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Sony's More Powerful PS4 To Be Announced Before PlayStation VR Launch (polygon.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report on Polygon about Sony's alleged PlayStation 4K, which Kotaku reported about earlier: Sony's more powerful version of the PlayStation 4 -- also known as the "PlayStation 4.5" and "PlayStation 4K" -- is expected to be announced prior to the launch of PlayStation VR this October, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal (paywall link). The upgraded PS4 will reportedly be able to play 4K resolution content, according to the report, and deliver "a richer gaming environment, including a high-end virtual-reality experience."
At least now we're admitting to duplicate postings up front now. An improvement... /s
What's worse... this isn't even an announcement. It's speculation about an announcement.
Correction to article: "a richer gaming environment, including a high-end price."
Only at 30FPS and it only have HDMI 1.4a.
The new one will have HDMI 2.0.
And also presumerably HDCP 2.2.
At least, _I_ assume it does. Would be weird not to include HDCP 2.2.
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The PS4 is 4K ready...for videos (note the last edit date on article). The 4.5 is supposed to enable the support for games as well. I have to wonder though; did it really require new hardware, or could Sony have unlocked the 4K Gaming capability through a firmware patch? Knowing Sony's track record, I seriously think they're going with the hardware fix only because it will drive more sales of the unit...where a simple OTA update probably would have sufficed. This question probably won't be answered without seeing the proposed hardware differences.
Is that you never have to worry about upgrading them and you know that everyone has exactly the same version of the hardware.
You also know that every game will always work on your console.
I expect they would need to upgrade their video card a bit. 4k Video vs 4k gaming is rather different in terms of hardware needs.
Video can be buffered, compressed for optimal performance. Video Games being dynamic and real time, not so much time to buffer display.
I am sure a firmware patch could be used to enable it, and I expect you may see improvements in many games, but their may be a few that you will see problems because it would require some additional resources.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Only a company as stupid as Nintendo would be foolish enough to release a hardware revision midway through a console's lifespan that upgrades core specifications, causing fragmentation amongst its userbase. Sony would never do that with PlayStation.
My $600 graphics card can barely handle 4K. And they're going to do it in a $400 console. Sure.
Does anyone really believe this will be anything but a glorified 1080p upscaler?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Sure you might be able to use PS VR with the current gen PS4 but I would put money on them pushing this hard for a decent experience. In the mean time I'm going to Japan to open a pitchforks and torches vending business. I have a feeling it's going to be very profitable very soon.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
If they don't offer a trade-up, many current PS4 owners are going to be angry. People expect their console to be good for a whole console generation, not half of one.
The PS4 is 4K ready...for videos (note the last edit date on article). The 4.5 is supposed to enable the support for games as well. I have to wonder though; did it really require new hardware, or could Sony have unlocked the 4K Gaming capability through a firmware patch? Knowing Sony's track record, I seriously think they're going with the hardware fix only because it will drive more sales of the unit...where a simple OTA update probably would have sufficed. This question probably won't be answered without seeing the proposed hardware differences.
There is exactly 0 chance this won't require a massive hardware upgrade if they are going to do 4K gaming. Unlike previous generations, this console is x86 (OK x64 but you get the point) based and we know what the APU they used is capable of, or at least we have a very good idea of it's possible range. We also know from PC gaming what it takes to do 4K gaming and the gap between those two bits of knowledge is not insignificant. So unless they plan for a 10-15fps 4K experience (and I'm probably being generous there) it's going to require new hardware. Even then, unless AMD has made some recent breakthrough or has gone into the charity business, I can't see them doing 4K gaming and keeping their current price point. Yes, discounts for volume and all that, but chips powerful enough to do what they want are not free to manufacture, and they are only one component in the overall cost of the unit. Sony would need to take a massive hit, selling the PS4.5 well below their costs to keep it at $400.
Also keep in mind Sony probably wants to do 4K UHD blu-ray playback, since it's Sony and they own a chunk of the BD spec. That will probably take new hardware as well for the drive and HDMI port (although it's possible they could flash the port, they did some crazy flash only upgrades on the PS3 due to their use of programmable hardware where most devices use dedicated chips).
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Creating a more powerful inter-rim console just seems wasteful. Developers will have to aim for one of them and that's going to be the original model.
I imagine Sony will mandate both as part of the certification process for new games. Really it won't be much different than offering different graphics settings on their PC versions, but limited to two possibilities instead of a huge range. PS4, use these graphics settings. PS4.5, use these. Medium vs High. The big issue may be with multiplayer where greater FPS could give an advantage to the players on the 4.5. They may need to lock the framerate, which would cause grumbling of its own.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Video games can be upscaled to 4K. Expect 900p games upscaled to 2160p instead of 1080p.
By that I mean that the GPU will be able to create a 4k framebuffer and render at 4k if it likes, and the outputs will be filly 4k capable.
However you are correct that it'll be seriously lacking in power. so as a practical matter, 99%+ of games will be rendered at a lower resolution and then upscaled. This is actually already the case to some extent. Many games cannot run at 1080 and hit their framerate target on the hardware today, so they are rendered at a lower resolution internally. For example Battlefield 4 has a 60 fps target since it is a shooter. To hit that it renders at 1600x900 on the PS4, and 1280x720 on the XBone. Watch Dogs is even more intense and so renders at those same resolutions, but only has a 30fps target.
So in some cases developers may elect to use more simple geometry/textures and thus will be able to make the new unit render at 4k natively, but most likely they'll elect not to. The trend seems to be to prefer higher detail games and sacrifice resolution and/or fps as necessary to hit that.
Hopefully the 4k playstation will be able to output in 1440p instead. My TV does 4k at 30Hz or 1440p at 72Hz (HDMI 1.4), and my graphics card (yes reasonably priced) can more or less drive those 2 options just fine. Guess which option I prefer to play games with.
These "rumor based" articles are stupid. The media outlets should know better, especially given Sony's history with PSfoo hardware.
More likely this "4K" PS4 will be like the later model PS2's that could do progressive scan (early models couldn't), or the later model PS3's that can bitstream a couple more high quality surround audio formats., with ZERO changes to the gaming capabilities.
So I'm figuring what we'll see is a PS4 Slim that supports 4K blu-rays and nothing more.
Great, but will it ever come with anything that will ever use the Eye? I feel like that thing should be a class-action lawsuit, almost (yes, I was one of the original purchasers who bought a bundle that came with an Eye)
PS VR that they are releasing soon will benefit from 90+ FPS (it can go as far as 120Hz, Oculus only does 90)
4.5 games will run on older PS4, but with lower FPS.
All in all, it's about VR.
The interesting part is, exactly HOW they are boosting current PS4 hardware, is it still 28nm process, or is AMD far enough with 14/16nm. AMD recently demonstrated Polaris based low range (960 levels) GPU with very impressive perf/ration (at least two times better than 960).
My old PC had a "Turbo" button, doesn't the PS4 have something similar?
Thank you Sony! I really hope they put out ad's making fun of the Xbox One and how it cant do full 1080p let alone 4K.
Microsoft loves sitting in their asses and doing as little as possible on the Xbox line, I really hope sony forces them to start making better hardware and faster releases of updates with more power.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Note that the turbo button was used to downclock the CPU, not boost it.
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