Sony Announces Two New Versions of PlayStation 4: One Slimmer, Other More Powerful (engadget.com)
Sony isn't done with the PlayStation 4. The company today revealed the PS4 Slim, a thinner version of its latest console that's been lurking around the rumor mill for months now. The Slim lands on September 15th for $300. The PS4 Slim features all the guts of a standard PS4 plus a few cosmetic and convenience upgrades, including a lightbar at the top, more space between the front-facing USB ports and the removal of the optical port, Engadget reports. From the report:The console is about 30 percent smaller than the standard PS4, which came out in 2013, and it plays all existing PS4 games.
The company also launched a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4: the PS4 Pro, which offers support for 4K. It is priced at $399, and goes on sale November 10. The Verge reports: The PS4 Pro can output 4K and HDR video, which is powered by an upgraded GPU. Sony also boosted the clock rate for the new PS4 Pro. It will also come with a 1TB hard drive. "PS4 Pro is not intended to blur the line between console generations," Mark Cerny, the chief architect for the PS4, said on stage. "Instead, the vision is to take the PS4 experience to extraordinary new levels."
The company also launched a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4: the PS4 Pro, which offers support for 4K. It is priced at $399, and goes on sale November 10. The Verge reports: The PS4 Pro can output 4K and HDR video, which is powered by an upgraded GPU. Sony also boosted the clock rate for the new PS4 Pro. It will also come with a 1TB hard drive. "PS4 Pro is not intended to blur the line between console generations," Mark Cerny, the chief architect for the PS4, said on stage. "Instead, the vision is to take the PS4 experience to extraordinary new levels."
sup
Only a kiddy game company like Nintendo would release a hardware upgrade like New 3DS mid-cycle and leave all of its existing customers SOL.
Play games on real consoles like PS4, because Sony won't screw you over by releasing a "New PS4".
Just FYI, it comes out November 10th.
Twinstiq, game news
...if I didn't have this feeling that Sony is going to open up all of their content to PC walled garden customers running compatible hardware. The reek of stagnation is all over this crippled-PC-based console market.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Sorry but it does not matter what price-point sony puts on their devices... They are still on my prohibited list for all the crap they have done over the years.
Uggh. That's what I use to connect to my home theater system. Guess I pass on the slim. Is it still there on the more expensive version?
This is the company that hires a company to install rootkits on your system. This is the company the advertised an "other OS" feature on it's products and then issued an update to remove it. This is the company...
Why go on. Anyone who trusts Sony either doesn't read or can't.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is it just to make light? Cuz I got too many LEDs in my home entertainment unit, and about 1/3 of them have a piece of black tape over them.
The sources I can see all say you're wrong. Estimates have the PC gaming market as being worth ~$32 billion, consoles altogether at about $25 billion, and mobile similar at about $25 billion.
You're point still holds to some extent - the majority of PC gaming money is Free-to-Play MMOs and stuff that isn't a great match to PS4 ports, but your idea of the overall market doesn't appear to match with reality.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
So, let me get this straight;
Sony has released a new console that can playback 4K HDR content, but DOES NOT HAVE a 4K UHDBlu-Ray Player in it.
Therefore you can only playback 4K content by streaming it from Sony, or Netflix (using your bandwidth cap in the process.)
The XBOX S does have a 4K UHDBlu-Ray player in it, and can also stream 4K HDR content.
ok
Is the removal of the optical port considered a cosmetic or convenience upgrade?
The last point, VR, is also the one place where the grandparent post is probably right. I expect a good percentage of PSVR games to get PC ports, if only because they'll need to hit as much of the small VR market as they can.
PSVR is also likely to be terrible, perhaps bad enough that it may sabotage the whole VR market. Even with a monstrous computer that far outperforms anything the PS4 is going to do, VR presents real challenges to developers. Console developers are going to have to juice visuals for 2d trailers, and end up with a barf-fest in 3d.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The Playstation Vita has just recently been inducted into my pile of exploited systems running game backups and homebrew. From what I understand of the scene, one of the exploits has already been ported to the ps4, POC is somewhere on youtube.
Now is the time for Sony to release new hardware that cannot physically run older exploited firmware to slam shut the piracy/homebrew door for at least a little while longer. Its the same game, over and over.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Isn't this move sacrificing one of the major advantages of owning - and developing for - a console, which is its standardized hardware? As a customer, being sure that any Playstation 4 game I buy will run on my platform without difficulties is a big plus over the uncertainty of trying to get that same game running on a PC. Similarly, as a developer, I can max out the platform's capability without worrying that some players are going to have a substandard experience because their GPU isn't up to snuff (also, I don't have to worry as much about compatibility testing because the platform is standardized). But now Sony has introduced two different tiers to the customers.
If I own an older, slower PS4, am I going to miss out on some games because my hardware can't hack it, or - even if the game is nominally compatible - am I going to have to play with poor framerates or worse graphics effects? Or is Sony going to insist developers limit themselves to the capabilities of the older hardware, in which case what advantage is there really to buying the PS4 Pro if games are going to target the lowest common denominator anyway? Meanwhile, as a developer I would hate this because now I either have to target and test against two different hardware configurations.
Consoles used to be the ultimate in plug-n-play gaming. The way things are going, playing a game on a console is going to be as troublesome as on a PC.
Why, of all things, do we care about how thin a gaming console is? Or care about small differences in weight?
When was the last time you were thinking "This thing is great, but it could be so much better if I had an extra few inches of space all around it and was a little lighter!"?
I'd rather it be larger and have better cooling.
Grand Turismo Sport was supposed to be released in a few months, now it's been pushed back until the last day of 2017 and Sony is even cancelling pre-orders. One of the reasons I bought a PS4 was for this game, now it probably will be broken by the time it's released. I still have to run an emulator to get my PS1/PS2 Grand Turismo fix.
Meanwhile, as a developer I would hate this because now I either have to target and test against two different hardware configurations.
Sony did two configurations on the original PlayStation. There were two major versions of its GPU with different bugs. Games had to work on both the green debug unit and the blue debug unit, which had the different GPU versions, before shipping.
Nintendo did two configurations with the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak (which upgraded RAM from 4 MB to 8 MB) and the Game Boy Color (CPU, RAM, and video upgrade).
They should have added 4K BluRay support and then they could call it PS 4K.
Right now, "meh".
Since the audio CD "rootkit" shenanigans, this is my maxim: "Don't buy Sony".
I'd be willing to change that, but since then, Sony's behavior has just confirmed my maxim time and again.
Not that they were the only in my blacklist, mind you.
No mum i'm not playing, i'm working, you see it's a pro...
Hey boss, i need this, no it's not a toy, it says pro doesn't it??
WTF is that naming convention , a pro console.. are they putting back the linux functionality ?? or opening their bsd variant?? need shell...
Does anyone else find it ridiculous marketing wank to attach a 'professional' moniker to a game console?
Or will be able to run skyrim remastered.
Sorry Sony, you've jumped the shark. Again.
Watch this Heartland Institute video