What if the PS4k wasn't the Pro, and is still in development?

[KBG29]

SegataSanshiro said:
Yes competing with yourself with so much hardware worked so well for SEGA. Stupid if they did that. Already silly with Vita,PSVR,PS4,PS4 Pro,PS4 slim and in some parts PS3 still. Also what killed Apple until Jobs skimmed it back down in 97.

This is not competeing with yourself. These are options within a unified ecosystem so people can choose the device that is right for them. Sonys internal competition issue is Android vs PlayStation OS, Play Store vs PlayStation Store, Ultra 4K vs PlayStation Video 4K. 

Sega's problem was tio many new console generations to quick, which all had exclusive games and peripherals. Sony having a multiple models of the PS4 is a very different situation. 

 

Back to the O.P. 

I think they have a PS4 Premium in the works, but for slightly different reasons. PS4 Pro was just taking advantage of the move from 28nm to 14nm. With PS4 successful, Sony wanted to see how the market would react if they did a more powerful version of the console when the tech was ready, instead of just doing a slimmer cheap model. In the past we would have got PS4 Slim, and that would be it. This time Sony gave people an option, and I love it. 

I think PS4 Premium, will launch in 2019, and will be a native 4K PS4 option. At this point I think Sony and Microsoft will be trading blows over who has the most powerful console on nearly a yearly bases. I think we will see Gran Turismo 7, Grand Theft Auto 5, and The Last of Us Part II, launch as optimized PS4 Premium games, and I expect the launch to go much smoother than the PS4 Pro launch. Gran Turismo's engine is already built to scale, I have no doubt that Rockstar and Naughty Dog will be building there new engines around scalability. With expereince from PS4 to PS4 Pro, and new engines built with scalable consoles in mind, the transition and launch should be a lot prettier this time around.

I think Sony still believes in generations, but only when the leap in power justifies it. I think in reality Microsoft feels the same. We won't have enough of a techical leap in 2019 - 2020 to produce a true next gen, so with that I think we will see both companies bring out very refined 4K version of the current gen consoles. Then they will both launch true next gen devices in ~2023 with 25 - 30TFLOP APU's, 128GB of RAM, and m.2 NVMe Storage.