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Sony already has the more powerful console when it comes to the current generation but it turns out that it may consider a ‘high-power' model at some point in the future too. This PS4 would offer improved hardware, while also still being able to play all of the current games thanks to the x86 architecture. This is all according to Sony Computer Entertainment Senior VP, Masayasu Ito, who shared his thoughts in an interview with 4Gamer.
There are no immediate plans for a superior version of the PS4 and a big part of the discussion is centred around splitting the console user-base. Sony has strong sales momentum at the moment, so it probably wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardise that.
When it comes to consoles, historically developers are given the same hardware to work with for a number of years before a whole new generation is ushered in. However, with the x86 architecture, there is potential for incremental hardware updates- something that PC gamers will be familiar with. Sega played around with the idea of hardware ‘add-ons' for consoles back in the day but unfortunately, it didn't turn out too well.
Fast forward to 2015 and we can see Nintendo doing something similar, selling the ‘new' 3DS in addition to the old one, despite beefier internals, meaning ‘new 3DS' games can't be played on the older console.
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KitGuru Says: Seeing incremental hardware upgrades over the course of a console generation is an interesting idea. However, most console gamers are used to not needing to purchase a new system for a number of years, so its hard to judge how they would respond to something like this. As a PC gamer myself, the idea of releasing a beefier console with backwards compatibility a few years after the original doesn't seem like such a crazy idea. Do you guys think Sony would be smart to release an upgraded PS4 in a year or two?
It would be ok if the upgraded parts were modular. That way I can buy the PS4 when it comes out, down the line I can get the upgraded CPU and/or Graphics card module and swap them out. If I had to purchase a whole new system every two years I would not be happy.
Profit is the motivation… so what I got from this is I should wait to pick up a console since I’m a pc gamer anyway.
I think a modern day n64 style expansion *could* work again. The trouble
is, if we are a talking about a gpu (APU) then I guess that’s probably a
bit more difficult than just adding 4mb of ram.
I can’t see being cheap either.
Perhaps would they could do instead is say, “hey, got a laptop or computer thats ok? how about creating your own local cloud computing to improve frame rate or physics effects in games”.
Get a “PC”
… and then sound like many of my PC gaming friends, whining about their drivers crashing, new game not working, waiting for a patch. Nah thanks. I just want to slide in the disc and play when I want to relax in the evening. Not everyone has the time or will to spend hours trying to get certain games working. At least at some point of their lives.
To be fair most PCs are virtually plug-and-play now, there’s next to no faff. Just click the game, install it, and play.
They are for some games. I still prefer a PC for an FPS or strategy when I have lots of time. But the amount of times I’ve heard and had drivers crashes etc, it puts me off to that extent, that I just prefer to PS4 and chill 🙂
yeah you get the odd game like arkham knight but other than that its rare to come across a game that just dosent work or at least in my experience anyway
I mean at the end of the day it’s personal preference. PC’s biggest disadvantage is living room multiplayer tbh.
Imagine Zen based APU with 4core 8thread CPU AMD 16nm GPU with hbm2 as memory subsystem. That would blow anything console out of the water.
didn’t that thing fail horribly though? if i remember correctly they paired it with a donkey kong game, but even then i doubt it had a large number of sales. plus it could make the console overheat.
now i hate to make the comparison, because i pretty much hate the scam that is the current smartphone market, but why don’t they set up some form of trade in like they do with newer iphones/galaxys/whatever else? i guess they don’t really have the infrastructure, but i’m sure a way could be found.
With the N64 you could still play the games though. If the ps4 split would be, for example, the difference between playing on a 1080p tv and a 4k tv with the exact same titles then it’s not such a big deal, but if they bring games that can’t be rendered at all on the older gpu then they’re going to alienate some people.
Make this a 8 Core 16 Thread CPU
32 Gbyte HBM2
16nm Finfet Plus
2560 Shader GCN 2.0
HSA 1.1
Maybe your PC friends should not be using a PC in the first place then lol
no no. 8 or 16Gb of HBM2, 4core 8 thread Zen and whatever they can fit with GPU cores of GCN 2.0+. That on its own would be serious things. And yeah, full HSA.
32Gb of HBM2 would be prohibitively expensive even for consoles.
So much faith in Zen, so very little actual evidence.
next time use your brain for some logical thought before saying something.
Currently GPUs in AMD APU are bandwidth starved so much so that Intel showed that with their eDRAM trick in Broadwell Iris Pro. Take even GCN 1.2 shrink it to 14/16nm add HBM2 for massive bandwidth, plus Zen CPU which should in theory be way more powerful than Jaguar in PS4 and you have serious DX12 gaming machine. And since x86 compatibility remains Sony can advertise their next gen console compatible with old games as well.
So you prattle on about using logic and then discuss a theoretical CPU as though it’s fact?
So, I repeat, so much faith in Zen, very little actual evidence. I see a lot of AMD fans bigging Zen up but I’ve yet to see any numbers.
I see a lot of ignorant idiots rejoicing on idea that Zen will fail, thus leaving you fools with yet another lovely decade of fantastic 5% invisible improvements in CPU performance. I am not saying Zen is gonna be another k8 for AMD, and I am not saying Zen will be most powerful of all the things alive. I am just speculating with a bit of logical thinking that Zen based APU with HBM2 would be serious performer. But hey, knock yourself out concentrating on how I am putting too much faith on one of many components of a frikkin APU for Sony.
You don’t think Zen will be much faster than a Jaguar core?
So much in that post I didn’t actually say, or isn’t really relevant to me. I’m just wondering why everyone is bigging Zen up so much when there aren’t any numbers.
It probably will be faster yeah
Wondering if console games could start to come with multiple graphic profiles to support different revisions!
Well they are just behaving like a typical faboy. Just like how Xbox One’s hidden core and second GPU crap coming from xbox fanboys and nvidia fanboy claiming the next GPU will be 4x faster than current card based of theory but not actual fact. Every side have their fanboy and they know nothing about facts except some absurd things they came up with or picked up from another fanboy.
It never ends.
Your PC friends are probably bad with computer trying to do shit that is out of their league. I have a friend that constantly upgrade his laptop and it is not officially supported but just the modding community. Constantly driver problem, constant crashes, literally reformat computer twice a month for the trouble.
So yeah PC is simple, just people making it complicated.
I would be happy if they just release a amplifier like clevo/alienware so that we can plug a dedicated GPU to the PS4.
Sony had the option to go for performance increase with the latest slim PS4 version but chose to make it more power efficient instead so that that they don’t divide their peasant base.
Its shit like this that drives people to ascend to the pcmasterrace. Lack of evolution. With a same price range PC you can have a whole lot more without paying a subscription to use your own internet in multiplayer.
Since when was there ever a slim PS4. The recent changes was just to change the chassis to reduce overheating issue. You will get your slim version few years later.
Induring PS5
Too many people believed the Fury X hype and were let down. Marketed as a Titan X killer yet it couldn’t even match a 980ti in a lot of cases and used water cooling.
Zen is nothing but hype on paper until it gets here and proves itself!
I hope it blows everything away but like I said it’s nothing but hype at the moment, Don’t praise anything unless it’s in your hands to test.
Or they could just encourage devs to better utilize the current hardware as, so far as I can find, devs are still living in a “DX11” world on the consoles.
I seem to recall at least one game that required the RAM expander. A modern example of this sort of “same console, different hardware” is the Nintendo 3DS as the newest model has a better CPU and now games are requiring it 🙁
A dedicated GPU is the biggest expense for PC gaming though, so if you were to buy one for a console you’d be losing money.
True but I don’t mind sharing my pc gpu with my ps4 🙂 I prefer to play some games on console and some in pc.
Heh, my x99 system must be in order of magnitudes faster than either console.. Actually IPC boosts are drying up, Skylake is proof of that (barely any better, if that, than regular Haswell).
But I think with consoles I think it’s a good idea to have 2 models at launch, a mid end one and a high end one that can run games at a solid 60fps.
Well even if Zen catches up to Haswell-e they will still be over a year late to the party..
“Marketed as a Titan X killer yet it couldn’t even match a 980ti in a lot of cases”
Erm.. 980Ti is better than Titan X and quite a lot cheaper to boot, Titan cards will always be a huge rip off and I will never buy one, Ti cards are normally worth their money so I will buy the next one when it comes out, but no chance of me getting an overpriced Titan. Yes they have more VRAM but it is mostly useless. 6gb in the Ti is more than ample.
True, but anyone who knows what they’re talking about will already guess that the next GPU’s will be https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_Ti/31.html
I think it’s safe to assume 1 high end GPU to the next in series is around 30% improvement overall, so a good boost but nothing majorly huge. This is the way it usually is.
I think the segment of the market that would have no problem with the occasional hardware upgrade are already playing on PC… Keep consoles sweet & simple.
Rather than upgrades they could release a meaningful updated console 2 years later I guess, but with changes that actually make a difference – noticeable CPU & GPU improvements. Though tbh that might cost MS/Sony more than it’s worth, the other alternative is to make a much more powerful system from the offset but that would put it in the price range of a mid range gaming PC.
Sounds like Sony are bricking it now that the PC market is flourishing again. Their consoles will not stand the test of time.
Peasant? Since when does having PC counted as a luxury? Care to clarify?…
Very smart decision.. I always said they should do this it just makes sense.
It’ll eb damn sight better than anything AMD has out right now that’s for sure.. and on 14nm too.. it’ll be pretty decent.
Probably? They’re saying about 40%..
Exactly, where are the numbers? Hearsay and hype so far
Its a humorous ‘offending’ term the PC community is using for people denying the supremacy of the PC platform in gaming. Therefore they are called Console Peasants. Nothing wrong with Console users in general. Only those that believe that a gaming PC is expensive to build, that their console can play games at 4K and all the stupidly funny things we see all over the internet.
PC is not luxury. It can be if you wish to spend extra money for extreme graphics and uprated resolutions (1440p or 2160p) but its definitely not required to play a modern game at 1080p on 60fps.
Yes that’s the one. They specifically chose to make it 8% more power efficient instead of increasing its performance. There was an option due to architectural improvements in the chipset and they opted for Power Efficiency so that they don’t create a performance gap. I facepalmed hard when I read about it 4-5 months ago.
Err, it’s a statement.. where are the numbers? Err.. the product hasn’t been released yet so the numbers are with AMD.. 0 _ o;
Sure ain’t invisible if you skip a few generations. And what exactly is to stop you from going for a six or eight core processor? You’re kinda shooting yourself in the foot continuing to choose quad cores at this point. Intel is more focused on GPU performance at that scale, bit of a shame they don’t have a true high performance quad core with EDRAM and no GPU, that would own.. Probably just comes down to a lack of competition I think. Zen is needed for us Intel owners too, to give them a kick in the pants. It’s unfortunate how they’re using the die space for people that want the fastest single threaded performance / game performance that they can get.
I see. I agree with you. In my opinion people who spend on a single graphic cards or any other single PC component for more than $400 each are seriously dumb…
No they chose to address an overheating issue and the power efficiency gain was a bonus. Addressing an issue with the existing model *should* come before improvements to hardware.
Power efficiency and heat come together. Besides there are a numerous ways you can handle heat dissipation instead of keeping your gaming performance gimped.
If zen is as near to intel’s best as furyX is to nvidia’s, amd will survive. Bulldozer cores are nowhere there in absolute performance.
That makes quite sense. Release a super gpu powered version for the with the VR headset.
Yah Lol, such baddu, hovering above errywon. Uno, cuz of games XDd lolololool
Yaah maataan, bredda they bad thwy must BE gud wif peecs u no, cuz games serius biznas
for a week