To some people, the thought of a slightly more powerful machine is an affront to all the sensibilities they hold dear: consoles as monoliths, (mostly) unchanging hardware that stands strong against a world gone insane with technological change.
I got a PlayStation 4 around launch and have, from PES and Bloodborne alone, had more than enough playtime out of it to justify the investment. That it's a great-looking machine with a simple and elegant front end also means that it's the heart of my – and I can't believe I'm actually going to say this – media center. It's been a fantastic console so far, a minor miracle when you consider the absolute atrocity exhibition that was the PS3.Crucially, if Giant Bomb's report is on the money, it's also not going to be truly rendered obsolete any time soon. Yes, the Neo/4K/4.5/whatever may be able to pump a few new more effects on screen, or run certain titles better. But it's not going to be a generational leap, and nor is it going to run Uncharted 4 at true 4K resolution. It appears to be an incremental upgrade with some nice bells and whistles – 4K video is a good one for people who have the TV to support it.
Games are changing, gamers are changing, the way we interact with our games is changing. Static console hardware won't be around forever, and the industry has been experimenting with upgrades of various sorts for decades. Microsoft's making a move into software which can be played across boundaries with UWP and cross-platform saves. Remote/cross play has been a thing on PlayStation Platform for years. Then there's streaming to PC, and all the other ways of playing your games. Is it annoying that you'll have to fork out more to see games at their best? Yes? Do you have to? No. If Sony can actually deliver on keeping Neo (or whatever) an incremental upgrade, then most of its audience probably won't even notice. The rest will have to make a decision, like they have done for years. Nintendo has done it with its newer 3DS revision, and that thing has games which can only be played on it and not older machines, something which Giant Bomb's source claims won't be happening on PS4.
