PS4 Pro’s inability to play 4K UHD discs is, no doubt, short-lived

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GameAnalyser said:

FunFan said:
Are you saying SONY is forcing their customers to buy a separate box for UHD Blu-Rays? For any other company this would be far from a solid defense.

I think a separate box player is indeed a fair justice to consumers who are more of a video elitists. Sony can market these separate players for them rather than via a dominant brand which could hurt those sales.

You mean a separate box player like Xb oneS? That's the problem here for Sony, they have competing interests. On the one hand they want to launch their stand alone players and give them room to establish, on the other hand they have a direct competitor in consoles that has a point of difference in its favour, which has up until now always either been a point of differnce in Sony's favour, or been equal between competitors. This is the first time Sony has been at a disadvantage on this particular front. And it was a mistake to be the one behind here.

I would have thought that the number of people who are going to buy a PS4Pro AND a UHD blu-ray player is very small indeed, and if I was one such person I'd be in a bit of a snit about PS4Pro not having that functionality and I would go out of my way to buy a non-Sony stand alone player, because they are being dicks for withholding that functionality on PS4P. Conversely a stand alone player is not going to succeed or fail based on sales to PS4/PS4P owners buying one, the success of a stand alone player will be in its ability to sell to non-gamers who just want a UHD blu-ray player to watch movies. I would also be supremely pissed at Sony if they implemented UHD playback out of the blue and I wasted money buying a stand alone player. I think Sony needs to secretly get the word out that a future firmware update will implement UHD/HDR playback and that people who buy a separate player in addition to a PS4P do so because they are impatient to get a UHD player and not because they think PS4P will never be capable of it, or not capable of it for a long period of time.

There doesn't actually seem to be much of a business case for withholding UHD playback on PS4P, unless of course there is a significant price differential between PS4P and UHD blu ray skus. In which case one might ask why is there a big difference in price of the technology is the same, and a stand alone player has much less functionality (i.e. it can't play games).

I think Sony got caught with their pants down wrt MS implementing UHD blu-ray in the Xb oneS, and the only reason there's any delay in UHD functionality for PS4P is because they need to prep the firmware update to implement it. I will be very surprise if the first significant firmware update after PS4P launch will include UHD playback. Of course, Sony might not put out a significant firmware update unti January or February, which means they will try to catch some holiday sales for the stand alone player.