What do you realistically need to double fps in an existing 30fps title?
Or to make better looking games, better textures, longer draw distances, higher poly models etc all need more memory, faster memory, faster cpu, faster hdd for streaming. HDR rendering needs more memory too.

At first the games need to be designed around this, so you're looking more towards multi platform game performance instead of exclusive type optimization. Yet maybe 1st party can afford to make Uncharted like games tailor made for both hardware specs, and most multiplats already have the option of higher fps on pc.

But it will cost a lot more money to optimize and test for 2 hardware specs at no extra gain for the publisher. They still sell the same amount, it's not selling to a different user base. So it will probably not get that much effort. Either the base ps4 will suffer or the new one will go underused.

This PS4K is nothing more than HDMI 2.0 HDCP 2.2 HDR compatible revision for video. Any slight upgrades in hardware performance will be for the UI and might at most stabilize fps in some titles. (And perhaps introduce frame pacing issues in others...)

devs wouldn't cast aside ~50m+ people owning the standard PS4

games would still be optimized for PS4 and PS4K users could activate 1080p/60 mode maybe even with additional anti aliasing and other image quality enhancers

Yep, all the above.

Quick! We all need to make up our minds about this before have all the facts!

My comment was more of a generalised statement about how new hardware has nothing to do with what FPS developers target. But let's not get into that discussion again.

And the PS4.5 to just run 30fps games at 60 fps I don't think is that easy. See everything said above by SvennoJ.

I agree that it is likely to be a PS4 with 4K capable playback for blu-ray movies/Netflicks. I do not believe however that there will be a performance increase in gaming. It would fragment the userbase.

Let me try to break it down into point form so that maybe it goes into your mind:

Nintendo:

- Nintendo has done this stunt twice.

- They Tried it on the DSI which had five exclusive games ( Horrible ones which no one wanted to play ). The userbase was in no way shape or form fragmented.

- They tried it on the N3DS and so far they've released one game for it ( A good one depending on your likings ) and some other games make good use of the dual analog sticks.

- As you can see both stunts have been done only  on handhelds.

Sony:

- Is going to carry this stunt on their home console, which are much more expensive and have Games which are also more expensive ( Game per game basis )

- All games on the new PS4.5 will be playable at a much higher res and fps when compared to the same version of the game on other consoles ( Strike 1 )

- Games will no longer be optimised to the fullest on the old console, and considering developers will now start using more and more the power available in the PS4.5 we might see Sub 720P games on eight gen hardware ( Disgraceful to say the least ).

My comprehension skills are fine good sir, it's not my fault if you have a ton of money to throw around. I like to use my money for other things considering that this is just a hobby and I shouldn't be spending over 1K a gen on whatever stupid decisions Sony make just to keep up.

I can live with not playing a couple of horrible titles but getting almost Gen 7 graphical quality games just because Sony decided to make a more powerful console and extend Gen 8 rather than releasing a Gen 9 console like Microsoft is going to do in ~2018 is inexcusable ( It's not as if the PS4.5 will extend it that much, maybe by a year and a half )

My thoughts too, people are over reacting.

Anyway the answer to the likelihood of a ps4.5 with visibly improved graphics is pretty much debunked in that article.

It took four dramatic leaps in chip production technology to make the generation leap between PS3 and PS4 possible. By 2017, there will have only been one viable jump in fabrication technology available to console manufacturers, and expectations should be limited.

In the side panel they said 360 went from 90nm to 32nm during it's lifespan. This upgrade might go from 28nm to 14/16nm in 2017 at a big cost. If anything last gen was the time to do this with the ps3 super slim, 1gb ram and twice as powerful gpu. Or a 360s with updated hardware to make Kinect work like it was supposed to (the hardware stuff that was scrapped from the camera to save costs) It didn't make sense then, it makes even less sense now.


The 7970's Tahiti processor is the obvious example, offering up a 60 per cent increase in compute power. This could be combined with an overclock, faster RAM - and possibly more of it (though we suspect that cost issues may be a concern here).

So at most DF expects a 60% increase in GPU, maybe allowing some games to run at 1440p if extra memory is added as well. Or maybe not quite, the 50% GPU difference between XB1 and PS4 results in 900p vs 1080p which is a 1.44x increase, jumping from 1080p to 1440p is 1.77x

Not enough to double frame rate, extra work for developers (who will likely not bother), for maybe 10% of people what will have a 4K tv hooked up to their console.

Sony have been to wise and savvy this generation to pull a stunt like this(I would think). It could also be the "Slim" variant that Sony has put out for every one of their consoles which just happens to have 4K playback for blu-rays and Netflicks.