PS4 Super Slim and PS4 Pro Slim?

[KBG29]

potato_hamster said:

KBG29 said:

A stand alone PS5 at $1,000 would be a terrible decision. A PS5 as part of Sony's Elevated Standards line, that sits as an enthusiast level option, along side a $399.99 PS5 Basic, and a $599.99 PS5 Pro, that would be a worthwhile market. I have said this a thousand times. I don't get why Sony sells enthusiast level products in their Walkman Line, Xperia Line, and Bravia Line, yet we still don't have an enthusiast level PlayStation. PlayStation sells more than the rest of these products combined, and is actually a profitable business, with a very loyal fan base. If any product Sony sells should have an enthusiast level offering, it is PlayStation.

With games being built with dynamic frame rates, and resolution, needing nothing more than additional power to achieve locked performance (as seen with non enhanced games on PS4 Pro, XBO S, and XBO X), you can not convince me that there are not a few million PlayStation Fanatics out their that would not plop down the cash for a PS5 that could deliver uncompromised performance.

One Day!!!

It's because you ignore it every time it's explained to you. Unlike their Walkman, Xperia and Bravia, the people making content for the Playstation have to develop for each and every performance specification. Just like the PS4 Pro, everyone besides Sony and other rare exceptions would support this high performance console in the most minimal way they can get away with and nothing more.

Console video games don't scale the way you believe they do. If they did, the Nintendo Switch would be getting pretty much every multi-platform third party title, or at least ones that use multi-platform focused engines like unity. But you don't see that, do you? Developers have to put in the same special effort they always did. It doesn't appear to be any meaningful gains in development to port a PS4 game to the Switch than there was to port a PS3 game to the Vita. How do you explain that if " games [are] being built with dynamic frame rates, and resolution, needing nothing more than additional power to achieve locked performance" the opposite should be true, shouldn't it?

You're more likely to see Sony drop the pro model next time around than you are to see them make a super high performance model. The Pro experiment was not a success. Third parties have largely ignored it. Sony had to figure out a way to do additional post-processing to render in 4K while emulating regular PS4 functionality because third parties weren't supporting it any more than they had to. You know that"enhancement" feature actually runs games poorer than they would if developers actually took the time to support the PS4 pro properly, right?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with minimal support. It is about Sony offering their games at a level that takes full advantage of their TVs. Premium consoles are not about offering anything other than higher resolution, better frame rate, better AA, better shadows, better draw distance. A premium console does not mean they are going to develop completely different assets, it is just a better looking/performing way to experience the same content. I don't know where you get the idea that Pro was not a success or supported, a Sony executive just said it was a success and a necessary evolution. We will definitely have multiple PS5 offerings next gen.

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/12/ps4_pro_has_been_a_good_example_of_necessary_evolution_says_sony

 

Switch has nothing to do with scalability on PlayStation. Switch to PS4 is no different than PS3 to PS Vita, it is nothing like PS4 to PS4 Pro. Switch uses a different architecture than PS4/XBO/PC, so of course it takes extra work to port games to Switch. When Sony was building games for PS3 (Cell/Nvidia), PS Vita (ARM/PowerVR), and PS4 (X86/Radeon), that was a ton of work. With PS4 and PS4 Pro there is no porting, PS4 Pro runs the same code as PS4, not only are they both X86/Radoen, they are mostly the same exact X86/Radeon technology. Adding in support for the Pro's additional CU's take very liitle effort.

Here is Mark Cerny's exact quote “The target was to make sure that support [for the PS4 Pro] could be done for a fraction of a percent of the overall effort,” Cerny said to Gamasutra. “And I do mean a fraction of a percent. I mean, I’ve run the math, and it’s 0.2 or 0.3 percent for these projects — some of them. So at that point, I think it’s very natural for the development community to support the platform.”

https://gamingbolt.com/mark-cerny-converting-a-base-ps4-game-to-ps4-pro-version-is-just-0-2-or-0-3-percent-of-the-overall-effort

That means on a 5 year project, you are looking at about a week to tune in Pro support. This is with Sony offering a new system mid generation, without developers aware of the additional hardware. A future console that is built with multiple tiers in mind from the start would take even less work, as the Hardware, API's, and Development Tools are all be built from the ground up with scalability in mind. 

 

As for your final question, yes I know that Boost Mode only takes advantage of the clock boosts on the CPU and GPU, and does not take advantage of the 18 additional CU's on the Pro GPU. That just proves that extra performance can be absolutely free. If a PS5 Pro and a PS5 Premium both had the same CPU and GPU, but the Pro runs at 3.2GHz and 1400MHz, while the Premium offers 4.0GHz and 2000MHz, that would offer a significant performance boost for the Premium. In this situation it would take no additional work from Sony, it would just be a matter of setting aside the highest quality PS5 chips exclusively for the Premium model. 

DonFerrari said:

KBG29 said:

A stand alone PS5 at $1,000 would be a terrible decision. A PS5 as part of Sony's Elevated Standards line, that sits as an enthusiast level option, along side a $399.99 PS5 Basic, and a $599.99 PS5 Pro, that would be a worthwhile market. I have said this a thousand times. I don't get why Sony sells enthusiast level products in their Walkman Line, Xperia Line, and Bravia Line, yet we still don't have an enthusiast level PlayStation. PlayStation sells more than the rest of these products combined, and is actually a profitable business, with a very loyal fan base. If any product Sony sells should have an enthusiast level offering, it is PlayStation.

With games being built with dynamic frame rates, and resolution, needing nothing more than additional power to achieve locked performance (as seen with non enhanced games on PS4 Pro, XBO S, and XBO X), you can not convince me that there are not a few million PlayStation Fanatics out their that would not plop down the cash for a PS5 that could deliver uncompromised performance.

One Day!!!

PS4Pro have double power than PS4 vanilla, and still you see minimal notable gains. This super premium would have much more power probably 4-6x almost a gen difference. But the games to show it would be very few, so unless Sony do it for mindless profit without concern to have its devs showing it off, there is no point in it.

I'll tell you the same thing I said to potato_hamster. The idea of a Pro or Premium console is not about seeing notable gains. It is simply about improving the same experience.

A Premium console doesn't even necessarily ave to have a different chip set from the Pro Version. It could simply be a significant improvement to cooling, paired with the best quality chips yielded from each die. That combo would allow a massive increase to clock speeds for the GPU and CPU, which would mean completely free performance.

I gave potato the PS5 example, but I'll give you a PS4 example. Say Sony does drop a PS4 Pro Slim this year. Going from 14nm to 7nm they could easily increase the clock speeds on the CPU and GPU. In theory, say they bump the CPU to 3.0GHz and the GPU to 1200MHz. That would be more than enough to make games that scale between 1440 and 4K lock in at a steady 4K, or make games that bounce between 50 - 60fps run at a rock solid 60fps.

For all we know Sony could be putting things into motion for something like this right now. It could be the reason we have not seen any consumer facing OS upgrades for 2 years. They could be doing background work to make PS4 Super Slim and PS4 Pro Slim run all games better, by boosting the clocks on these new 7nm chips. Or it could be because they are building this kind of scalability into PS5, which means we could see a $299.99 PS5 Basic, a $499.99 Pro, and a $999.99 Premium.

 

 

One thing is for absolute certain. Scalability is the future of gaming. Offering games within any given ecosystem, that run between multiple different devices is going to be the new norm. You don't have to believe me, just listen to Phil Spencer, Satya Nadella, Shawn Layden, Kenichiro Yoshida, John Kodera, Reggie Fils-Aime, Lisa Su, Jensen Huang or any other person in power involved in Computing, Games, and Applications. It is an industry wide road map to tech in the 2020's.