Sony Interactive Entertainment President Andrew House has today revealed more info about the PlayStation Neo during Sony’s Investor Day in Tokyo.

He mentioned that this is the first time that Sony will ever offer a hardware upgrade in the middle of a PlayStation’s life cycle. Although, he went on to say that this doesn’t mean that they’re going to do regular upgrades like we’ve come to know in the PC and Mobile industry. Nor does it mean that we’ll see a generation hardware change.

He went on to explain that the mobile business is very different with users upgrading their hardware every one or two years, which he doesn’t think will ever be the case in the console business, where we know the cycle as being at least five or six years. He does believe that there is potential and that’s why the latest and greatest technology can be introduced in the middle of a life cycle. The key factor for Sony will still be the important of the customer, which Sony intends to ensure stays a “one console world” with the same software for both the PS4 and PS4 Neo.

http://press-start.com.au/news/playstation/2016/06/30/sony-playstation-neo-isnt-shift-regular-hardware-upgrades-like-mobilepc/

BraLoD said: Neo is coming because of VR. Come on, Project Morpheus, Project Neo, it's so damn clear

That would be waaaay too expensive.

Just as long as it doesn't become the norm with playstation consoles, I'm fine with neo.

No one is doing phone or PC type upgrades. Those come every year or multiple times in one year. They could do upgrades every 2 or 3 years.

It's a new type of console cycle. We probably will get a new console every 4 years and the old system will be supported for a while after that.

I think thats pretty much exactly what it is, and frankly I want that.

4 or 5 years from now, release a new box with games that atleast support Neo but play all PS4 games. Its better than a new console that can only play 9th gen games.

Neo is the slim or its replacement. Regular die shrinks didn't work this gen, 28nm planar was the end of the line.
The jump to 14nm finfet is expensive and probably not guaranteed 1:1 compatible, hence:
He does believe that there is potential and that’s why the latest and greatest technology can be introduced in the middle of a life cycle.
Double the compute units, still reducing the gpu size, get a nice upgrade in power so any difference in architecture can be ignored and a higher sale price is justified. It has nothing to do with VR or keeping up with the Joneses, simply a step to different hardware tech mid gen which can again be shrunk and made cheaper over the years.

PS5 will ditch Neo. PS5 will have a new CPU, different memory architecture eg 16GB HBM2, Sata 3 or M.2 for much faster read speed. Neo won't be compatible.

All I can say is that PS5 will need to be backwards compatible. Sony has effectively reintroduced a backwards compatibility expectation with Neo. Forward compatibility obviously needs to be a feature of a mid-generation upgrade, but backwards compatibility will need to be there for every hardware change.

With Sony talking so much and freely about Neo, it must be close to release.

BC will almost be certain to be be in all PS consoles, the PC like hardware architecture makes it possible. The hardware in previous consoles were highly customised which meant it was a pain or too expensive to get BC working on PS3 and PS4. 

Slarvax said: BraLoD said: Neo is coming because of VR. Come on, Project Morpheus, Project Neo, it's so damn clear That would be waaaay too expensive.

I never put those two together until now. Amazing. Thank you!