https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBTNDdwVsMk

At the end it says 2016, we've had no official word since this only rumours of a delay to early 2017.

Hi Mazzy,

Yes, I absolutely agree 100% with the bolded. I imagine Sony feels much the same way, and we will probably see the proof of that with their E3 presentation. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of ways they could screw it up, and stratifying their PS4 lineup would run the severe risk of alienating/confusing general consumers, who are even less savvy on average than the video games media, whom don't look at production and tech realities clearly on any type of consistent basis.

IMHO, what is Sony's wisest course of action, and what I expect to happen, is indeed a fairly muted launch for PS4+, where it fits in as the new defacto model in short order, and more emphasis is made on the expanded capabilities to play 4K media, faster OS interaction, etc, without making it seem like PS4 OG is obsolete in any way for gaming. But they will keep the gaming boosts in their back pocket in case MS decides to start trumpeting X1.5's newfound 1080p guts (assuming that Xbox is also getting a pumped up 2nd gen APU setup, and probably at least a move to DDR4 to replace the DDR3 in X1).

As for costs, the facts are these : the 28nm PS4 1.0 APU was a 348 square mm die (19x18.3mm) , and running on a 300mm / 12" wafer process, and taking into accounts the yield issues GloFo had with 28nm HKMG tech, you had a set cost. We know that it ended up costing Sony around $100/unit initially for the 1.0 APUs. With the 14nm tech, if there were no other variances in the yields, transistor count, etc, a pure die shrink would net about 4x the usable dies per 300mm wafer, because you're talking about square MM. In a very simplistic way, think of making squares on a regular piece of 8.5x11" paper. If you make exact half inch by half inch squares, you get 374 squares per sheet. Now try it again with quarter inch by quarter inch squares. Instead of doubling, you get four times the number of these, because it's half the size in both Y and Z axis, for a total of 1,496.

But with the Neo APU, they indeed increased the transistor count, so even with 14nm process tech, they aren't getting 4x the dies from a 300mm wafer, it's somewhere in the middle, and much more likely to be closer to 2x than 4x. A pure 2x increase in dies per wafer would assume a transistor count of exactly double PS4 APU 1.0, and we know that won't be the case, as it's the same size for the CPU portion (8 jaguar cores just as before, but clocked higher), but with a GPU portion that's just about double the previous model on the highest estimated reports. Basically, for the purposes of this discussion, you're talking at minimum a gain of 100% in terms of usable dies per wafer, and that's your baseline for how much each individual APU will cost Sony. Further mitigation occurs when you look at the incredibly painful reports about GloFo's 28nm process woes, and the glowing reports on the 14nm process. Physics and engineering in the semiconductor field is a wild area, and sometimes things go way better than expected, and sometimes way worse. Intel found this out the hard way when their 90nm process was fraught with problems, but then their 65nm, 45nm, and beyond all had outstanding yields and technical results. And higher yields = more usable dies per wafer = lower cost per die.

So we can pretty much guarantee in every reaosnable sense that Sony will be paying less, perhaps even very substantially less, for each 'Neo' APU vs. the 28nm vanilla APU. What else does that leave?

Well, lets look quickly down the line and a quick and dirty analysis :

Heat output / Cooling = this will be improved, so this portion of the Neo revision will be the same or less expensive

Power supply = this will be improved, so this portion will certainly see a size reduciton and consequently be less expensive

Memory = this will be improved as GDDR5 prices have further dropped, buit probably not enough to make any kind of impact vs PS4 Neo, buying industry standard GDDR5 you get what you can get. If anything, getting the current mass-produced standard just maintains that regular pricing. Still, this is going to be definitively less expensive than it was in 2013 for 8GB of GDDR5.

PCB = this will be somewhat of a wash, but could see minor savings with less heavy-duty chokes/VRM/caps needed with the less power hungry Neo APU to feed

Assorted ICs and HDMI 2.0 connector = a wash

Intangibles : New controller revision? Different casing/materials? This will be interesting stuff, but shouldn't really affect pricing much one way or the other.

So there you have it, PS4 Neo should be less expensive from day 1 following industry norms. That wouldn't be too suprising. If there were a pure 14nm die shrink of the PS4 OG APU in existence, that could be even less expensive to make, but there is a limited amount of fab capacity out there, and it's way WAY more expensive to run 2 separate products than a single product on a particular fab node.

I Think that is 100% confirmed a Resident Evil 7 release this year, Capcom will not let the franchise's 20th Aniversary pass in blank.

The only discrepancy I see here is that unless something has changed internally, there was a pretty big leak from a bish-verified GAF insider (and I believe Kotaku also did an article as well from a separate source), and they said that the NEO is expected to be $100 more, and possibly $200 more if they do the possible CPU upgrade which was still undecided at the time. This is what caused such an outcry; the price remains the same and people view it as a slim, the price goes up, people feel segregated and as if they have an inferior box and as if the console market is undergoing such rapid changes that they aren't comfortable with. 

The fact that Sony's handling of this has been rather muted makes me think this is not a calculated move, but rather a reactionary one to the changes at AMD regarding the nodes. However, now that Xbox is following suit (for different reasons imo), I think it becomes a sort of console power arms race where consumers lose, and it may force Sony's hand into continuing with this iterative console nonsense which I am not a fan of at all. 

Will have to wait and see how things turn out, but I think all this hardware nonsense when the software output this gen has been quite underwhelming will cause many console owners to become disgruntled and seek alternatives. However, I think this is very dependent on how Sony (and MS) go about introducing these products to the market; it is a very delicate process. 

x86 architecture is far from perfect, but the models Sony and MS chose for their consoles were carefully chosen in a performance segment that allows them to enjoy economies of scale and production costs reductions through the whole generation, they are two single models produced in a quite large number compared to the total  AMD APUs, initially sitting in the mid/mid-high range, then currently in the mid-range and at the end of the gen they'll gradually enter mid/low- and low-range, but still within the current production range, so yes, I think a price cut is definitely likely, and viable too, it won't be at a loss, and further cuts will happen to keep the value for money attactive for users as the console gets older (besides the new, more expensive beefed-up models within the same architecture and generation).