Sony Working On Upgraded, 4K-Capable PS4?

Megalith

Megalith

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Can someone tell me how Sony could pull this off when the current PS4 costs $400 and can barely manage 1080p at 60fps?

Based on conversations with developers who have spoken with Sony, this ‘PS4.5’ will include an upgraded GPU both to support high-end 4K resolution for games and add more processing power that can enhance the games supported by PlayStation VR, the headset Sony will launch this fall. It’s unclear if ‘PS4.5’ is an official name or just a nickname that developers have been using. One developer jokingly called it the ‘PS4K’ while telling me about the device.
 
It's probably just a PS4 with the breakout VR box built in along with some improvements to wifi/sata standards and some addition GPU power to offset some issues pertaining to VR. I can't see a business model where they increase the GPU power to include a new design with HBM or anything crazy 3/4 years after release. I could see them adding HBM to get the design and R&D out of the way for PS5, but nothing more serious than that. I've always thought they would just release a vastly more powerful console and simply use the PS4 OS and maintain that OS over many console cycles. Sort of like OSX or mobile OSs, just do hardware refreshes every 5 years and keep improving that OS instead of starting over from scratch. Makes backward compatibility very easy and the transition easy as well.
 
If they think they can make money on it and have content ready why not ?
 
IMHO I bet the PS4.5 is like next-Jin said the PS4 with the VRBox but the VRBox built into the machine so it's not external.
 
It's just a stupid rumor. IMO, an incorrect stupid rumor to drive page hits to Kotaku (it worked).

Sony is obviously working on a 4K PS, but it will be PS5, not PS4.5.

Sony fragmenting PS would fail, customer would just stick with PS4 because thats what even new games would target. Developers would ignore 4.5 because the market is all PS4 and PS4.5 is backward compatible.

Not to mention is Sony going to be able to pack a GTX 980 equiv into a console anytime soon?

BS from any angle you look at it.
 
Would be cool to see a small Fury NANO Xconnect enclosure for the PS4.5, but I don't see a high bandwidth port for it.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
This will be 4k at 30fps!!
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Pfft, 4k @ 23.976 FPS. Good enough for film!



I wouldn't doubt this could be true, but I doubt it'll do 4k. There was the same rumor of the Xbox One getting an upgrade. Past gen, we saw many hardware revisions (some internal only) which served to reduce power requirements or increase reliability and lower production costs. This gen they flipped the script and didn't make the hardware a loss-leader, they seem to be realizing that it needs an upgrade quicker than prior gens.

This could be the start of a good thing though. Maybe they've realized they don't need to relaunch an ecosystem, but can give consumers better hardware every few years. With the switch to an x86 base, it makes it easier on developers to enable graphics to scale with the new hardware, while maintaining support for the original.

Developers win by having a large install bass. Console makers win from game sales, subscriptions, and accessories. There's no reason to reset the ecosystem every 7-10 years when you're not doing highly specialized hardware.
 
Fragmenting the current generation worked great for Sega - Genesis, Sega CD, 32X... There were a few games for the full stack (32X CD), more for the Sega CD, but the majority were on the Genesis. That's where the user base was. Fragment to 32X users, Sega CD users, Sega CD + 32X users, or just plain Genesis users. You go for the largest user base.

It'll be the PS5. Which is fine by me. Let 5 years and this generation live out. By then, a very nice 4K machine will be doable at a good price. AND, 4K TV adoption will be much higher by then.

Doing 4K now, and doing it right, would cost too much and fragment the market. It's too big of a gamble.
 
I don't see how they could include a GPU capable of playable framerates at 4K and still maintain a reasonable price point that console gamers would be willing to pay. I also thought that one of the big selling points of consoles is that the hardware is fixed at a certain performance level throughout a generation, so everyone who buys a system has the same experience, regardless of when they buy it.

I don't think a PS 4.5 will happen. I do think the PS5 will come out sooner than people might be expecting, maybe even in Q4 2017. They went with really underpowered hardware this time around. And in another couple of years building a console that can handle 4K gaming at a reasonable price point should be possible.
 
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Ur_Mom said:
Fragmenting the current generation worked great for Sega - Genesis, Sega CD, 32X... There were a few games for the full stack (32X CD), more for the Sega CD, but the majority were on the Genesis. That's where the user base was. Fragment to 32X users, Sega CD users, Sega CD + 32X users, or just plain Genesis users. You go for the largest user base.

It'll be the PS5. Which is fine by me. Let 5 years and this generation live out. By then, a very nice 4K machine will be doable at a good price. AND, 4K TV adoption will be much higher by then.

Doing 4K now, and doing it right, would cost too much and fragment the market. It's too big of a gamble.
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Not a fair comparison. You're comparing very old hardware with very old methods. I had a few of those accessories and they required you purchase special games.

The current consoles don't need that, it'd be the same game. The game could simply query the hardware and load the proper config for graphics settings. That would allow the games to play on any hardware revision and allow game developers to push new configs for the newer hardware to refresh interest in an older title.

We're not talking about tons of different hardware configs (PC) or specialized coding (IE: cell processors). Most games are developed with engine software that is capable scaling rather easy on the x86/x64 architecture.

Heck, I've seen some titles (TheDivision?) that already do this as the user can select high-FPS or high-fidelity options.
 
Spidey329 said:
Not a fair comparison. You're comparing very old hardware with very old methods. I had a few of those accessories and they required you purchase special games.

The current consoles don't need that, it'd be the same game. The game could simply query the hardware and load the proper config for graphics settings. That would allow the games to play on any hardware revision and allow game developers to push new configs for the newer hardware to refresh interest in an older title.

We're not talking about tons of different hardware configs (PC) or specialized coding (IE: cell processors). Most games are developed with engine software that is capable scaling rather easy on the x86/x64 architecture.

Heck, I've seen some titles (TheDivision?) that already do this as the user can select high-FPS or high-fidelity options.
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Totally fair.

If Sony released a console with a 4X GPU, and UHD Blu Ray (why bother if you don't upgrade Blu Ray), what do you think that would cost? Who would buy it.

IMO almost no one, because despite the hype, penetration of 4K TVs is negligible.

Are Devs going to really bother putting much effort in an inconsequential market share of PS 4.5 when it plays all PS4 games as is?

Are early adopters who already own PS4, going to buy a half baked PS4.5, that just plays the same games that already play on their PS4?

Are late adopters who don't own a PS4, going to buy a $500 PS4.5?

In case you have guessed by now, the answer to all those questions is: NO!

This is nothing that any significant group of buyers, or developers wants.
 
Snowdog said:
Totally fair.

If Sony released a console with a 4X GPU, and UHD Blu Ray (why bother if you don't upgrade Blu Ray), what do you think that would cost? Who would buy it.

IMO almost no one, because despite the hype, penetration of 4K TVs is negligible.

Are Devs going to really bother putting much effort in an inconsequential market share of PS 4.5 when it plays all PS4 games as is?

Are early adopters who already own PS4, going to buy a half baked PS4.5, that just plays the same games that already play on their PS4?

Are late adopters who don't own a PS4, going to buy a $500 PS4.5?

In case you have guessed by now, the answer to all those questions is: NO!

This is nothing that any significant group of buyers, or developers wants.
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I don't believe the rumors as much as the next person, because even high end PCs struggle with 4k, and I can't see a reasonable PS4 playing 4k, but...

Devs don't need to put much effort in. Setting a resolution from 1080p to 4k isn't like 2 weeks worth of work, more like 2 minutes worth of work. For cross platform games, the work is already done to be scalable. Even when taking the PC out of the equation, there needs to be some differences for the capabilities between the Xbox One and the PS4 (along with the upcoming Nintendo system). Maybe a system exclusive game won't put effort in, and be PS4 only, but I think those would be few and far between. Besides, things like textures, often those created at a higher quality than what goes in the original game.

Would people buy it? I think a few would, but I'd agree that most wouldn't. People prefer cheap inexpensive products to higher quality, but more costly products. Late adopters might get the better version though. The New Nintendo 3DS is a good comparison here.

What really matters is the games though. A system exclusive killer app would get people to upgrade, but I just can't see anything that would fit that description. It's one thing to have a VR game be something that requires it, but I can't see any regular games.
 
Nytegard said:
Devs don't need to put much effort in. Setting a resolution from 1080p to 4k isn't like 2 weeks worth of work, more like 2 minutes worth of work. .
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You get out, what you put in. Simply changing the resolution would be almost pointless, it would hardly look any better. To really make a 4k game you need the appropriate upgraded textures (at minimum).

As it is console games often have pretty low quality textures for 1080p, they would be shit at 4K.

So it isn't 2 minutes work to make a 4K game out of 1080p game.

To make it remotely worth while, you would build a 4K game, and spend time (probably a lot more than you think) to squeeze it back down to a lower end console.
 
For those of you that don't know, I think the sales figures as of Feb 2016 is PS4 = 37.5 million units sold to Microsofts = 13.8 million.

So, how does Sony keep their lead? Produce an even more powerful PS4.

A new PS4.5 will play all of the older content.

An older version PS4 will play all new content but at a lower FPS / possible resolution.

And guess what? PC's have been doing this for decades. There is no reason the PS4 cannot be upgraded.

I would love Sony to come in and crush Microsoft like the cockroaches they are. /my personal 2cents ~ feelings

Microsoft's desperation is so bad now they reduced the Xbox One to $299 starting this weekend.
 
Let me get this straight. Even a 980TI which goes for more than the cost of two PS4s, isn't enough for a perfect 4K experience. The most I'd expect is support for 4K movies.
 
SixFootDuo said:
For those of you that don't know, I think the sales figures as of Feb 2016 is PS4 = 37.5 million units sold to Microsofts = 13.8 million.

So, how does Sony keep their lead? Produce an even more powerful PS4.

A new PS4.5 will play all of the older content.

An older version PS4 will play all new content but at a lower FPS / possible resolution.

And guess what? PC's have been doing this for decades. There is no reason the PS4 cannot be upgraded.

I would love Sony to come in and crush Microsoft like the cockroaches they are. /my personal 2cents ~ feelings

Microsoft's desperation is so bad now they reduced the Xbox One to $299 starting this weekend.
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I love how, anything that seeps trough from the PC to the consoles suddenly becomes a PRO, instead of a con. I've spent countless years arguing fanboys who insisted that consoles are better because you don't need upgrades. Ah, the good olden days when you didn't need to install games, on the console, and you didn't need to patch them. We keep this up an the consoles just become barebone PCs. It especially looks like that with MS pushing W10 to Xbone.
 
:cool:
add on FTW!
tL5zd63.jpg
 
M76 said:
Let me get this straight. Even a 980TI which goes for more than the cost of two PS4s, isn't enough for a perfect 4K experience. The most I'd expect is support for 4K movies.
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We have a winner! A decent 4K experience requires specs that won't be economical in a console form factor for ~3 years and would fragment the user base even if they could pull it off, but a hardware revision that can play 4K video files is comparatively trivial.
 
Wonder if AMD will sell em the lower binned polaris dies/APUs. Huge volume, low cost.
 
4K...at 3FPS!

To be honest I don't expect full 60FPS 1080p till the gen after next. Maybe 2030?
 
Maybe Sony has been secretly working on a super powerful version of their Cell architecture that will easily run games at 4k and offer perfect emulation for existing ps4 software!
 
Doing this is quite simple actually every ps4 game will have two graphical profiles the one the ps4/ps4k loads is dependent on the system you have... this method breaks nothing as all game will work on all hardware if you do not have a 4k tv / 4k ps4 no need to load the 4k graphics settings.
 
maxius said:
Doing this is quite simple actually every ps4 game will have two graphical profiles the one the ps4/ps4k loads is dependent on the system you have... this method breaks nothing as all game will work on all hardware if you do not have a 4k tv / 4k ps4 no need to load the 4k graphics settings.
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Before you make simple imaginary profiles, you need actual Hardware. That is the HARD part.

As has been correctly pointed out by most of us so far. There really is no way in Hell that Sony can deliver reasonably priced 4K capable GPU in a console anytime soon.

I really don't think an $800 PS4.5 will sell well at all.
 
If I put on my tinfoil hat for a second, the existence of the Fury Nano would all of a sudden make more sense.
 
I believe its quite possible for them to release a ps4 slim with its procesor and gpu built in the new 16/14nm process with a 4k HEVC coder/decoder included in the die!
 
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DedEmbryonicCe11 said:
Hey I played Quake 1 at less than 3 FPS on a 486 and it was still a blast.:clown: At a glorious 800x600 resolution too!
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You're a more patient man than me. Quake on a 486 was more than I could handle.

Also your name has got me nostalgic for some old Sepultura.
 
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Personally, My friend and I have been speculating that this rumour is a bit more substantial than many have been thinking.

By 2017, 4K TV adoption will reach 50%, as buget 4K TVs are so cheap now, its difficult to consider a 1080p for only $100 less. That gap will only get narrower by 2017.

So you have a ton of consumers with epic 4K TVs, yet the mainstream consoles will only output 1080p (well, 720p for the Xbone)?

Microsony have a real opportunity to sell a current-point-five generation console that plays the SAME games, just at 4K. no new development, no exclusive games. It just plays the games already released at a higher resolution. It would require older games to shoot out an update that allows their resolution to scale up, but chances are that wouldn't be a HUGE deal, as if the architecture is the same, just with more GCN cores, you could get away with minimal optimization. Not to mention, many developers could 'cheat' the same way they do now, and render a game at 1440p and just upscale to 2160p and toss in the UI at native resolution. 1440p would be a significant upgrade to MOST consumer's current experiences.
 
KazeoHin said:
Personally, My friend and I have been speculating that this rumour is a bit more substantial than many have been thinking.

By 2017, 4K TV adoption will reach 50%, as buget 4K TVs are so cheap now, its difficult to consider a 1080p for only $100 less. That gap will only get narrower by 2017.

So you have a ton of consumers with epic 4K TVs, yet the mainstream consoles will only output 1080p (well, 720p for the Xbone)?
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50% next year. You are dreaming.

North American 4K TV ownership to hit 10% in 2018

Most people don't give a rats ass about 4K TV, most people's TV is so far away that they barely tell the difference between DVD and Blu Ray. 4K is just another spec for nerds to brag about, it really doesn't matter to most people.
 
Snowdog said:
50% next year. You are dreaming.

North American 4K TV ownership to hit 10% in 2018

Most people don't give a rats ass about 4K TV, most people's TV is so far away that they barely tell the difference between DVD and Blu Ray. 4K is just another spec for nerds to brag about, it really doesn't matter to most people.
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That article was written three years ago, back when 4K TVs were 10K. Nowadays, a 4K TV is about the ONLY option when buying a TV over $900. and there are PLENTY of 4K screens for cheaper.
 
KazeoHin said:
That article was written three years ago, back when 4K TVs were 10K. Nowadays, a 4K TV is about the ONLY option when buying a TV over $900. and there are PLENTY of 4K screens for cheaper.
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That doesn't mean everyone will have to rush and replace perfectly good HDTVs. There are probably 200+ Million TVs in the USA, and maybe 10 million new ones are sold in a year.

If starting today 100% of TVs on the shelf were 4K, it would still take 10 years, to get to 50%.

This isn't like when we switched from Analog to Digital HD and the government practically enforced the changeover.
 
Snowdog said:
That doesn't mean everyone will have to rush and replace perfectly good HDTVs. There are probably 200+ Million TVs in the USA, and maybe 10 million new ones are sold in a year.

If starting today 100% of TVs on the shelf were 4K, it would still take 10 years, to get to 50%.

This isn't like when we switched from Analog to Digital HD and the government practically enforced the changeover.
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It's safe to say that MOST new TVs bought off of shelves today are going to be 4K. That number is only going to go up. Just like in 2005 when HDTV was thought of a niche and expensive, and 1080p TVs cost 10K, less than five years later, 1080P was commonplace and only the cheapest, CHEAPEST sets were 720p. It happened WAY faster than most people expected. A lot of people are going to have new, shiny 4K TVs and want SOMETHING to experience content on them. These new consoles will also help push adoption as well, but trust me, there will be PLENTY of adoption without them.
 
ZodaEX said:
3FPS isn't even playable. I doubt that will be the case.
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Why? Are you expecting 60FPS? They cant even do that at 720/1080p after all this time. Set your expectations appropriately.

Plus I guess you didn't get the sarcasm. My fault I haven't checked the more modern forum for a sarky emoticon.
 
KazeoHin said:
It's safe to say that MOST new TVs bought off of shelves today are going to be 4K. That number is only going to go up. Just like in 2005 when HDTV was thought of a niche and expensive, and 1080p TVs cost 10K, less than five years later, 1080P was commonplace and only the cheapest, CHEAPEST sets were 720p. It happened WAY faster than most people expected. A lot of people are going to have new, shiny 4K TVs and want SOMETHING to experience content on them. These new consoles will also help push adoption as well, but trust me, there will be PLENTY of adoption without them.
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I'm still running a 540p LCD TV. Yep 540p, it was called PerfectPAL as it fitted a PAL resolution (30 or so lines are not visible on screen hence just 540p rather than 576p) and it looks superb with SD material but also due to it being 540P provides a natural downscale to handle 1080p material. It looks so smooth with 1080p content. Many people have said "oh that looks great!" and its not even HD. Consoles work really well running at 1080p on it as it looks so clean.

Always thought it a shame that the standards were not set at 720p and 1440p for the neater upscale/downscale.

However it is 10 years old and I'm thinking of getting a new TV this year. I got the SD only one back then as 99.99% of what I watched was SD/DVD and I wanted the best picture for that. Now I have HD and 4K streaming ability that's the route I'm going. 4K all the way. At least 25% will be 4K so that's worth the investment and its only going to grow. Unlimited broadband at 80Mbps download should serve me reasonably well.

I still haven't bought a Blu-Ray player as I knew stuff was going to go too fast for that, with it being a unfinished standard.
 
KazeoHin said:
It's safe to say that MOST new TVs bought off of shelves today are going to be 4K. That number is only going to go up. Just like in 2005 when HDTV was thought of a niche and expensive, and 1080p TVs cost 10K, less than five years later, 1080P was commonplace and only the cheapest, CHEAPEST sets were 720p. It happened WAY faster than most people expected. A lot of people are going to have new, shiny 4K TVs and want SOMETHING to experience content on them. These new consoles will also help push adoption as well, but trust me, there will be PLENTY of adoption without them.
Click to expand...

Go look at bestbuy on line, most TVs stocked are NOT 4K, so it is not safe to say that most sales are 4K. Quite the opposite. If you look 40" TVs 4K cost >twice as much as 2K.

Again you can't compare to what happened with HDTV, because there was a government enforced switch-over from Standard Def to HDTV. This was widely publicized for years and everyone wanted to get a new TV to not be left behind. After the switch-over, you essentially couldn't buy an SDTV.

This time there is no switch-over. This time most TVs are still 1080p. This time almost no one cares or would benefit from 4K.

If my 40" TV died tomorrow, I would replace it with another 40" HDTV (1080P) because from where I sit, you can't even tell the difference between 720 and 1080(as is the case in most homes I have seen), so 4K would be pointless, so why pay more for something pointless?
 
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