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."

Comments

Hardware - and customer - fragmentation

[Somebody Is Using My]

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.