) so they promote it too...

We'll see when the PS5 comes out if the UHD BRs became a thing, and if it did, the PS5 will for sure have a UHD player.

This time Sony is pushing the Streaming, not a support (unlike the DVD and the BR), let's see what will happen. They also made the (smart IMO) choice of the PRICE, by removing the UHD player they save money (15$ per machine I heard, it's huge in terms of margin, multiplicate by the numbers of PS4s already sold for exemple, you'll see) and we can have the "high end" PS4 experience for 399$. The truth is it's CHEAP for what it is! A huge boost for just 50$ more is great (the 1TB PS4 Slim is 349$, PS4 Pro 1TB is 399$), even though there's no UHD player.
 
I've seen a lot of discussions and stories about how strange it is that Sony is not pushing it's "own" format by not including the UHD Blu-ray

But Sony is pushing a format he cares about with the PS4 Pro, and it's HDR10. Personally I've just discover this because I'm not into home cinema and such, but there is a new format war in the TV scene between HDR10 and Dolby Vision.

HDR10 is pushed by majors TV sellers such as Samsung and Sony. Good thing this time, unlike the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD war, Microsoft and Sony are on the same side ;-)
 
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