| KBG29 said: They just came off the largest quarter in the history of PlayStation. We have an incredible line-up of games coming out for PSVR and 4K HDR that will make PS4 Pro a very good buy over the next 12 months. I think we have to wait and see how things play out before we can fully say how the PS4 Pro is doing. I fully expect a Slimmer Slim/Pro Slim when 7nm becomes available, the only question is if they will make PS5 at the time, or if they will continue to iterate on the PS4 hardware. Looking at where tech is, I don't see any chance of a console in 2019 - 2020 wowing people, and I think it would be bad for the industry to try and claim what they are offering is next gen. I think a 3rd PS4 revision that offers full 4K 30fps gameplay as a minimum is all they can achieve at that point. A true generational leap doesn't look possible until ~2023. That will be the point where they can deliver 4K graphics with massivly advanced rendering techniques. They may make PS5 for 2019 - 2020 with a ~12TFLOP APU, and 16GB HBM RAM, but I can't see it really capturing the market, because, it will not be able to wow people. It will just be a 4K PS4, and no where near the leap we saw from PS3 to PS4, which in itself was not nearly as impressive as PS2 to PS3. I just think we are better off polishing the current gen until a real leap can happen, to me that is the advantage Pro and Scorpio are offering us. They give us time until a real leap in computing can deliver a truly next level experience. |
I think the times of visually "wowing" people are mostly over. Sure some of the new lighting effects we're seeing now and HDR are making the visual experience better but every gen the visual wow has become less and less. That fact is, the reason why those TFLOPS keep getting thrown in everybody's faces is because people need to be shown now in numbers how much better the graphics are, because its harder to see with your own two eyes. Especially for everyday casuals.
Another thing you have to try and anticipate, is will PS try and incorporate more "new" hardware into the console? PS likes to have a one piece clean console, and right now with the push for VR, they don't have that with the break out box and wires etc. Will they try and cram as much of that into the PS5 as possible so they only have to sell you a wireless/wired headset that plugs directly into the console? It would help to "subsidize" VR and get more people into it, but would also mean that PS would have to purposely hold back on the regular internal hardware to a certain degree to meet their $399 target.
A few other things like loading times are long enough already, so will faster, more expensive SSD storage tech be used? If so, how much, at what cost and is that enough? Do you also include a larger SATA SSD or do you go with an even larger SATA HDD to get enough storage and save on cost? Do you completely leave out extra storage altogether and let the gamer buy their own ext SSD/HDD so they don't have to waste more time and money changing the stock drive anyway since its to small?
A 12Tflop APU with 16GB HBM RAM sounds just about right for that time period, give or take, depending on what else the PS5 has inside it. If you look at it from an overall stand point, with a much newer/faster CPU and GPU, more higher bandwidth RAM, very fast loading times, built in VR capabilities, full BC, ext storage, PS5 could hit right around the $399 mark once again. It would actually be a lot like what NIN said they did with the Switch. They took many different past console ideas, and put them together and just made them better with new tech. Thats a possibility with PS5. Taking past PS console ideas, and bringing them all together in one box, just better with the newest tech.
Its also possible they worry too much about the TFLOP marketing and decide to keep VR its own separate package. Just beef up the specs of the normal console parts as much as they can within budget, which could mean higher than 12 Tflops and even more RAM. Scorpio and its "the most powerful console ever" at 6Tflops may have a slight impact on their decision based on how sales go.
