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[Mr Git]

If this is true I wonder who was first to do it - seems strange that both MS and Sony would almost simultaneously buck the well established console trend - there have been console iterations with regards to adding or removing functionality, but not really like this. Did the companies discuss it, or was one a reaction to news of the other one I wonder. That or it could all be untrue.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

If this is true I wonder who was first to do it - seems strange that both MS and Sony would almost simultaneously buck the well established console trend - there have been console iterations with regards to adding or removing functionality, but not really like this. Did the companies discuss it, or was one a reaction to news of the other one I wonder. That or it could all be untrue.

If it was developers that leaked the information about PS4K then I'd assume MS got wind of it far earlier than we did. Sony also spoke of it last year.

 

[Aurean_Mentat]

Honestly, I wish people would consider something about the whole 'they will support the older things' idea which thus far, has proved to be just words:

Remember the cross gen stuff between PS3 and PS4?

Shadow of Mordor and DA : Inquisition exclusively (because I have experience with both)

On the PS3, they ran very poorly and weren't optimized at all ( i.e. like dog shit).
On the PS4, they ran just fine like they were designed to, and were great.

Also the Hyrule Warriors situation:

It runs like crap on the 3DS, and was obviously designed for the n3DS.

Its not like there's not precedent for people's concerns, and they're not small. And there is history to show that this stuff happens, leaving people with the older hardware to feel like they got the lesser version of the game.

You're changing the way an entire branch of consumer electronics has worked. Part of the appeal of consoles is that you don't need to worry about upgrading hardware as often, and its very simple. Buy the console, buy the game, you now have the best looking version of the game on that console. Swapping console generations makes sense, and its a model that has worked very well.

Fragmenting the userbase is going to be problematic, and honestly, I hope this blows up in Sony's face. The old console model has worked just fine for this long, and if I wanted to upgrade my gaming hardware more often, I would just play stuff on PC. The PS4 is now the PoorS4 to me, as it describes how having the launch version makes me feel, and how games presumably for the PS4 (but designed and optimized for the PS4K) will run for the launch version (PoorS4) in the not too distant future (poorly).

Sony needs to step out with some messaging fast, because I don't think I'm the only person with these kinds of concerns / bitter feelings, and the current PS4 sales are going to tank (especially with all the bundles they've announced. At least one person in this thread canceled their bundle). And for everyone saying that the PoorS4 is not inferior, there will soon be a better version that does everything the PoorS4 does, but with graphics and other tricks that make the same 'PS4' games look, work, and play better. That is almost the textbook version of inferior (especially in terms of gaming hardware).

 

[injurai]

any kind of performance critical code is programmed with the hardware in mind, even on platforms such as windows. unified architecture and api's ideally only mean that the same code compiles across configurations, it has nothing to do with optimization which only really cares about the hardware because newsflash that's what all code actually runs on.

Not all performant code is written with hardware in mind. It is just as often written with abstraction or data structures in mind. APIs have a lot to do with optimization. The implementation of an API is not standard on every system, it abstracts away complexity once the same performant operation is arrived at. The 4.0 and 4.5 will not differ all that much. The main difference will be how API calls are parameterized. In fact it's compiler directives and rendering parameterization will happen at an even higher level the API for most optimization. What will matter more will be how much you can parallelize the restoration of the world space.

 

[AmyS]

Since the Cerny thread is likely to fade away, I'll post this here also.

Here's what he said about PS4 to Eurogamer - Digital Foundry, post-reveal but pre-launch.
Most interestingly about the GPU and GPU-compute, and that devs would get more out of it and do new things 3-4 years into PS4's life ('2016-'17).

Digital Foundry: Is there a sense of homogenisation in terms of what is a games machine now? There's x86 architecture, there's a GPU. Were there any concerns that it would be difficult to make PlayStation 4 stand out?

Mark Cerny: Consoles hit above their weight when you look at the price/performance. There's a few reasons for that. One is that the software layer in-between the game creators and the hardware is much thinner than it is on PC. Another reason is that because the hardware doesn't change, you can focus in just on that one particular architecture and learn a lot about it and then the games over the years... You'll see the benefits in terms of the graphics and the quality of the world simulation and the like. On top of that we did significant customisation of the GPU to make sure that there was that extra target for people to go after in 2016/2017. Put that all together, I think the future's looking very bright for PlayStation 4.

Digital Foundry: There's a cluster of CPU cores [in PS4]. Their purpose in the PC market - I think there are dual and quad configurations - is for tablets. There are two of those [in PS4]. Then you have what I can only describe as a massive GPU...

Mark Cerny: I think of it a super-charged PC architecture, and that's because we have gone in and altered it in a number of ways to make it better for gaming. We have unified memory which certainly makes creating a game easier - that was the number one feature requested by the games companies. Because of that you don't have to worry about splitting your programmatical assets from your graphical assets because they are never in the ratios that the hardware designers chose for the memory. And then for the GPU we went in and made sure if would work better for asynchronous fine-grain compute because I believe that with regards to the GPU, we'll get in a couple of years into the hardware cycle and it'll be used for a lot more than graphics.

Now when I say that many people say, "but we want the best possible graphics". It turns out that they're not incompatible. If you look at how the GPU and its various sub-components are utilised throughout the frame, there are many portions throughout the frame - for example during the rendering of opaque shadowmaps - that the bulk of the GPU is unused. And so if you're doing compute for collision detection, physics or ray-casting for audio during those times you're not really affecting the graphics. You're utilising portions of the GPU that at that instant are otherwise under-utilised. And if you look through the frame you can see that depending on what phase it is, what portion is really available to use for compute.

Digital Foundry: I think the thing that excites me most about the PS4 is that it's a fixed hardware design, developers can get the most visually from it but they don't need to just concentrate GPU power on, say, slightly higher quality shadowmaps. They've got GPU compute sitting there that can be doing new things, exciting things. Is this something we'll be seeing further on down the line? Is this something you're pathfinding with Knack?

Mark Cerny: Knack is a small title. Knack will not be leading the way in terms of utilization. We'll be looking much more towards teams that have done that in the past like Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed and Watch_Dogs, Naughty Dog with their next titles or Sony Santa Monica with theirs. I think Killzone is going to be doing that. All we are doing ultimately is setting it up so that developers can take it any way that they want go. So if increased visual fidelity is what is most interesting to that team, that is what they can focus on. We just wanted to be sure that they could also dig in on GPGPU [general purpose computing on GPU] as well.

Digital Foundry: You've got eight CPU cores in PlayStation 4 and in your presentation you said that the choice was between four or eight. Did you investigate four cores? AMD obviously has hardware that satisfies that need. Is it simply down to performance per watt?

Mark Cerny: Well, it is true that performance per watt is quite good for Jaguar - that has been helping us out in general. We knew that our design space would accommodate either four or eight so we proceeded accordingly.

Digital Foundry: So Jaguar was the best fit?

Mark Cerny: To be honest, when we asked people, we heard absolutely every answer you could think of. One developer even told me their technology could accommodate a thousand cores! But for us it was very important to find out what the mainstream would be, what the overwhelming majority of the games industry would need.

Digital Foundry: Going back to GPU compute for a moment, I wouldn't call it a rumour - it was more than that. There was a recommendation - a suggestion? - for 14 cores [GPU compute units] allocated to visuals and four to GPU compute...

Mark Cerny: That comes from a leak and is not any form of formal evangelisation. The point is the hardware is intentionally not 100 per cent round. It has a little bit more ALU in it than it would if you were thinking strictly about graphics. As a result of that you have an opportunity, you could say an incentivisation, to use that ALU for GPGPU.

Digital Foundry: I seem to recall you might have talked about a toolchain where code could be compiled either for CPU or GPU. Is that right or have I got that completely wrong?

Mark Cerny: Such a toolchain does exist. It's AMD's HSA [Heterogeneous System Architecture]. That's very exciting but our current strategies are about exposing the low-level aspects of the GPU to a higher-level language. We think that's where the greatest benefit is in year one.

Digital Foundry: Final question. Two years from now, are you going to pitch to develop PlayStation 5?

Mark Cerny: [Laughs] Can you just put "Mark laughs" in there?

Full interview here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-to-face-with-mark-cerny

Maybe certain games will be able to have more / higher-fidelity GPU-based compute effects, physics, etc when run on PS4K.

 

[Portugeezer]

If this is true, fuck Sony.

Just make PS5. I don't want to play worse looking PS4 games than PS4.5, if I did I would have an XB1.

 

[El_Chino]

If this is true, fuck Sony.

Just make PS5. I don't want to play worse looking PS4 games than PS4.5, if I did I would have an XB1.

This is a very one sided way of looking at this situation.

 

[beef3483]

If we are talking about games that might run badly on the ps4, then point the blame at the devs.

No. I can point the blame just as much at Sony for opening this door in the first place. That's what the people upset at this decision are saying, this doesn't need to happen if Sony doesn't allow it to.

There are reasons some of us buy consoles and not gaming PCs. This is one of them.

 

[androvsky]

If this is true, fuck Sony.

Just make PS5. I don't want to play worse looking PS4 games than PS4.5, if I did I would have an XB1.

Why don't you have a PC?

 

[King Gilga]

Why don't you have a PC?

What kind of stupid question is that? They're expensive, buggy, require far too much troubleshooting and are inconvenient.

 

[Dubz]

Why does everyone in this thread feel like they already know the price point, the specs, and the release schedule...lol

 

[rambis]

If this is true, fuck Sony.

Just make PS5. I don't want to play worse looking PS4 games than PS4.5, if I did I would have an XB1.

Really can't sympathize with this logic. Nintendo is about to launch a new machine that could be stronger than the PS4. Are you mad at them too?

 

[RustyNails]

If this is true, fuck Sony.

Just make PS5. I don't want to play worse looking PS4 games than PS4.5, if I did I would have an XB1.

*Mark Laughs*

 

[MogCakes]

What kind of stupid question is that? They're expensive, buggy, require far too much troubleshooting and are inconvenient.

I can't tell if this is a serious post or not.

 

[Lionel Richie]

Have you looked around there's literally people all over saying it would ruin their experience knowing there's a more powerful version of their system. This isn't something I'm making up there's tons of evidence here in this thread.

I've been jumping in and out of this thread since yesterday and for every post that actually understands the situation, the systems architecture and game development there's dozens fear mongering over how Sony will just stop supporting the PS4 and it will magically become worse because they won't optimize anything for it anymore. It's ridiculous.

The world is going to keep turning and improvements will keep being made. If you want static blocks of time with little to no change over years and years to suit your desire for parity then you're vying to hold progress in gaming back. PC's have been doing the incremental upgrade system for ages and its worked out just fine. This isn't even on the same level. This is two configurations compared to thousands that the PC has to contend with and generally work out fine. This will be a cakewalk for developers. It's literally just two different graphic presets.

I can't blame people who are saying something like that, this generation has been somewhat lackluster and a good bit of the console libraries are made of remasters and remakes. Look at Capcom ffs.

I don't buy at all the argument that the games are still going to be "well optimized" on the earlier PS4. That's never been historically the case on an industry that traditionally sacrifices performance for graphics. I know the situation isn't like it was going from the PS3 to the PS4, but while a more powerful revision wouldn't make the earlier model become "magically worse", it isn't a sure thing that the new games are going to still run well on the earlier model. I'm skeptic about this and if you aren't hey more power to you.

I agree that the situation wouldn't be too complicated for devs, but it's sort of shitty that we could be getting new hardware whenever a certain developer finishes its game. Take Naughty Dog, Uncharted 4 has been under production for what, 2 years and a half at the very least? If a new hardware hits in that time as well, you could end up having to buy a new Playstation every time you want to play the new Uncharted as the developers intended. Or play the lesser cross gen version.

All that and the essential unanswered question is still the same: if this is what consoles are becoming, why not just game on the PC?

 

[Grief.exe]

MFW I keep waiting for the PS4 to get more quality exclusives and now I get a better console too.

The waiting life is strong.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

Honestly, I wish people would consider something about the whole 'they will support the older things' idea which thus far, has proved to be just words:

Remember the cross gen stuff between PS3 and PS4?

Shadow of Mordor and DA : Inquisition exclusively (because I have experience with both)

On the PS3, they ran very poorly and weren't optimized at all ( i.e. like dog shit).
On the PS4, they ran just fine like they were designed to, and were great.

Also the Hyrule Warriors situation:

It runs like crap on the 3DS, and was obviously designed for the n3DS.

Its not like there's not precedent for people's concerns, and they're not small. And there is history to show that this stuff happens, leaving people with the older hardware to feel like they got the lesser version of the game.

You're changing the way an entire branch of consumer electronics has worked. Part of the appeal of consoles is that you don't need to worry about upgrading hardware as often, and its very simple. Buy the console, buy the game, you now have the best looking version of the game on that console. Swapping console generations makes sense, and its a model that has worked very well.

Fragmenting the userbase is going to be problematic, and honestly, I hope this blows up in Sony's face. The old console model has worked just fine for this long, and if I wanted to upgrade my gaming hardware more often, I would just play stuff on PC. The PS4 is now the PoorS4 to me, as it describes how having the launch version makes me feel, and how games presumably for the PS4 (but designed and optimized for the PS4K) will run for the launch version (PoorS4) in the not too distant future (poorly).

Sony needs to step out with some messaging fast, because I don't think I'm the only person with these kinds of concerns / bitter feelings, and the current PS4 sales are going to tank (especially with all the bundles they've announced. At least one person in this thread canceled their bundle).

comparing ports to 9 year old hardware and retrofitting a console game (a musou at that) on to a handlheld is not really a vaild point of comparison.

Using your example:-

A game built in 2022 might struggle on the PS4 more than the PS4K.
A game built from the ground up to take advantage of the PC..(lets say Cyberpunk as there is precedent there) might run better on the PS4K


Either example is so clearly out the normal state of affairs its not worth worrying about.


Yes, over the next 7 or so years, there may be the odd game, especially if they run badly on all platforms (JC3) or built specfically for the PC platform and then consoles are an after thought (TW3 pre patch), That have unacceptable performance on the PS4 and XB1 and run decently on the PS4K and Xbox 1.5.

However they will be very few and far between and down to developer ambition on a much more powerful platform (PC) or developer inabilty to optimise their engine for anything in time ( Unity games are especially guilty of this).

There is not going to be a collective fuck you to 55 million and growning PS4 and XB1 fanbase. Developers cannot guarantee that everyone will upgrade and honestly, its far more likely in the shirt term the PS4 + XB1 base grows even bigger due to the older models dropping in price as a reaction for new SKUs on the market.

 

[TLZ]

I wonder if this will be their new business model going forward. I fully expect it to have a very niche appeal - most people will just buy the cheaper model, and the newer model will be held back by the old. The only market for it are the hardcore of the hardcore.

Imo, they should have both ready day 1. For PS5, have both basic and elite versions ready day 1, so people can choose whether they want the cheaper model with good graphics or the more costly high end graphics model. 2 models are more than enough. The current PS4 is good enough for most gamers, as most of them think it's a beast. Just the hardcore gamers would definitely want to go for the better experience.

In my case, I'd want better fps. But even that wasn't confirmed I think. So I'll wait to see what this all means.

 

[Dubz]

PC is now the obvious answer if all this is true.

Full backwards compatibility
Cheaper Games
No Online Paywall

Just to name a few.

 

[Boogz]

PC is now the obvious answer if all this is true.

Full backwards compatibility
Cheaper Games
No Online Paywall

Just to name a few.

No nintendo or Sony exclusives... Just sayin

 

[bitbydeath]

PC is now the obvious answer if all this is true.

Full backwards compatibility
Cheaper Games
No Online Paywall

Just to name a few.

And there is nothing wrong with that.
Go where the games are you want, that is the main thing at the end of the day.

 

[DavidDesu]

If there was an opposite to the ignore button then Aztechnology would make me hit it!

So much FUD, let the light shine through.

 

[texore]

If this and NX comes out this year, this fall is gonna be so exciting!

 

[Skinpop]

Not all performant code is written with hardware in mind. It is just as often written with abstraction or data structures in mind.

false, you can't reason about actual performance without having hardware in mind. abstractions have nothing to do with optimization and performance except that they tend to make it hard to control things on a low level. data structures are just chunks of memory, on the hardware. how do you think programmers determine how to design and structure their data structures when doing optimizations? well they study the exact characteristics of the memory and hardware they are working with, which is something that will change with new iterations(or there would be no point to "upgrading").

APIs have a lot to do with optimization. The implementation of an API is not standard on every system, it abstracts away complexity once the same performant operation is arrived at.

this is a common misunderstanding. abstractions adds complexity, it doesn't take it away. That works to different degrees when performance doesn't matter, or at least isn't critical because it might be ok to pretend the complexity doesn't exist. This is not the case for games. The reality is that all code runs on hardware and to be performant you need to understand the machine and code for it.

The 4.0 and 4.5 will not differ all that much.

if the 4.5 has more memory, more bandwidth, bigger cache, new instructions or whatnot then all code relating to those parts will have to be optimized for the final product to be, well, optimized. that's what it means after all. of course most devs won't do that, so we'll end up with less optimization, more bugs and an overall worse experience than what a locked spec would provide for.

The main difference will be how API calls are parameterized

you seem to think that engine programming and performance tuning works like webdev or something like that, or that programming is nothing more than a series of api calls. the api has no idea of how your code is structured, what you are trying to do or how many cycles you are willing to invest in a certain function. it just doesn't work like that.

In fact it's compiler directives and rendering parameterization will happen at an even higher level the API for most optimization. What will matter more will be how much you can parallelize the restoration of the world space.

compilers can do about 10% optimization for you, which is only really meaningful if you've already done the other 90% yourself. I don't even understand what "parallelize the restoration of the world space" means.

 

[Glorified G]

PC is now the obvious answer if all this is true.

Full backwards compatibility
Cheaper Games
No Online Paywall

Just to name a few.

Name them all.

Three different gaming clients, with different userbases, friends list & ecosystems (Uplay, Origin & Steam) just to play all the popular third party games with no universal control method all the while jumping back and forth with keyboard/mouse & gamepad in the living room.

 

[Bowl0l]

More reason not to buy a console day one.

[WTB]PS5.5 in 2025

 

[GribbleGrunger]

PC is now the obvious answer if all this is true.

Full backwards compatibility
Cheaper Games
No Online Paywall

Just to name a few.

But how would we play RAC, Uncharted 4, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Dreams or Alienation to name but a few? Do people always ignore this when advising Playstation fans what they should do?

 

[RK128]

Edit: Made a mistake, sorry everyone . This thread has made me more bitter/angry then I'm normally, so leaving it for a while.

People looking forward to this; hope you are happy .

People like me who are upset with this news; I understand the frustration and I hope Sony clears everything up soon enough.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

Ok, so here's the slight problem I've been thinking about: If games are able to run on ALL PS systems from here on out, how will that data be stored? Is there going to be two versions on the shelf? One for ordinary Blu-ray and one for 4K blu-ray? Surely the data for 4K is going to take up a hell of a lot more space so are we going to be stuck with having to download patches for all the current PS4 games? If you don't have an internet connection but buy a PS4K, how are you going to be able to see the benefits?

This is the first genuinely probable concern that I feel has been raised in this thread.

Dependant on how games are written, we could see games balloon in size to accomodate all the data.

As we are already pretty much hitting the 50gb limit of a blu-ray on many AAA titles, 4k versions will make some games effectively online only.

We already have a Uncharted 4 disc that only contains single player and Multi is a seperate download.

This definitely is a cause for concern.

 

[Curufinwe]

AAA games won't run in native 4K.

Why does everyone in this thread feel like they already know the price point, the specs, and the release schedule...lol

So they can be angry RIGHT NOW.

 

[dano1]

More reason not to buy a console day one.

[WTB]PS5.5 in 2025

You could say that with any new product! But I prefer not to wait 6-7 years to buy new hardware. Choice is good and I choose to buy the new one and sell my old PS4. And you can choose not too. Win Win.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Just don't play them then, if you are against this move Sony is making :l. If I'm not happy with the announcement/new/information Sony puts out regarding the PS4K/4.5, I have no issue not playing those games.

And I personally was looking forward to Horizon and Ratchet a lot this year too.

I'm not entirely sure you've quoted the right person.

 

[RK128]

I'm not entirely sure you've quoted the right person.

I'm sorry for my mistake then . Will get rid of my post right now.

 

[injurai]

Skinpop, I'm talking about writing low level code that takes into consideration cache layout, data structures, parallelism and API abstraction. The hardware will not differ so drastically between the two systems that they need consider differences between abstraction.

 

[kyser73]

Just don't play them then, if you are against this move Sony is making :l. If I'm not happy with the announcement/new/information Sony puts out regarding the PS4K/4.5, I have no issue not playing those games.

And I personally was looking forward to Horizon and Ratchet a lot this year too.

You have a perfectly usable console with great games, but because there might be a better version of the same console you're not going to buy games for your existing one.

I believe this is the very definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face. I'm genuinely struggling with the logic here.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

AAA games won't run in native 4K.



So they can be angry RIGHT NOW.

The irony.

 

[joecanada]

Some people complained about the PS3 because it was a trojan horse for non-gaming objectives and it had a crappy GPU. It was a sham and overpriced.

Lol it was the cheapest and one of the best Blu-ray players on the market with Bluetooth and wifi included. It could have played no games and still been a good deal

 

[Naudi]

If this is true, fuck Sony.

Just make PS5. I don't want to play worse looking PS4 games than PS4.5, if I did I would have an XB1.

Comments like this is why we aren't taking this argument seriously.

 

[MogCakes]

Win Win.

Significantly reduced early adoption rate -> dissolution of pre-launch console hype -> extremely niche appeal. On the bright side, the OG unit will sell gangbusters once it hits a $200 price point. What that also means is -> supposedly elite version will be held back by OG or the only noticeable benefit will be some graphic checkboxes that get ticked by the software instead of manually.

 

[RK128]

You have a perfectly usable console with great games, but because there might be a better version of the same console you're not going to buy games for your existing one.

I believe this is the very definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face. I'm genuinely struggling with the logic here.

I don't own a PS4 yet and this news has me upset about my intention of getting one.

Will stop talking about this topic as I'm clearly crazy or something, but I hope people looking forward to it are happy. Sorry for disrupting the conversation or anything.

 

[Art Vandilay]

What's the consensus on the PS4.5/XB1.5 reveal dates? Could we see these at E3?

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Significantly reduced early adoption rate -> dissolution of pre-launch console hype -> extremely niche appeal. On the bright side, the OG unit will sell gangbusters once it hits a $200 price point. What that also means is -> supposedly elite version will be held back by OG or the only noticeable benefit will be some graphic checkboxes that get ticked by the software instead of manually.

How can point three exist if point one is correct? I think people are making the mistake of considering the PS4K a PS5. The improvements won't be a generational leap. That's not the intention in my opinion. 1080p/60fps across the board with a better AA solutions, 4K movies (perhaps games upscaled to 4K) and improved overall performance of the console itself is what I'm expecting.

 

[ekim]

MS talked about it openly and these "leaks" (I assume they are controlled) about Sony are just here to see the reaction and to adjust the message how they will announce it.

 

[kyser73]

I don't own a PS4 yet and this news has me upset about my intention of getting one.

Will stop talking about this topic as I'm clearly crazy or something, but I hope people looking forward to it are happy. Sorry for disrupting the conversation or anything.

So you're actually in a better position than those of us who already own a PS4 as you will be able to get the 'PS4K' straight off the bat?

I mean I could understand it if you bought one at the weekend or something...

 

[platina]

What's the consensus on the PS4.5/XB1.5 reveal dates? Could we see these at E3?

Rumor is we'll see the first game using the added power at e3.

 

[Grief.exe]

AAA games won't run in native 4K.

That would be beyond delusional.

 

[MogCakes]

How can point three exist if point one is correct?

I'm not seeing your logic here. Are you sure you read my post correctly?

 

[kyser73]

Have you looked around there's literally people all over saying it would ruin their experience knowing there's a more powerful version of their system. This isn't something I'm making up there's tons of evidence here in this thread.

I've been jumping in and out of this thread since yesterday and for every post that actually understands the situation, the systems architecture and game development there's dozens fear mongering over how Sony will just stop supporting the PS4 and it will magically become worse because they won't optimize anything for it anymore. It's ridiculous.

The world is going to keep turning and improvements will keep being made. If you want static blocks of time with little to no change over years and years to suit your desire for parity then you're vying to hold progress in gaming back. PC's have been doing the incremental upgrade system for ages and its worked out just fine. This isn't even on the same level. This is two configurations compared to thousands that the PC has to contend with and generally work out fine. This will be a cakewalk for developers. It's literally just two different graphic presets.

The voice of sanity.

 

[thuway]

Does any one have any interesting hardware predictions? Here's some eccentric modifications that I think could make it into PS4K:


1. Hardware based Reprojection: If Sony wants to insure 4K across the board, a smart optimization would be to include some sort of hardware based reprojection chip. Whether this can be facilitated through FPGA/HSA - I have no idea, but reprojection is the most likely solution to the resolution quandry.

2. UHD, HDR video, Rec 2020, and 4:4:4 support: After watching my first UHD Bluray, the real difference wasn't in the pixels, it was in the colours. The amazing hues of an expanded range of colours is something that can only be seen on a proper HDR set with selected media. We are entering a new era where the standards are officially changing. Gone are the days of 1080p, it's now about: 4K, HDR, Rec 2020.


3. Support for Free Sync/G Sync: For some reason the majority of gamers are completely deaftone to Free Sync. Imagine playing a game where frame-drops are no longer offensive, and the insane amount of tearing/hiccups/stutters are minimized considerably. This sort of wizardry is unfortunately only found in high end gaming monitors, but PS4K supporting it will hopefully motivate CE manufacturers to start implementing into televisions. Bluray was a trojan horse for PS3, perhaps FreeSync can be a Trojan for PS4.


4. H.265 Support + WiFi AC for Remote Play: The PS4 has a dedicated H.264 chip for on-the fly video compression/decompression. Upgrading it should be a benign and cheap endeavor that will push the experience to a more consistent and visually appealing experience.

5. Thunderbolt 3.0 support with an external port for BC modules: Sony currently has a patent for an external hardware based backwards compatibility module. They could create a small box the size of a rubick's cube that contains Cell B.E, Emotion Engine, and Vita Hardware. It could bind to your PS4K and support PS1/2/3/Vita emulation on a native level offering the "most accurate" emulation experience today.

It's a small list, but I'm sure there is more Sony can do than just "better VR and graphics!" The little things matter most- and a premium device should exude that.

 

[Canon]

It feels like the PS4 just came out. It certainly doesn't have a library that feels mature. Feels like developers have barely even utilized it.