By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Aielyn on 29 January 2013
Edit Thread

If I'm reading those specs right, and what I can find of the Wii U is accurate, this is pretty much exactly where I figured the PS4 would end up.

Here are the CPU GFLOPS ratings of all of the 6th and 7th generation consoles:


(The "Total shipped CPU" measure is if you add up the total power across all consoles sold at the time that the article this came from was written)

Now, the thing to note here is that this puts the PS4 CPU at a total GFLOPS rating that is lower than that of the PS3. Much as how the Wii U's CPU is slower than the PS3. Indeed, most estimates of the Wii U's CPU seem to put it roughly in the same ballpark as the one listed here for the PS4.

For the GPU, estimates for the Wii U put it somewhere in the 0.5-1.5 TFLOPS range. So lets say that the PS4, according to this leak, has somewhere between 1.3-3x the power of the Wii U, in terms of GPU.

What does this mean? It means that Sony would have spent a little more than Nintendo on the GPU, allowing them to produce a faster chip, by eschewing an attempt to copy the Upad - remember, the Upad is fairly expensive to produce.

A quick look at the memory says that it has double the memory of the Wii U. That's probably about right - Sony would want to put a bit more in than Nintendo, because it tends more towards brute force rather than balancing.

And between all of these, I could definitely see Sony managing to release the console for no more than US$500 and making a small profit per console, or for US$400 and make a relatively minor loss per console ("relatively minor" compared with the PS3's initial loss per console). In fact, they could probably break even by selling it for US$450 or so. And I do think that's what Sony needs to do to remain solvent in the next generation - if their gaming division starts leaking money like most of the rest of the company, I doubt anything will be able to save them.


At least, that's how I'm reading it. Somebody could probably point out flaws in my interpretation - I'm happy to be corrected on any actual mistake.