Sony Announces Two New Versions of PlayStation 4: One Slimmer, Other More Powerful (engadget.com) 82
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."
November 10 is the PS4 Pro release date (Score:2)
Just FYI, it comes out November 10th.
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And after that date, the price difference is such that getting the PS4 Slim over the PS4 Pro is a bad purchasing decision. And you've got those two months to save up that $100.
I would consider buying a PS4... (Score:2)
...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.
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Sounds like you've started listing project requirements. Do you work for Sony? Maybe you should. I bet you want to.
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Nevermind the developer appeal of being able to target specific processors, memory sizes, clock speeds, coprocessors, controllers, and so on. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] states the processor was developed by AMD in cooperation with Sony, which likely has some Sony-specific stuff in the chip that would limit compatibility with an everyday Intel+BSD combo. You could argue that's DRM or you could look at the fact that the PS4 is dedicated to games, not general-purpose computing, the requirements for things like context-
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I agree with your DRM observation, but you really aren't paying close attention to the "evolution" of the PC if you think there's no way to do it there.
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The Playstation is really a device for facilitating game DRM. There is no way in heck to do the same thing with a pc.
Yes there is, it's called Windows 10 genuine malware edition and the ISO is available for download here [microsoft.com] for free. The only thing stopping you from running this piece of software is the fact that you have to agree to the EULA (don't bother reading this it's to much trouble, just trust Microsoft to do no wrong) and enter your license code (you can also use your Windows 7 or 8/8.1 license code) . It is also recommended that you click on the "quick install" icon, afterall Microsoft knows what are best setting
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Why would they? PC gaming is not even a 1/10th of console gaming and with Sony releasing the ONLY real VR gaming system shortly they will further dominate it.
If you really think most people PC game... then you are stuck in 1995.
Numbers don't agree with you. (Score:3)
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.
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I believe he is speaking of triple A games. Which tend to outsell their PC counterparts nearly 4:1. Yes, computer gaming is still technically driving more money because of Steam and it's endless sales on Euchre clones and Bubblepop Plus. The fremium games and such that everyone plays on their facebook goes into those sales numbers, too.
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Technically, PC gaming is at least 10 times as big - there are usually 10 times as many people on Steam than say, Xbox Live at any given time.
The problem, though, is the PC p
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Who cares about triple A games anymore? I've got my old-school PC games, and C64, NES, SNES, Genesis, Amiga, Neo Geo emulators (and many others) ready to go with the quality games of yesteryear, before DLC, achievements and mandatory always-online DRM infested the gaming world and made it an exercise in frustration.
Don't get me wrong, I have over 600 games in my Steam library, but things were just so much more straightforward back then.
On VR.. (Score:2)
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 2
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Sure there's Good Old Games, and that's great for older games and indies, but you're not going to find the big-budget stuff there, aside from CD Project Red's own products.
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Because Gog and Humble aren't really contenders, even though they both have made inroads with publishers regarding the publication of new games? Okay, if you want to think that to feel good about your console purchases, fine. Tell yourself it's less DRM.
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And yes, DRM which doesn't require an internet connection is "less DRM" th
No way... (Score:1)
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.
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I get your point, but these days I feel Microsoft is worse. Between Playstation and XBox, I'll take Playstation. I also prefer the exclusives on Playstation, and Nintendo has nothing I'm interested in.
Something to note is when PS4 and XBone were first announced, it was Microsoft that was going for game activation and region locking.
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I used to use Optical to connect back when I used S-Video... but it's easier with HDMI.
Re: Dropped optical port? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some people have not upgraded their receiver to one that does hdmi. I connect devices to the tv via hdmi for video, but still use optical for audio to the receiver.
It all depends on your setup. My 7-year-old HDTV has four HDMI's in and one optical out that I connect to my 7.1 sound system which is older still.
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Company a proven treacherous liat (Score:2, Offtopic)
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.
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This is the company that murdered 6 people in cold blood. This is the company who dropped a receipt when pulling their keys out of their pocket. They saw it but didn't bother picking it up. This is the company...
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Exactly. Ever since the rootkit fiasco, Sony has been on my shit list.
Why a light bar? (Score:2)
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because the marketing execs haven't figured out that blue leds lost their novelty by 2002.
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They should have luminance limits on indicator LEDs. You just need to know it's on, not to be blinded by the LED.
LEDs have had way too much power since like 2005.
No 4K UHDBlu-Ray player? (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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This is really a bizarre move from Sony. I was already surprised they didn't manage to market a stand-alone UHD Blue-Ray player by now (while 4 other companies did), and now, despite the fact that Sony also sells movies, while Micro$oft doesn't, they save a very few bucks on the hardware of their new "premium" console product by putting a non-UHD-capable BluRay drive into it? And despite the fact that the PlayStation 3 back then got a real boost from being an early, affordable BluRay player? I really don't understand that strategy... but Micro$oft will certainly celebrate this evening.
I was expecting for the Neo (now Pro) to have a 4K player although Sony does support streaming (ie. Netflix) hence HDR support. Even though the XB1-S has a 4K Bluray player Microsoft will have to pay the license fees for it since they aren't in the Bluray consortium. Guess who is?
I am assuming the "Pro" and with a firmware update, all PS4's will support HDR10 not Dolby Video HDR. Obviously, you will need a compatible UHDTV and an HDMI 2.0+ cable.
Re:No 4K UHDBlu-Ray player? (Score:4, Insightful)
While it struck me as baffling too, now that I've thought about it some more, I'm inclined to think that it honestly shouldn't have come as a surprise. 4K blu-rays entered the race late, stumbled out of the gate, and found that they were not only entering a market in rapid decline, they were doing so without the benefit of the factors that allowed their predecessor to enjoy a middling level of success.
The fact that the Xbox S supports 4K blu-rays does nothing to change the situation at large, since it's a mid-cycle console upgrade that flew by the majority of the public without them even realizing it had happened. There's virtually no chance of it changing the situation that drove Sony's decision.
Mind you, this is much to my chagrin, since I'm still in the habit of buying physical media and making high quality rips of it so that I can control where and how I view it, but it's pretty clear that Sony has looked at the sales numbers for 4K discs up to this point, seen that they've failed to turn the tide of declining sales, and have decided that it's not worth the couple of extra bucks per console to support a format that will never manage to gain traction in the market at large.
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Just to break things down a bit more, since I realize I said a lot of things without explaining what I meant...
Sales Decline
Even though blu-ray won the format war over HD-DVD, blu-ray sales have been declining for about five years, with the decline hitting double-digit percentages for the last three years straight. It's a format in falling-off-a-cliff levels of decline, despite no physical successor displacing it. DVD sales are down by a similar amount. On the flipside, streaming is up. WAY up. The writing is on the wall for physical media, and has been for some time, whether we like it or not.
Beneficial Factors
This is happening, despite the fact that blu-ray had every opportunity to succeed. Getting people to buy an expensive new TV would typically be a major hurdle, but the falling price of HDTVs around the time that blu-rays launched (coupled with the fact that massive, flatscreen HDTVs were a compelling upgrade over the bulky, small CRTs that everyone had at that point) helped drive an incredible adoption rate that far outpaced the typical upgrade cycle.
4K's Hurdles
In contrast, while 4K blu-rays have to cross that same hurdle of getting people to buy new TVs, we haven't seen 4K TV adoption move anywhere close to the same speed that we saw with HDTVs (i.e. it's on par with the typical replacement cycle). 4K TVs are proving to not be a compelling upgrade for most people over existing HDTVs, presumably because the benefits of UHD over HD are lost on most people.
Late Arrival and Competition
Moreover, YouTube, Netflix, and other streaming services have been providing 4K content (or higher) to the people who wanted it for years at this point, and they did so without requiring big ticket purchases of their users. The first 4K blu-ray discs didn't start shipping until March of this year, so the format was both late to the game and priced higher than its competition, meaning that it's, unsurprisingly, fared quite poorly in the market.
Other Moves
On the other hand, we've seen Sony work on making PlayStation Vue a more compelling service. When the Olympics were ongoing, I saw numerous mentions of it as a viable alternative to cable subscriptions and services like Sling TV. And this is in addition to Sony's ever-expanding, existing library of digitally distributed games and movies available in the PlayStation Store.
All of which is to say, between the market and Sony's other moves, it shouldn't have come as a surprise to us that this would happen, even though we might wish otherwise.
Removal of the optical port - Upgrade? (Score:2)
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It's a cost-cutting measure. And since the signal through TOSLINK cannot be encrypted, they also consider it a security hole.
In other Sony news... (Score:2)
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.
Hardware - and customer - fragmentation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Isn't this move sacrificing one of the major advantages of owning - and developing for - a console, which is its standardized hardware?
Yes. But that you're stuck on a hardware platform many years old is also the greatest drawback. I'm surprised there is no middle ground between the infinite combinations of the PC markets and the "one console to rule them all". Like say you declare - in advance - that you'll issue bi-annually updated consoles. All released games are required to minimum support the N-1 and N-2 versions. So instead of the PS3 (2006) and PS4 (2013) you'd have PS 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and any game released today mu
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The long cycles are useful for letting developers get the most out of a particular console. For an extreme example, look at all the crazy stuff people have somehow made the venerable C64 do. There's still some really impressive stuff going on in the demo scene.
For console owners, it also lets you know for sure that your console will play any game released for that platform. Buying a $300 console every 6-7 years, instead of a new $300 console every two years. And really, are the graphics on the 360/PS3 gener
Two configurations are not very many (Score:3)
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).
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The way things are going, playing a game on a console is going to be as troublesome as on a PC.
As a Linux PC gamer I think you're too worried about it, but I do understand your fears.
My reasoning is thus:
This move is probably going to result in two tiers of plug-and-play gaming for PS4: low-def "standard" experience and a high resolution, texture, poly-count, and fast framerate experience. I'm willing to bet money that Sony will either require that all studios support both versions or provide incentives to support both- it shouldn't be a problem for AAA studios because they already do support a
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You are absolutely correct, everything you outline is WHY I got into console "plug, play, forget" simple gaming. I was sick of reading, tweaking and testing. Now I'm still going to have to read articles to see things which make me pang for an upgrade.
I like knowing I own the best possible (for that platform) for 4 to 7 years, it's great. No stress, no fuss.
Sure game X might be barely diff on the new model but perhaps game Y will have significant frame drops on the old model or it'll have really noticea
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Re:IT'S THINNER! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm here to slim down and remove headphone ports.... and I'm all outta headphone ports.
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Apple Engineer Talks about the New 2015 Macbook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Missed opportunity: PS 4K (Score:2)
They should have added 4K BluRay support and then they could call it PS 4K.
Right now, "meh".
And neither of the allows mods on f04 (Score:1)
Or will be able to run skyrim remastered.
Sorry Sony, you've jumped the shark. Again.