Never read something so out of touch.

Even if you don't want to hear it, technology and gaming are intertwined. So much that gaming pushes technology as much as technology pushes gaming. So many advcances in technology thanks to gaming and the other way around. There was no moment in the entire gaming history that game developers didn't demand stronger and more cutting edge technology. It's more apparent in this generation than ever that developers are frustrated and incapable of dealing with the underpowered hardware they have to work with. They can't get their games to run properly and have to even stoop to silly lies like "it's more cinematic".

Sony is on a roll and sellinmg PS4s like crazy. There is not a single thing to suggest that they will suddenly sell less because they introduce a better product. I mean other than whiney minority gamers. Gamers will be happy, Sony will be happy, developers will be happy. No one is going to stop producing software for a 40 million sold hardware. Gamers will not switch over to MS or Nintendo just because their console manufacturer of choice is giving them the option to have an even better experience. There is simply no logic behind that argument.

BTW a lot of PS4 games already run like crap and it's not going to get better, with or without PS4k. Console gamers don't care now and they won't care in the future. Where do you expect them to go when they're not satisfied anymore with the old PS4? Stop playing games altogether? Switch to a platform that is even weaker? Yeah, that makes total sense.

Thanks. I couldn't even bother to reply him. 

I don't mind people having a varying opinion, but there are some things ome have said that have been so outta touch that it makes me wonder how to even start trying to reason with them. 

A lot have been going on about this as if this suddenly means the PS4 stops getting games. While at the same time saying the Neo gets half baked support. And what funny is that neither if those arguments are even remotely true. 

While I have no personal preference on which way it goes, I do think there would have to be some major transitions in the way that the gaming market works, in order to support such a business model:

1) The purchasing and pricing models of consoles may have to change. Arguing that it works because it works with phones misses a few key points. While, yes, new phones can be very expensive, more so than any new console, they are a) considered a higher utility product by many consumers compared to consoles, justifying higher prices; and, b) the price of the phone is typically not satisfied immediately upon purchase, and is usually spread across 1-3 years.

2) Software monetization will also have to radically shift. Writing software that supports multiple SKUs will increase testing costs, and potentially bring up development issues. All sorts of considerations are made when writing software about the hardware it is running on. Developers like ND, who pride themselves on "writing to the metal" will be at a significant disadvantage.

If Sony has some kind of mandate that games will have to forward support then next two or three iterations of hardware, this will mean that that developers will still need to be on the project to patch them when issues inevitably arise, which means that publishers will still need to fund it. How many publishers are interested in funding old games well into the future? Hell, EA seems to want to turn off their servers after a couple of years. Or, has anyone tried to play a Call of Duty game that's more than a couple years old? Almost impossible.

And it makes sense, most console games have the bulk of revenue generated at start-of-life, and many gamers are resistant to ideas of microtransactions or subscription models which could move gaming to whole-life revenue generation.

Even iPhone and Android apps will usually require updates to them to keep them working properly on new versions of iOS and Android. If anybody has ever tried using a developer build of a mobile OS with apps that are not yet updated, you will know how unstable they are until they have been patched for the latest versions. And that's only a yearly update, with a simple set of functions. Updates across three years of development, with much more complex functionality to be kept, well, functional, will be dramatically more expensive. It only happens with mobile apps because they receive constant monetization from ad revenues, microtransactions, and subscriptions, and they are far, far, cheaper to keep stable.

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That said, the idea of Sony, MS, and Nintendo, having to "restart" every generation seems like madness. Pretty sure Nintendo aren't happy about losing all their progress from Wii to Wii U, same as MS and Xbox. Sony knows the risk is high of that happening to them in the future, too.

I don't think a model that will impose regular high costs on consumers, or require publishers to support their games for 15 years (!!!) is necessarily the solution.

Oh I can relate on that first one. Wouldn't PS4 neo (if it's real) would have to be released to get any kind of support? My point is that there's alot of unkowns about it including if it exists yet a lot of people (wink) are talking in absolutes about it when they shouldn't be. 

I don't know why you think SDKs are these wonderful magic things that load balance and optimize everything for you. They can only do so much.

Consider you're developing a game. The cpu does it's share, as well as the gpu. Now you assign more tasks to the cpu to use the idle time left over waiting for certain gpu or other tasks, while carrying over some other CPU tasks to gpgpu to fill up the idle time there, which again allows more cpu time for gameplay related things. The SDK makes that process easier, yet it doesn't do it for you. In the end you get a balanced piece of software that fully utilizes the hardware.

Now you disrupt that balance by unequally increacing the processing speed. Apart from some unforseen timing related consequences, everything should still run at least as well as it did before, as long as you keep the fps the same. However if you assume that it's easy to now suddenly run everything at double the fps or double the resolution you might be in for a rude awakening. Your carefully balanced program now runs like an engine with a wonky wheel. Plus even if you don't add any upgrades you still need to test it all again.

Rememer on PC all this extra load balancing optimization never happens. That's why consoles can get more out of the hardware while PC games rely on overhead. Which is how a GPU heavy game ends up only using 10-20% of cpu time on PC, while a CPU heavy game will hinder high fps.

Anyway you are correct that performance won't be worse on NEO, even a bit better in most cases. Yet you are mistaken that it is easy to simply use that double performance beyond a simple resolution bump. And that it won't have an effect on optimization in ongoing titles, as what load balancing works in the base model's favor won't neccesarily benefit the NEO and vice versa.
Plus things like deciding on 1 resolution can result in a lot of savings by hardcoding that resolution into the software and providing lookup tables for many things. That probably still works as Sony isn't stupid, which is probably why there is a separate GPU binary (unlike PCs where you have 1 code base) and the SDK will solve most of that for you on compile time. Yet during development and testing you are now working on a much more general piece of software instead of fixating on 1 profile.

Middleware engines will do a lot of that for you too. Yet they need to be updated as well, figure out new best ways to load balance on both hardware specs, and pass on the costs to the developers... Extra time, extra money. While the install base is the same as previously projected, heck it might even grow slower as a cheaper slim is what used to ignite sales and draw over the majority to the new gen. Maybe the NEO will do the same, dunno, opinions seem divided.

In the end, there is more work to be done for the same amount of potential sales. Which either means more generalized software like on PC, leading to less full utilization of the hardware, slightly less ambitious games, or ways to get those extra costs back through DLC or higher prices.

Some has drawn parallels with smartphones. iPhones is coming up to its first game-console-like generation age. It is nine years since the first iPhone and six years since the iPhone 4. It now starts to get trouble updating the old phones and will probably become more difficult in the future.

"Apple pulls ios 9-3 update for older devices following activation problems"
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/03/apple-pulls-ios-9-3-update-for-older-devices-following-activation-problems/

EDIT: ios 9.3 only goes back to 4S, that is five years of backwards compatibility.

If this model works, it's not that publishers support games for 15yrs. it's that Sony ensures that every hardware they release is BC without the need for any kinda patching of older titles. 

Quick question: have you ever made a console video game, or even a PC video game that required direct work with an API?

Well said. I do understand why you may say that a proper PS5 may be necessary. and that is attributed to the fact that at some point people will just stop buying incrementally upgraded PS4s..... but the thing about this thing is that sound arguments can be made for any perspective one chooses to look at everything from. 

You are basically talking about a world where hardware hitting the rice price point and library density results in it having a peak sales marker for that generation. And that after that the only thing that will result in another uotake of hardware and it's resultant peak is new hardware. New generational hardware. 

I'm suggesting that there isn't a chart for what may end up happening with incremental hardware released yet. Cause then it's not about every having a peak, but about selling consistently good number every year. Then it becomes more about install base retention than about getting new customers. Sony wouldn't care if they are selling only 8M consoles a year to ppl that want the latest and bst version of their console if that 8M is only adding to an active install base of over 150M aquired over a 9yr period. And the difference between consoles and mobile phones or other incrementally upgraded tech, is that the money really comes from buying software and not the hardware itself. 

The biggest standout benefit of this system to the platform holder is that it prevents them from ever having to do a hard reset and start all over again. And trust me, I'm sure publishers are just as ecstatic about that as the olatform holders. 

Great points. Last gen was quite different from the norm. It started with MS getting in trouble with the XBox, no room for a slim due to NVidia keeping the price high which forced them to launch early with the rrod while killing off the original XBox. Sony was in a blu-ray vs hd-dvd war and ended up with an expensive machine which cost them a lot of money. Both launched with a console a bit ahead of the tech curve and both lost a lot of money, while Nintendo did it's usual thing and got free reign with an inexpensive console that became a giant hit.

Lessons learned, and after a longer generation with that delayed peak to recoup the losses, XBox One and PS4 launched with a much more reasonable BOM getting a more affordable start. To the consumer it might seem that tech hasn't progressed as much, since the ps2 to 360 step was bigger than usual, while the 360 to ps4 step was back on the normal path, leaving a smaller noticeable increase.

Now some people like to think that incremental models will keep the sales curve steady. I doubt it. It won't crash as much as when a new console is due obviously, and sure there will be people upgrading. Yet there will also be people longing for a new gen, new experience, not feeling any need to upgrade for a bit better graphics, switching to a competitor for a new experience. iPhone fatigue is already happening. If die hard fans are already returning the upgrade why would that not happen with incremental consoles. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-apple-iphone-se-review
I put my money where my mouth is by purchasing the SE, but I ended up returning it - the whole user experience was simply too close to the product I already own. It may not have been quite the revelatory upgrade I was hoping for, but that's not to say that this product doesn't deserve kudos.

Plus it becomes a mess after a few iterative upgrades. Different second hand versions of ps4s, which new games still work on what older version and are thus held back by the specs of that version. For example if the NEO is getting 9 year guaranteed support, that means games are still bound by that 8 core Jaguar and 8GB of ram until 2025! (Assuming 3 yearly upgrades and NEO.2 getting a better CPU and more RAM in 2019, which won't be used until 2025...)

One last thought, what if PC games had a clause to be guaranteed to run well on 9 year old average PCs and can have no extra features. That means supporting GPU's from 2007 which had 256MB memory lol. Well pretty much the same as gameplay still being determined by what ps3 and 360 can do. No Witcher 3 sorry.