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thismeintiel on 25 February 2019
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Biggerboat1 said:
thismeintiel said:

1) Maybe I should have been more clear.  I meant partly make up early adopters.  And this gen, those that were early adopters, i.e. who bought it at $399, were a huge crowd.  For the PS4 that was ~30M, nearly 1/3 of its current sales.

2) Like I keep saying, there is a HUGE difference between a launch console and a mid-gen upgrade.  The upgrade is naturally going to sell to less people, as there will be plenty of people who will just wait another 3 years or so and just spend that money on a next gen system.  Others are budget buyers who wait for the PS4 to drop to $199.  Gamers do look these things up, especially at launch.  Why do you think the PS4 continued to outsell the XBO, even though MS got the price to equal less than 7 months after launch and had many sales to make it $50+ less than the PS4.  The perceived value was still too low at that price for many, as the PS4 was just more powerful.

3) The PS4 base model is much closer to 1/2 the power of the Pro than it is 1/3.  Also, games on the Pro are not made only targeting that HW.  It is made so that it runs well on the base model, then a few bells and whistles (usually just higher res and/or framerate) are added to the game to take advantage of the Pro.  If the games were made using only Pro HW, you can bet they would look better.  4) There will be little interest in the lower powered XB2 because the early adopters will be looking for a real jump in performance, not another half step.  And given that it will probably still be $299, early adopters would rather spend the extra $100 to buy a system that is 3x the power and a real jump.  If it was $199, those budget gamers might come into play.  Of course, they may just choose to wait a 2-3 of years and wait for the $199 BF deals for the other consoles, to also get a real jump.

1) The early adopter thing, still not really getting your point, what counts as 'early' - 6 months / 12 months / 18 months?

2) There were many reasons PS4 beat out XB1 - to simplify it to being power only is silly. There are also multiple examples of weaker hardware winning a gen so...
3) PS4 : 1.84 TFLOPS / Pro : 4.2 TFLOPS - so 2.3 x more powerful, just for clarity, but then the Pro isn't doing real 4K, to do that would need to be a bit more powerful, bringing us closer to the rumoured Xbox Skus.
I'm not an expert on this stuff (maybe Pemalite or one of the more technically minded guys can help us here), but my understanding is that GPU power requirements scales with resolution. So to increase the resolution from Full HD to 4K, you're gonna need 4x the power. If I'm correct then the that means there won't be any extra 'bells & whistles' between the 2 skus but just resolution bump. In fact Anaconda might struggle to hit full 4K at only 3x... 

4) I guess we just fundamentally disagree on the potential popularity of the lower-priced sku. I believe that there's a healthy market for a cheaper model and that a lot of gamers just don't care about 4K, not to the tune of an extra $100-$200 anyway. If MS does indeed go this route then I guess we'll see!

EDIT : not sure what's up with the formatting here but it won't let me put an extra line between points 2) & 3) and 3) & 4) - very odd!

1. Early adopter is someone who buys the system at its launch price.  That is usually ~1-2 years.   For a system that is on the market for ~10 years, that would basically be the first 10%-20% of its lifetime.

2. I didn't say it was only about power, I said it was about perceived value.  Several things play into that, power being one.  XBO, even though it had fixed pretty much everything within the first 8 months of launch, it still didn't have the same perceived value as the PS4 for most, even when it was the same price or ~$50 cheaper.

3. We'll just have to wait and see the real world results on this one.

4. If the lower SKU launches at $199, it definitely has the possibility to wrangle in budget gamers.  If its $299, only $100 cheaper than the premium SKU, its chances diminish.  Early adopters are obviously fine with paying an extra $100 for a much better SKU.  And budget gamers are more likely to wait til something drops to $199. 

Intrinsic said:

 

  • Yes. In a rendering pipeline resolution is one of the things that scale proportionally. So if you are going for 4 times the rez you either need 4 times the power or 4 times the rendering time. But there are things that dont scale up at all unless a dev specifically wants them to (eg geometry). Another thing to consider is that the number you are told (eg 4.2TF, 1.8TF) doesn't mean that at any one time all of that GPU is fixed on driving rez. This is a very loose description, but say out of that 1.8TF 900Gflops was used solely for the rez part of the pipeline for a 1080p, then if you want the same game running in 4k you will need 3.6TF. 

  • I agree with you here as well. I too believe there is a very healthy market for a dedicated  1080p sku. Funny thing is that those f is in forums that say its stupid are the minority. Last I checked there are still more people with 1080p TVs than there are with 4KTVs.

Like I said, a 1080p device's appeal will depend on price.  At $299, it's less appealing to budget gamers, who are more likely to pick it up at $199.  Of course, by the end 2020 we are more than likely going to have more than 1/2 of US households with 4K TVs.  I would imagine it will be nearly the same in other developed nations.  A box advertising 1080p at that time will be much less appealing than one that advertises 4K.

Trumpstyle said:
thismeintiel said:

Yikes.  You have some ridiculously low expectations for next gen.  Trust me, 4K 30/60 FPS, even if it is 4K CB to push visuals more, will be the goal for next gen.  They are already advertising 4K with the Pro and X, not aiming for 4K next gen would be idiotic.  Sure, we may have a few games that aren't the most optimized hitting 1440p, but that won't be the goal for the majority of games.  Especially not exclusives.

I don't have low expections, I'm just assuming game developers will go the easy route, the most powerful machine will have the highest ress :). But even for Sonys first party games I think they will target 4k CB or 1440p upscaled to 4k, they will need to do this to get a decent boost in graphic fidelity as for right now I expect Navi to be a dissappointment.

I just can't see anyone targeting 1440p.  Not if we are actually getting ~12 Tflops to play with.  While I know this isn't always exactly how it works, but if resolution basically scales with performance increases, that will definitely be enough.  Just think of the best looking PS4 games.  Now, that's running on a 1.84 Tflops GPU.  Going with the performance premise, it would take ~7.36 Tflops to run the same game at native 4K.  That's still ~4.64 Tflops of breathing room.  Of course, that doesn't include any kind of improvements to GCN that Navi will include over Polaris.

Nate4Drake said:
thismeintiel said:

Yes, please.  If the PS5 can play all 4 previous consoles at launch, that will be a big point in its favor.

It would be a big plus, and a way to secure even more the Playstation ecosystem.   I feel nostalgic sometimes, and I would play again on PS5 the best games of all previous playstation hardware, it would be a dream comes true.

Yep.  With PS4 B/C, it is much more likely that current PS4 owners stay in the PS ecosystem.  I'm looking forward to remasters through emulation.  Not sure how many will actually use it, but I'm sure Sony will at least.  I didn't know this, but apparently that's how they did the Loco Roco port on the PS4.  Even if that feature isn't used much, straight emulation will still be a good thing to have.