Nah, the improvements on the Neo will be minor. Most people will own the original PS4.

ok. of you have been there then you should be able to relate with any of what I'm about to say. 

Multiplatform games all have  a config file of sorts. The PC version of said games have multiple config files. This makes it easy for devs to scale between XB1,PS4, PC low/medium/high/ultra. With the PC theye even allow the end user choose what in said config file they wanna enable via handy in game menus and some adventurous users can even hack the games and release "mods".

Its all about scalability. We have the XB1, PS4 and PS4n. Which as far as devs are concerned will feel very much like having a PC medium, high and ultra setting. The XB1 will continue to get optimized to run games at medium cause rhas what utsbhardware permits, the PS4 will continue to run games at high settings. Only difference now is that on that PS4 game disc the contained config file will have support for two hardware types. One for high the other for ultra. 

Having a more powerful option doesn't mean that everything else automatically starts to suck, it just means that PS4 gamers get another graphical preset option enabled. What you are saying is almost as if in the PC world devs currently optimize for everyone to run their game with triple Titans or something. No, their games can run just fine at 1080p with any decent rig. 

And the " easy" decision.... is actually not to optimize for the PS4n at all. Cause "management" knows thatthr number of people that own the vanilla PS4 far outweigh those that owm the Neo. 

Thanks for the insight. This was quite illuminating.

I wonder how much effort devs are going to go to for Neo. Initially it will have a small user base, and there is really little incentive for devs to do more than the minimum, since they won;t really sell more games for extra effort and expense. The only 100% consistent benefit will be 1080p native res for all games, compared to PS4 og which only hits that sometimes, and often at a cost to other things.

I am really struggling to see the gaming benfit in this. It's a way to promote 4K movies and buying 4K TVs. But I don;t see it being a direct good to gaming.

You're welcome. There just seems to be a lot of misinformation being spread around as if what is happening now is this great big new industry breaking thing. Where as in truth its always been there just never on consoles. But to even make multiplatform games possible, for any dev to make a game for PC and consoles; this very same thing happens every single time.

Granted scaling up requires more optimization and testing, it's why we have console centric publishers gimoing on a PC version cause of the new infinate optimization requirements on that platform. It's why the FF15 PC version is releasing after the console versions. Why Batman sucks on the PC....etc. But that doesn't apply here cause for the most part scaling up within the PS4 models still has the devs working not only in the exact same dev environment but using the exact same APIs. And there are already fixed guidelines on what should be done and shouldnt be done. 

Let's take FF15 again for instance. When the game hits beta, it becomes all about optimization. If their target is 1080p@30fps then they would work on getting it up to that. In its broken state, by default the PS4n will run it with ease at 1080p@30fps just from simply bruteforcing the code. At that point, they don't have to lay a finger on the PS4n version. They will focus on getting the PS4 base version up to scratch casue all improvements made on the PS4b code will naturally carry over. If anything, having a stable version of the same code running on PS4n hardware will allow them quicker start fixing generalized bugs and play testing while still optimizing the code for the other versions cause again, bugs fixed carries over. 

There is so much more to all this but I notice a lot seem to be freaking out for no real reason other than we got fucked in the ass caaue we are early adopters. And to them I will say, if having the best possible running "console" version of your games mattrs that much, take your current PS4 and sell it for $200 to someone that just wants a PS4, add another $200 to that a buy the PS4n. This is actually a smart way of dropping the price of the PS4 without really dropping the price. 

And I called all this out last year when I said this is where the future of console gaming was going. To me it just made sense. Guess Sony agrees. 

Let me try and key you in.

the gaming benefit to Sony is that they will NEVER lose their established install base. For now devs domt have to do anything besides making the PS4n games run at 1080p, have higher framerate and have higher level assets in certain areas (better lighting, more particle effects, better AA, better LOD...etc). Those are things that can be adjusted in any respectable modern game engine by just moving sliders around.

in another 3yrs, chances are that the install base of PS4n owners will exceed that of the stock PS4 users. And around that time we are likely to see another console... call it the PS4x that is even all round more powerful. At that time the games that console runs at 1080p@30/60fps may just be impossible to run on the current PS4 at anything higher than 720p. But then, the current PS4 can probably be had for as little as $100.

What Sony is doing is adopting a strategy that will mean there will always be a $400 console on the market while slowly phasing out all previous models. Even thoough those models can still play the new games albeit at much lower settings. This brings an end to the age old problem "how do we make new hardware and not lose all our install base in the process thus starting all over again.

But here's what will really pop your head. Now, everyone will pretty much replace their consoles every 3-4yrs. Say I'm willing to spend $400 every 3yrs. and you are willing to spend $400 every 6yrs. You will be " upgrading" when you buy my console for $200 and I add to that to buy the new box for $400. you will be upgrading again 3yrs later when you buy my console again for $200 and I upgrade to the new box And in turn everytime you buy my console for $200, you sell yours to someone else for $100. and to Sony, the install base is just growing.  The value of the previous consoles hold because they can still play the latest games. 

Even Shu has hinted that there may not be a PS5. 

It's not as simple as you're stating. UWP has already demonstrated that there's a lot more to do than a simple config file. This config file situation for multiplatform games is merely a starting point. From there specific optimizations have to be made to ensure consistent performance, sometimes down to a scene by scene basis.  Remove some objects here, bit less grass there, specific draw distance adjustments etc.
On PC you need a healthy overhead or turn some settings down yourself in taxing scenes, on consoles this tweaking is done for you which is time consuming. For 2 hardware specs all that fine tuning doubles. That likely leads to a PC like situation for the NEO, as in leave a healthy overhead to get over the performance bumps, thus only optimizing the base version.

But true, NEO version can have some enhancements from the PC version as long as it doesn't cause performance dips in certain places. However it still needs to be tested, which costs a lot of resources. That has to come from somewhere. So indeed the easy decision is to let the PS4n version run a bit better and not waste time on anything that might need tweaking.

And that is all about multiplatform games made with a scalable PC engine. Console exclusives go a lot deeper into optimizations and customizing game engines, thus a lot more work for 2 hardware specs. For example specific code adjustments to smartly cut some corners, like KZ SF and QB reprojected 1080p modes.

Anyway that all supports what I was trying to get at. Instead of going the extra mile to cram as much as possible into the ps4 version, there is now an alternative. Still show off the best in game graphics, yet some stuff won't quite make it into the ps4 version. Or drop the resolution for the base version. With the extra needed time to test for a second hardware spec, it's only more tempting to put less effort into the best optimized base version, nevermind doing all that work for 2 versions and still sell it to the same userbase.

Besided this is not the same as the PC situation
The CPU binary is identical, while three GPU binaries (shared, PS4-specific and Neo-specific)
Different neo specific GPU code is a bit more than a few settings in a config file.

as long as most TVs don't support adaptive sync, consoles won't either

I hope future HDMI standards are including mandatory adaptive sync, as that would make it possible to use framerates other than 30 or 60 on TVs

Still not seeing a benifit for games. PS4 and Xb one don't need awesomeness upgrades. Wii U clearly does, but that's because it started out with gen 7.5 hardware.

If I'm willing to spend $400 every 6 years then the reason for that is because I want to experience that generational leap. I'm not interested in 30% more power. I'm interested in 100%-200% more power. PS3 had 512MB RAM, PS4 has 8GB. That's a 1500% increase, that's what I want when I go to spend my $400. I'm not interested in spending $200 twice to get 2 rounds of minor improvements two years after the fact and be constantly gaming on low tier hardware with gimped versions of games within the same console eco-system.  

Which is how it should be if you prefer performance in your games over visual gimmicks that barely add anything to the game.

You shouldn't think that "optimization" is a magic spell that suddenly makes 60 fps out of 30. There are extreme hardware limitations and optimization can only do so much. A 60 fps uncharted is simply impossible with the same level of visual fidelity. Unless they invent a completely new way to render games which no one has thought of before. But then we get into the realm of diminishing returns.

No developer on this planet wants to optimize. They have to because they don't want to compromise and they don't have any choice. Optimizing is a chore and can even lead to even more bugs. Everyone is talking about the burden of developing for 2 platforms. I think the burden of having to basically work magic to fit a game on a very constrained platform is an even bigger burden that costs time, money and effort for ultimately only very small gains.