| KBG29 said: Very nice post. I think you are absolutely on point. Look at the evidence we already have, look at the road maps, and you can start to poaint a pretty clear picture. It all just depends on what stratagy Sony takes. I still think a PS4 Premium in maybe even early 2019 on 7nm for all PS4 games at native 4K wouldn't be a bad idea. Then let PS5 come with AMD's Next gen GPU tech and Zen 3 on 7nm+ in 2021. We know they are going to shrink PS4 architecture to 7nm anyways, so might as well take advantage of it for one last upgrade. I don't think the core PlayStation audience would have any issue buying a PS4 Premium in 2019 and a PS5 in 2021. The move to 7nm+ should be the last revision to PS4 simply to cut cost across the line, and let it ride out it's twilight years. |
Honestly, I do not see a PS4 premium happening. It just makes zero sense especially when a full fledged PS5 would probably be hitting the market around a year later. Remember, the tech that would have made a PS4 premium possible is exactly what would be the basis of a PS5. Rather, I expect to see a PS4 super slim and a PS4pro slim that would retail for $129 and $249 respectively. And probably even release after the PS5 has released if at all.
Also, one of the big selling points of the PS5 will be 4k gaming. A very clear message of 4k gaming at that. You don't want to take one of the biggest selling points of the new hardware and give it to a (at the time) 7 year old platform. That would be cheaper than the new console no doubt.
I could see a PS5 as late as 2021 though, its possible. But i believe they would be mostly ready to go as early as 2020 with at least one of two possible strategies. But if MS doesn't push to launch in 2020 then they would wait till 2021.
And yes, it all comes down to the strategy sony takes, but that is also highly dependent on what strategy MS is taking too. Sony would wait until they have clearly seen what MS intends to do; they have won this gen and they can afford to do just that. They will not allow MS launch a year ahead tho, which is why they would have the best of two possible strategies developed enough to be finalized. This is basically a choice between an APU (12-15TF GPU) or going with a discrete CPU/GPU combo (18-20TF GPU). One option will basically cost like $100 more than the other to make.
Maybe I'm just overly optimistic, but my money is on a discrete architecture. There are a number of reasons why I think they could and would do this......
