Rumor: PS5 announcement coming mid 2019 and more info at PSX 2019

[DonFerrari]

Intrinsic said:

DonFerrari said:

If you allow running on the external HDD then you already go there on limitating factor.

Didn't say the will be able to play their games from the external HDD. Said the external HDD will just allow them back up their games. when they wanna play a game from the external HDD it will work just like playing a game from the disc. It will temporally install the game to internal storage.

Understood. Still they could if they so much choose at the time of launch if SSD is still expensive and they can't just put a low SDD because of marketing they could very well put a very small 128GB soldered on the motherboard as the main memory and a 1TB HDD for the internal backup. Then later when it is better priced they could just move to 512GB SSD only.

There is more than one way to foot the bill and also meet marketing needs. Because we all now that if for some reason PS5 offers low density SSD only with XbNext offering high density HDD PR will find a way to say Sony little SDD is bad for gaming.

Intrinsic said:

DonFerrari said:

And if you say they are always going to pick the cheapest available  at launch  why did they got 8GB of GDDR5 and 500GB of HDD for PS4 instead of 4GB of DDR3 and 250GB of HDD?

At the time even 8GB of DDR3 would have been cheaper. Or 4GB DDR3 and 4GB GDDR5 would also have been cheaper than going with 8GB GDDR5.

I am with you on this. Console OEMs have to be more forward thinking when picking parts.

Yes, they will look for the cheaper option that meets the need of performance and PR, but not only launch, full life. They need to do the profit curve for the full life.

Pemalite said:

DonFerrari said:

Sorry Pema, but only short-sighted company would look exclusively at launch. Price at launch is all good and dandy, but if one technology that gives then better price at launch but 2 years later is more expensive than another tech by their analysis they would go with the second one if it's something you can't change (like the memory where GDDR5 ended up being a better cost curve than staying at DDR3).

And if you say they are always going to pick the cheapest available  at launch  why did they got 8GB of GDDR5 and 500GB of HDD for PS4 instead of 4GB of DDR3 and 250GB of HDD?

Also better yet you ended up agreeing that if they can see a component or design that long run will be cheaper even if short run more expensive they will choose the second one.

I am not saying consoles go for the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel hardware.
But they do opt for cost-sensitive components.

And when it comes to consoles, Graphics is what sells games... So Graphics will get the priority on the hardware budget (Usually $400-$500 USD) and that means things like the CPU, Storage etc' get treated like second class citizens and the GPU and Memory will tend to get priority.

8GB of GDDR5 was relatively inexpensive when the Playstation 4 launched... And that was at a time when DDR3 was increasing in price, Sony made a cost-analysis and made the correct decision.
Although, I personally wished they threw more Ram at the problem, but Tomatoes, Potatoes.

OK we have an agreement on the first part. But it seemed you were putting it all on getting the cheapest period.

Also agree on the second part (even more if they can change the other stuff reducing cost and gaining performance, if SSD was already cheaper at time of PS4Pro and X1X even though games would still meet the lowest denominator of X1 and PS4 they would put it and call better performance on the premium console).

Launch is different than design. At the time they decided the architeture and components the memory was still more expensive (and you can see the reactions on this forum on the relentless discussion on the memory decisions of both consoles). You can let it go and accept that sometimes the console makers will choose something that is more expensive at the moment of launch if they see that long run it will make they more money even if at first they need to eat up a little of the cost, Sony have made it with PS1, 2 and 3. Or will you say to me that BD drive was the most cost sensitive decision? Or Cell?