Still have my doubts, but am interested in this..

Probably because plenty around here will pretend to know something about hardware capabilities relative to price. A 800 USD box at cost to Sony and selling for 400 is a stretch on playing 4k. Very, very few games would run competently. I imagine only less intensive games would be able to pull it off. They won't be seeing Bloodbourne or any AAA title for that matter run at 4k.

PS4.5, if it is true, is a completely new console not an upgrade. Meaning the costs would be like making a budget build 4k gaming rig from scratch. Obviously Sony can get it together for a little cheaper but it wont be by such large sums that 4k gaming will be competently viable for a low price of 400 USD taking a loss or not... It's also very unlikely Sony will take a loss at all, given the strategy with the PS4 in the first place was to sell the hardware at a profit. Which they did. Taking 400 USD+ loss per unit is just eyeroll worthy, not even the PS3 lost that much and far as the hardware ambitions they had was a failure because they had no choice but to take even bigger losses to stay competitive. Edit - I agree with you pretty much. lol

I do suspect that going forward the intentions and also what Publishers will do... Is that Sony is going to try and place it in a range that makes VR more viable for publishers to design into their games as an added feature. In other words it would be something like... Just an example.

PSVR 60-90 FPS min req's...

PS4.5 capable of running that 30-60, 1080p (likely better textures, shadows ect...)

PS4, 30-60 900-1080p...

I'm being very generous considering most games haven't really been hitting a solid 30, 900-1080p hardly at all. Anyway, it wouldn't cannibalize other versions of games and it would prevent Pub's from having to fund completely seperate projects. I have a very hard time seeing Publishers fund VR specific games and not have them co-developed with the regular consoles in mind if it's to be worth their time at all. So making the specs accordingly would be a good idea to me then to start pushing skews where games have trouble being optimized due to hardware constrants of VR or the weaker PS4 model.

That said... I have no faith in Publishers / Developers that it won't harm some versions of games.

Has anyone else realized, the new ps4 gen MAY be able to brute force PS3 emulation?

That is possible. At some point Sony has to move everything over to X86, they can not run the Cell based server farms forever, and if they want to continue to push streaming games, they are going to have to get PS1/2/3/4/P/V games working in one enviornment.

I have said from the beginning, that Sony should offer compatability for local games for those that go out and actually by a PC from them. That should be a bonus of actually owning the PC as opposed to streaming on non Sony devices. 

Sony no longer owns the vaio brand fyi. Also, releasing a pc emulator is a horrible idea. Someone would reverse engineer it and pirates would be all over it. Look what happened to the android to windows remote play hack.

Sony no longer owns Vaio, because they have the PS4 which is their own in house PC. That is what I was referring to when I said PC, because PlayStation is not a console anymore.

 I agree that Windows and Mac emulation is not a good option. However, PlayStation Now streaming, should definitly be made available on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. In fact I think PS Now should replace Remote Play, and they should keep remote play exclusive to Sony devices on Sony OS's, just for the reasons you stated.

Why not? PSNow uses ps3 server blades with 8 ps3's a piece atm. Shrink it down to 16 then 32 per blade, servers become cheaper and cheaper to maintain. Emulating ps3 games requires a lot of overhead and likely causes compatibility problems. Sony is a hardware company first.

A ps4 elite with the neccesary shrunk components for hardware BC ps1, ps2 and ps3 would be interesting.

Come to think of it, one of those ps3 server blades should be enough for 4K gaming! Well almost, 4k is 9 x 720p.

Hmm, first console worth buying this gen?

So this is what we're doing now? It's gotten so bad that big console makers actually think they can get away with that kind of "minor upgrade", "mid-generation" re-release shit for HOME consoles now?

Sorry......but that is serious BS. The entire point of home console gaming, along with the convenience of playing on your couch, on your TV, is that you buy ONE piece of hardware, and you are able to buy games for just that hardware, for the next 5-6 years, before the next gen console comes out.

If this is going to become the new norm, where they release somewhat upgraded "1.5" models of home systems just a few short years after initial launch......I dunno man. It doesn't speak well for the direction the industry in general has been headed anyway for years....