Prediction: Sony will have a portable that will play PS4/5 games

[EricHiggin]

potato_hamster said:

What's nonsensical? That you think Sony even has a chance at making back the cost of development of a $1000 Playstation console in this day in age. This is a completely ridiculous, and would never fly, even if it would play all the latest games at 4K 120 FPS for the next five years. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You just fail to grasp even basic hardware design principles. Like you say "A PS Mobile device in 2019 or 2020 on a mature 7nm process even with PS4 tech will have very decent power consumption. If they build it on Ryzen Mobile, and Navi, you will have a very powerful, and very low powered APU perfectly capable of playing PS4 titles for hours." Ohh really? Based on what exactly? What will be the power draw of a 7nm Ryzen/Navi APU? Ohh right, you don't have the slightest clue. And what will be the heat dissipation requirements in order to prevent themal throttling? Again, you don't have the answer to that. And most importanly how do you know that a PS4 based on Ryzen Mobile and Navi will be able to properly emulate a PS4, and making it do so will be trivial?. Ohh right you don't. You don't know the answers to any of these questions, so how can you make these claims?

You act like this is a reasonable thing to say, when the truth is, the power requirements, and the heat disspation required to prevent themal throttling on a chip like that means that your "mobile device" is going to be well over twice the size of the Nintendo Switch, or use technology that's so cutting edge that the mobile playstation costs a ridiculous sum or money to produce. Like in all seriousness, you think in the next two years Sony is going to be able to take something the size of the PS4 slim, and make it what? 1/40th the size, and add a screen, and a power source,  all because of a die shrinkage and newer revisions of processors that have been developed in the 3-4 years since the PS4 was released? Good fucking luck.  It's delusional. This is wishful thinking and has no basis in reality. It's like saying in 2020, Nintendo will be able to make a Switch the size of an 4G iPod touch if they wanted to because technology.

You're right, there's no porting happening between the PS4 and PS4 pro. But effectively there's no classical emulation either, because the PS4 pro has an operating mode allows it to operate exactly the same the PS4 standard, meaning that developers can make the PS4 pro pretend it's a regular PS4 if they want to and call it a day. That "two weeks" to add PS4 pro support is essnetially doing nothing but going through your game engine and telling it that this new hardware singature is a PS4, and telling that hardware to operate in PS4 regular mode.So the PS4 Pro is not really emulating the PS4. It was designed in such a way that it literally only has to run at a lower clock speed, and ignore some of it's available memory, and it is for all intents and purposes a regular PS4. See emulation is not just a matter of having similar arcitecture, or running the same instruction sets, it has to be able to, step for step, match the timing at which the PS4 processes the instructions, in the same order, in the same way. The change in arcitecture to Ryzen/Navi as you call it could be well enough to make what's easy enough to do on the PS4 Pro extremely difficult to do on a PS4 Portable with Ryzen/Navi. Emulation is one of the most difficult engineering challenges the tech industry faces today. There's a reason why McLaren is hunting for 30 year old laptops that run the custom cards needed to service the McLaren F1 instead of emulating the laptop on a modern machine that's 1000x more powerful. This is not trivial, and do not take it for granted.

"Should" have decent power consumption, is more like it. Depends on your perspective. If PS?P lasts 3 hours then that should be good enough since thats what Switch does now. It won't be the norm though, compared to "Switch 2 in 2020" since it will have a "Tegra X4" by then and have a potential 6 hour battery life. If playing something like GTAV on the go is what you want, since the odds are slim you can have that experience on either Switch, you won't have a choice but to deal with the PS?Ps 3 hour battery life. Maybe consumers will be ok with that, maybe they wont. For all we know, battery tech by then could very well bump up that 3 hour playtime to 4 or 5 hours. What if PS?P is the same size as Switch but twice as thick due to a larger battery for 8 hours playtime? is that a dealbreaker? Hard to say. If you have full ergonomic "joycon" style grips on either side of the tablet, other than extra weight, I don't see a major problem with how thick the tablet is. Will that cost more money? Yes. How much more and how much is too much for a handheld/hybrid?

Nobody but AMD and PS know exactly what PS would be able to do with x86 and a handheld come 2020, if you want to talk about specifics. That's also not to say its totally possible, because it wouldn't be easy, in many ways, that's for sure, but you can't also say its impossible. Just look at the Switch. They basically put a PS3 inside of it. Even if you look at the super slim PS3, thats a huge size reduction. Different tech yes, but none the less. Plus the PS3's tech and performance was WAY ahead of its time, and Switch's tech and performance is behind its time (not for its purpose though). The PS4 to PS?P size transition wouldn't be that unbelieveable. You still have a point, if they tried to make it 1.8Tflops anyway, which I think is expecting too much. 1.0Tflop though, that's a different story, since "Switch 2" should be able to hit that by then pretty easily.

As for emulation, I don't see why PS can't do something like what XB did. The way I understand it, the XB1 basically "emulates" the 360 OS, and uses it to run the 360 games. Thats not to say its super easy and no problem. XB says it was still hard to do, but much easier than any other approach. PS even proves that, since they haven't even bothered to try it with PS4, as far as we know. That however, was going from PPC to x86. PS4 to PS?P would be x86 to x86. Again, not a simple task, due to consoles being coded to the metal, but at least should be do-able, if PS wants to put the effort into it.

If Switch can sell like it has in todays world for $299 as a handheld/hybrid, then why not a PS?P in 2020 for a similar price? If your a gamer who likes both PS and NiN games, as well as third party, and who also typically buys a PS console since you have no choice when it comes to the big AAA titles being only on console, why not buy a "Switch 2" as well as PS?P and continue to get all the games you want as well as the freedom you want to play them anywhere?

This is enitrely taking into account "what if SNY wants to expand the PS ecosystem", as if they've hit that console sales wall and need to diversify. As long as PS can continue to grow their home console market share, then the effort for a PS?P isn't really needed. With the mobile space gowing like it is, and home consoles stagnating in comparison, it's only a matter of time before PS is forced into serious mobile hardware, and an "all in one" PS ecosystem makes the most sense.