Sony's More Powerful PS4 To Be Announced Before PlayStation VR Launch (polygon.com) 67
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."
YAY! (Score:3, Informative)
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."
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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 [ign.com] (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 with
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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.
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Video games can be upscaled to 4K. Expect 900p games upscaled to 2160p instead of 1080p.
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My old PC had a "Turbo" button, doesn't the PS4 have something similar?
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The PS4 is 4K ready...for videos [ign.com] (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 genero
The nice thing about consoles (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Is that you never had to worry about upgrading them and you knew that everyone has exactly the same version of the hardware. You also knew that every game would always work on your console.
FTFY
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You may have heard a very loud wooshing sound just now. No...that was not a ram-jet or scream-jet plane overhead.
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So when someone tells you "that's a load of crap", you know exactly what it sounds like.
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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.
Stupid Nintendo. (Score:1)
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.
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Wii really is a Gamecube if you look at it closely. Same hardware with more RAM, but all new controller, design, name etc.
It's the one successful upgraded console out there, but it wasn't marketed as an upgraded console and the specs weren't pushed as a selling point either. The Game Cube controller ports are even hidden so that I didn't know they were there till I saw someone use them.
There are upgraded consoles in the handheld market, further blurred by backwards compatiblity. Have been since the Game Boy
"4K"....sorta....kinda....not really (Score:2)
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?
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Either your graphics card is 5 years old, or you over-payed massively.
A GeForce GTX 980 TI can play Grand Theft Auto V at 4k at about 30 fps at 4k with all the detail turned up.
Even at medium detail, it struggles to hold an average of 60 fps with many dips down to ~40 fps.
And yes, that is a current $600+ video card.
I'm sure it'll legitimately be 4k (Score:2)
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 Battlefi
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Well, look at the wording. "Play 4K resolution content". No where does it say it can play video games in 4K, but it can play 4K content. Streaming or likely, 4K UHD Blu-Rays (which require drive capable of reading UHD BDs). And adding PSVR support into it.
Plus, it's not necessarily $400. Sony may very well keep the PS4 at $400 and rele
Read: You're going to need it for PSVR (Score:2)
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2 x 1080p 4K
Sony PS4K will probably support native 4k menus/load screen, UHD (4k video content, at least by streaming, possibly UHD Blu-Ray as well), native 4k 2d gaming, 4k upscaling of 1080p/720p video or gaming, and 2 x 1080p or 2 x 720p VR (probably just the latter).
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Incorrect, 4k resolutions is 4x that of 1080p not twice.
resolution of 3840x2160 is not twice that of 1920x1080
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I see where he's coming from based on his confusion:
[1920, 1080] * 2 = [3840, 2160], or written as:
[1920, 1080] * [2, 2] = [3840, 2160]
3840x2160 is four times the resolution (or size) of 1920x1080 because two dimensions are being multiplied by two, not jut one and so he's not taking into account the other dimension.
If this happens, they better offer a trade-up (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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A trade up isn't going to be enough... If new games stop working on my existing PS4 half way through a generation, then this will be my last PlayStation...
Sony can do what they want, but I expect 10 years of use out of a console these days. The PS3 did that, it still serves us well upstairs, because there was never a PS 3.5.
If they want to come out with a PS5, that's fine, but this is much too early.
Why skip 1440p? (Score:3)
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480p at 216Hz?
More likely the "4K" PS4 will be like late PS2s (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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"they would have to significantly beef up the GPU and CPU"
Well, the PS4 has been around for 2.5 years. While CPU/GPU technology hasn't had any huge changes in the last few years, more powerful hardware should be available at a better price. If they go with a comparative level of newer hardware they'll still get a nice boost without a huge additional cost. There will be some offset since the current hardware is semi-custom, but there's also a cost-savings for bulk orders.
The current kit is a 1.6Mhz Octa-Core
great, but will it... (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with 4k (Score:1)
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).
A poke in the eye to Microsoft... (Score:2)
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.