i had my doubts initially. But I'm convinced it's real. First MS talked about an upgraded Xbox, and then all these PS4k rumors sprung outta nowhere. But most importantly, it's too big a rumor for Sony to not have said anything to deny it.

However, it fits in nicely with my theory that this will mark the last generation where we have distinct generational leaps. rather we will have generational transitions while with 2-4yr reiterations of technology

I am not sure where you got the $30k number from.  As I posted above, Samsung released a true UHD (4K) Bluray player for $400 last month.  This was announced last year (September), and confirmed at CES in January.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-UBD-K8500-Blu-ray-Player/dp/B01A9V6OI6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459517064&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+ubd-k8500

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-ubd-k8500-4k-ultra-hd-wi-fi-built-in-blu-ray-player-black/4853800.p?id=bb4853800&skuId=4853800

i believe in it. it makes sense for everyone (sony, developers, consumers) for consoles to follow the same hardware revision model that apple did with iphone.

people are angry right now because the internet is always angry. in the end more frequency smaller hardware boosts with forward/backward compatibility is good for everyone. graphic whores can upgrade sooner. non-graphic whores can upgrade less frequency. developers no longer need to guess which hardware specs to target at generational upgrades which means consumers no longer need to wait that 1st year of shitty software support in the first year of a generational update.

ms is doing this too. like spencer said he isn't going to have anyone open up their xbox and swap out a graphics card. this is simple iphone6 to iphone 6S kind of revision. I"m still on my iphone 4S and everything i care about still works. i'm not sure how frequently i'm going to upgrade my playstation but it is nice to know i could go 3 years or 12 years and still keep playing.

 Unless Sony & Microsoft are going to start giving away consoles for $0 with 2 year Internet contract plans none of what you wrote is going to happen.

 It's apples to oranges. 

Where does all this push come from that the ps4 needs upgrading? Have you guys seen Uncharted? These systems and developers are just reaching their prime, we can rude this wave for 2 years now.

Sure will $2000 Pc's outperform the consoles, they sure will and ALWAYS have. It has ZERO bearing on the console market.

Steam box success might have had an impact but they look like they fizzled out.

i fail to see the relavance.  why would MSony need to sell hardware via a monthly contract in order to implement forward/backwards hardware compatibility with smaller but more frequency hardware revision.  the ability to have a ps4k release is like the entire reason the ps4 (and xbox one) moved to x86 architecture in the first place.  no one should be surprised by this.  no one should fear this either.

Indeed. Yet the costs this time is not in the actual drive. According to avs forum a standard 6x CAV BD-ROM player should be able to play 4K UHD discs with minor modifications. The price is in the hardware needed to decode the 128 mbps H.265 stream with high bandwidth Dolby Atmos support. A 4k streaming / upscaling player doesn't need as much power as 4K streaming has much lower requirements.

4K blu-ray comes in 3 flavors: 50GB at 82Mbps, 66GB at 108Mbps, and 100GB at 128Mbps.
The 50GB discs are simply 2 layer blu-ray discs, 66GB a 2 layer slightly higher density disc (33GB layers instead of 25GB) and 100GB discs are the 3 layer variants. It's not completely new tech this time, more like HD-DVD compared to DVD and even a lot less of an upgrade than that.
A 6x CAV lu-ray disc player (the one in ps4) has a max throughput of about 90 to 216mps on blu-ray (depending on where the data is on the disc). The higher dot pich increases that to just under 128mbps for the inner track. A slightly faster drive than 6x speed should do. (119mbps on the innermost track if it all scales the way I think it does)

It's not new tech requiring new drive technology and new lasers diodes. Hence Samsung can start with a $400 player, while blu-ray started at $1200 at the time it ended up in the ps3! $400 is pretty cheap for a first player. Plus 4 layer drives have been out for years (BDXL)
The ps4 should be capable enough to handle the decoding and video processing, just some minor drive modifications needed and HDMI 2.0 port with HDCP 2.2 copy protection.

Thanks for that info.

I could not find anything to figure out what the real cost difference is between a UHD player and a standard Bluray player.  Given that upscaling Bluray players cost about $150 (so these would already have an HDMI 2.0 port and support HDCP), there is a $250 upcharge for the audio decoder, H.265 decoder, better laser lenses / servos / etc (which I am assuming would be needed to support the higher dot pitch), and probably some additional licensing costs for a true UHD Bluray player.  Even if the PS4 can already handle the audio decoding and H.265 decoding in software, there would still be additional costs associated with supporting UHD.  I am not quite sure that these would be insignificant (I am assuming at least $100 worth).

They moved to x86 architecture because it was cheaper, not because it was better.

And monthly contracts make upgrades bearable.  The costs are spread out over 2 years (for most phone contracts anyway), so most people are perfectly happy to upgrade to better hardware when their contract is up.  I don't think the mass market is ready to buy new consoles every 2 years.  If they don't, then deveoplers will not have any incentive to spend the effort to make games take advantage of the new hardware (and worry about supporting multiple platforms).  If the games aren't any better, then there is even less incentive to upgrade.  People are perfectly happy with upgrading once every 5 or so years.

Also, Sony and Microsoft don't make their money from the hardware.  They make their money from the software.  Their goal is make the hardware as cheap as possible, to sell to as many people as possible.  I just don't see them spending money on R&D to develop something slightly better (and more expensive).  If anything, they'll spend it to develop the same features for less money (such as a slim model).  I am not even convinced that they would add in a UHD Bluray drive because of the extra cost.

no one is asking you to upgrade every 2 years. 

both the ps4 and the ps4k will play the same games.  the ps4k will probably play games at that only run at 30fps on ps4 at 60fps.  some people care a lot about that and will upgrade.  some people won't give a shit and won't upgrade.  because games will be forward/backward compatible you can litterally wait as long as you want to upgrade.  older hardware versions will run a bit worse than newer hardware versions.  as a consumer you can decide what kind of performance you want.  if you are real graphics whore you can upgrade ever 2 years.  if you don't care that a game runs at 30fps and maybe 900p instead of 1080p than you can probably wait 12 years.  there will always be a higher end model to buy (~$400) but there will always be a lower end model to buy too (~$200 or $300) if you can't afford to spend a lot of money.  your library lasts "forever" instead of being abandon each generation. 

developers can and will optimize for each hardware.  they already do it on pc and that enviornment is far more complex because instead of having 2-4 hardware versions to target there are literally thousands of variants to consider on pc.  it won't be "free" for them to do this kind of development but i think developers will prefer this kind of problem to the alternative problem of starting a project 3-4 years prior to knowing what the specs of the machine the game will run on will actually be.  business love predictability.  it helps them plan which is crucial when starting a project that lasts several years.

HEVC or h.265 decoder is already in those $150 streaming upscaling 4K blu-ray players, just not at that bandwidth. Dolby Atmos is already on blu-ray, yet also not at the max 4K discs allow (upto 1536khz sample rate and max 32 channels). Licensing costs are probably not that much for Sony, I doubt the costs would be very much. Plus BDXL is already at the higher dot pitch, 100GB BDXL discs are triple layer discs (BDXL goes up to 128GB) A 16x speed BDXL burner is already down to $84 new at retail and some people at avs forum speculate that the current ps4 bd-rom player is already capable. It's old tech.

However the absence of any 4K UHD player announcement by Sony is suspicious. Do they want to focus on their 4K streaming service first or do they want to position the ps4 slim as the ultimate multi media device (remote sold separately or phone app). The former might be more likely as you would think that Sony would want to at least release a high end THX certified player, which the ps4 won't be.