Might Sony go with a two-SKU strategy next-gen (like Microsoft did with Series S)?

[Bofferbrauer2]

scrapking said:

Norion said:

Due to the success of the Series S I think it's likely they will but I hope they don't so their first party games have better minimum hardware. And I disagree about there not being a PS5 Pro since the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were both successful and if one of them does it the other has to unless they're ok with being at a big disadvantage power wise throughout the 2nd half of the generation and I don't think Sony would be fine with that.

I hope mid-gen refreshes don't happen for another reason.  The Series S showed how moving to a new architecture could get more performance than the One X overall, but also smaller and cheaper.  "Pro" consoles extend a generation, but I'd argue that doesn't benefit consumers.  Moving to a better architecture, with backward compatibility, is what benefits consumers IMO.

But it sure would be interesting if Sony extends the generation with a PS5 Pro, while Microsoft ends the generation and begins a new one on a better architecture (with back-compat).  Now *THOSE* comparisons would keep Digital Foundry busy!  :)

Considering how fast the computer performance moves forward right now, I think a mid-gen refresh is practically inevitable if they want to keep the generation going for longer than just 6-7 years.

The Ryzen 6000 mobile chips are already dangerously close to the series S in terms of performance (both CPU and GPU) and I'm fairly sure that by 2025, even the PS5 and XSX will be getting in range of AMD's APUs.

Raytracing is a weak point of AMD GPUs so far, and will probably only get really better with RDNA4. Since Raytracing is growing in the AAA space and consoles are mostly left out of it so far, I expect a mid-gen upgrade when those GPUs are getting released in 2024. Right now, the performance increase from RDNA2 to RDNA3 ain't big enough to avail a mid-gen upgrade for the big consoles, though a refresh with a die shrink is not out of question.

This is all true for the big models. The Series S however could benefit already from an upgrade: It's too weak anyway for Raytracing and even for non-raytraced games, it's performance is increasing limiting and not helped by the slow and small amount of memory. Upgrading the series S could give about 50% more performance if done right for the same TDP, making the system much more viable for the next years. The main question is if the price increases at TSMC would make the console more expensive and thus not worth it from a business perspective or not.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 09 January 2023