PS4K - Revealed Alongside PS4 Slim as PS4 Pro - General DiscussionPS4

[doblocruiser]

I would call it the "Playstation Pointless". Really nothing that convinced me yesterday. Sony have set the bar high when they released the PS4. They did some great marketing but since this year they are letting me down. Lots of errors and strange choices. It's not the Sony I know and like. Hope they refind themselves quickly.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

I can't believe Sony would market this as a "hardcore gamer" system and not even include a way to watch any 4K Blu-Rays. Just awful.

This really muddies the waters between Sony and Microsoft moving forward. The original Xbox One is still in production, and can be had for $249 with a 500GB HD (or $299 for 1TB). The PS4 Slim is Sony's cheapest entry at $299 for a 500GB. You can get an XB1 S for that same price point and hard-drive size, which will also do HDR, in addition to 4K video playback.

The PS4 Pro tacks on $100, but gains 4K playback and gaming (though how many games will actually support true 4K is anybody's guess). It also comes with a 1TB HD. In terms of TFLOPS, the Pro is massively more powerful than either the Slim or XB1S, but Project Scorpio will be 50% more powerful than that.

Sony's got a year on the market without a direct competitor in terms of powered-up evolutions of current consoles. But will that be enough? Is the Pro a big enough jump from either the original PS4 or new Slim to warrant the upgrade?

From the outside, it almost looks as if this generation will play out in the opposite way of the last. Microsoft got the early jump in terms of sales last time, but slowly lost that advantage to the PS3 over the years. The original XB1 launch was so bungled, it's no wonder Sony has run away in terms of sales. But I think Microsoft will start clawing their way back moving forward; hell, they've already started.

It will be very interesting to see how MS prices the Scorpio. I can't see them hitting the $400 target, but if they manage anything below half a grand (an important mental barrier), I could see it doing really well.

 

[Peasantslayer]

Digital Foundry's take on the PS4 Pro after a hands-on.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-three-hours-with-playstation-4-pro

 

[Soundtrack]

Big problem with HDR is that the standard hasn't been agreed on yet. So which tv to get is a bit of a gamble unless you get a to that supports multiple standards and they are pricey.

AFAIK the UHD Alliance agreed upon HDR10 Standard for the latest (2016) generation of 4K TV’s. A standard that relies on SMPTE ST 2084.

One may wonder how those 40 millions of regular PS4 will take advantage of the firmware upgrade enabled HDR capability considering a vast majority of them are connected to 8 bit REC 709 displays at best.

Anyway lack of UHD BD playback makes this "Pro/4K/HDR" console offering kind of pointless.

 

[Jawehawk]

Has the Xbox Scorpio been confirmed to have a UHD player?

 

[Lain]

Has the Xbox Scorpio been confirmed to have a UHD player?

Well considering that the Xbox One S supports UHD, it'd be kinda crazy if the higher end Scorpio didn't.

 

[shoemaker]

Save your money, purchase a HDR tv instead then save for the scorpio. Poor effort sony !

 

[Saidur_Ali]

A bit disappointing it doesn't have UHD player. Overall though I think Sony have nailed it this console generation, concentrating on making the best gaming device for the masses rather than media while remaining profitable, a healthy business model. Hopefully a PS4 Pro Slim will be out with a UHD drive next year, that should give it the legs to tide over to next-generation console/s in mid to late 2018.

Microsoft console strategy is a bit strange in the sense that PC is best platform to play some of the new Xbox games and Scorpio will be releasing quite late and probably expensive in comparison to the Pro and there won't be much time until the next-generation starts so I don't see a lot of people buying it. Also step up won't be so big on Microsoft side for their next console unless it's pricey (Unless they take a big financial hit) compared to competition or release quite a bit later. Good inclusion of UHD drive on the S model which should help sales at least as a cheap 4K player, they've had competitive pricing for a while now which should also help but still think Sony are going to extend the lead even further and also make a very good start for the next-generation. Mark Cerny a clever guy.

 

[FT-1]

List of forward compatible games released, which indicates these titles will support HDR/4K resolution

RELEASED TITLES

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Killing Floor 2
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Infamous: First Light
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Paragon
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3


UNRELEASED TITLES

Spider Man
For Honor
Watch Dogs 2
Days Gone
Farpoint (PSVR)
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Mass Effect Andromeda
Final Fantasy XV
Dishonored 2
Skyrim Special Edition

Spoiler alert: GT Sport is not on the list

 

[FoRiZon]

I was considering to buy a PS4. But after I give a time and saw these crappy directions Sony takes, I renew my plans to buy XBone instead.

I'm not regret it at all. Now back to work.

 

[NLxAROSA]

So I guess it's now acceptable to refer to upscaled HD as 4K? Oh boy, that's going to make for some nice discussions here in the future.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Well that's my PS4 pro and Sony 4K HDR tv ordered. I'll let you know what I think on the 11 November after I've played a bit

 

[Lain]

So I guess it's now acceptable to refer to upscaled HD as 4K? Oh boy, that's going to make for some nice discussions here in the future.

I don't know where people are getting the "upscaled HD" bit from.

Not all games will be rendered at a full 4K on the PS4 Pro, but it's certainly not just upscaling a 1080P framebuffer.

 

[Soulfresh_ACV]

Amazon already have it available for pre-order but cost USD399 and release date 10 November 2016. Plenty of time now for me to decide until GT Sport comes out and announce higher framerate on Sony Playstation 4 Pro. I'll pre-order it straightaway if it supports my BenQ Ultrawide @ 144Hz

 

[Samus]

Hopefully a PS4 Pro Slim will be out with a UHD drive next year,

I really want to know which universe you live in.

You were sure PS4 original could do full on 4K, just need Sony to enable it you said, you could see PD running GT at true 4K 60fps on it you said. Yet here we are, with a PS4 twice as powerful still only doing fancy upscaling to 4K.

 

[NLxAROSA]

I don't know where people are getting the "upscaled HD" bit from.

From the DF article posted here among others. And while it's not always upscaling a 1080p frame buffer, in reality there will be very few games actually running 4K natively.

 

[Scaff]

Well my current PS4 has started to throw up odd artifacting at certain times, mainly around intro's, cut scenes and when rendering shareplay stuff, so I was looking at replacing it (and the current one can then replace my old PS3 fat as a bedroom media streamer) so I've pre-ordered one.

Hell saves me buying a 1tb HDD and it will be interesting to see what it does (if anything) to help out the current sims I play.

 

[FoRiZon]

Reason Sony is not including the 4K BluRay Player is to cut costs and thought that streaming is the future.

Considering that they already announcing the "low end" PS4 that is the slim and they have courage to release ludicrously priced Walkmans, this is unacceptable.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

I really want to know which universe you live in.

Natural thing Sony to do as long as 10nm is out by then and makes sense in terms of cost.

Anyway I think Sony have priced it really well. Same price as Xbox One S 2TB and slightly more than 1TB model while offering more than 3 times the graphics power. I'm going to wait a bit probably to see how long GT SPORT will take to come out before getting one. Got recently a 4K HDR TV for living room so may get one for that but no one plays games much in my family and I've barely used my PS4 so don't see much point to it at the moment considering TV can play 4K media content by itself fine. 1TB at that price point makes it very attractive though, 500GB I'm already struggling and I don't have many games. I'm going to stick to 1080p in bedroom and it will be good to get as good experience hopefully as a decent gaming PC at them resolutions on an affordable console. Also they got a decent VR headset by the sounds of things at a very competitive price point so that is another reason to go for it.

 

[Samus]

The problem with 4K streaming is that it requires very high bitrate to actually look good, and show any 4K details. These current services at ~15-30Mbps aren't going to cut it and the infrastructure isn't yet there for better streams. That is why disc based formats are still superior for 'pro' video enthusiasts.

Blu-Ray will always have better quality over 1080p streams, 4K BR will be no different. Sony deciding not to offer that to cut costs on a 'pro' model is strange.

Natural thing Sony to do as long as 10nm is out by then and makes sense in terms of cost.

When has Sony ever released a slim version within 12 months? You keep making these claims and wild predictions, they don't seem to come to fruition do they? No comment on your 4K original PS4 claims?

 

[sems4arsenal]

Save your money, purchase a HDR tv instead then save for the scorpio. Poor effort sony !

Scorpio has the same issue as the Pro, it will be more powerful but significantly more expensive.

The main issue isn't just the consoles but the fact you need to get a 4 thousand dollar piece of equipment to fully gain the upgrade.

The Pro is a cheap entry into 4K gaming (will be the cheapest for a few years) that's it's main selling point.

I think they should do more to focus on people who have HDTVs, when my OG PS4 dies, If I know the Pro will seriously improve games I have atm I'll buy it instead of opting for a slim.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

When has Sony ever released a slim version within 12 months? You keep making these claims and wild predictions, they don't seem to come to fruition do they? No comment on your 4K original PS4 claims?

The problem for Sony and Microsoft is how long it took for the next process node and same for GPU manufacturers. 28nm been around since 2012 and only in 2016 has the move to 14nm and 16nm been done. If 10nm is done in time for 2017 release, I don't see why they wouldn't make a slimmer version, should at least get it down to original PS4 size. Think the iPhone 7 might have already 10nm SoC. The PS4 Slim is the 3rd revision of the original PS4 so Sony do have a track record of releasing new revisions to bring down power consumption and costs, however miniscule they are. It's the same for all PlayStation devices.

Scorpio likely be based on AMD Vega architecture and I think the next Sony console will be based on AMD Navi in 2018. Just follows the roadmap AMD hardware is on, nothing wild about that.

 

[FoRiZon]

The problem with 4K streaming is that it requires very high bitrate to actually look good, and show any 4K details. These current services at ~15-30Mbps aren't going to cut it and the infrastructure isn't yet there for better streams. That is why disc based formats are still superior for 'pro' video enthusiasts.

Blu-Ray will always have better quality over 1080p streams, 4K BR will be no different. Sony deciding not to offer that to cut costs on a 'pro' model is strange.

Not to mention the compression that will be present on such streaming services. But companies will ignore this anyway because its the future, boy. And also additional DRM to boot.

 

[Samus]

Not to mention the compression that will be present on such streaming services. But companies will ignore this anyway because its the future, boy. And also additional DRM to boot.

Uh, that's what bit rate is. More of it, less compression.

The problem for Sony and Microsoft is how long it took for the next process node and same for GPU manufacturers. 28nm been around since 2012 and only in 2016 has the move to 14nm and 16nm been done. If 10nm is done in time for 2017 release, I don't see why they wouldn't make a slimmer version, should at least get it down to original PS4 size. Think the iPhone 7 might have already 10nm SoC. The PS4 Slim is the 3rd revision of the original PS4 so Sony do have a track record of releasing new revisions to bring down power consumption and costs, however miniscule they are. It's the same for all PlayStation devices.

Scorpio likely be based on AMD Vega architecture and I think the next Sony console will be based on AMD Navi in 2018. Just follows the roadmap AMD hardware is on, nothing wild about that.

Since you seem to be ignoring it, let me remind you what you said about the original PS4:

That is what you still think, I am very confident there will be games outputting at 4K. I'm confident due to hardware inside PS4.

I think 1080p will be the main target for these consoles as expected. I think there will be more 4K games than there will be 720p only games.

4K is not as taxing as quite a lot of people think. You can see your GPU playing 4K games quite well on YouTube. I do think though given performance of PS4, you will see it on say games that are probably low budget as strange as that sounds and also potentially in future in like sport games like FIFA. Shooters like new Killzone and Battlefield games, I don’t think we will see. GT might possibly have some 4K support as PDI seem to be into them kind of things. Maybe 4K rereleases will be something that will be pushed in the upcoming generation.

 

[Peasantslayer]

I couldn't care less about 4K Blu-Ray movie discs but everyone seems to think that that's what the deal-breaker is, if you really want to watch a 4K movie on your PS4 Pro then you could probably just buy it from the PS Store if streaming is a problem.

 

[MeanElf]

I couldn't care less about 4K Blu-Ray movie discs but everyone seems to think that that's what the deal-breaker is, if you really want to watch a 4K movie on your PS4 Pro then you could probably just buy it from the PS Store if streaming is a problem.

Yeah, same here - maybe that's why I don't understand all the wailing. If people are serious about Blu-Rays then surely they would have a proper and dedicated player already and not be relying on a console with a less than ideal remote in the form of a DS4? I know that I would.

 

[Samus]

4K Blu-Ray is still in it's infancy, there aren't that many titles available that are true 4K, rather than upscales. For that reason many people have been holding off buying a player but when the time comes, a lot of people would clearly have liked to have just one device for all of their 4K needs, both video and gaming. As it is, if they buy a PS4 Pro at $400, they're also going to have to buy a standalone BR player at $300.

 

[Nexus]

I couldn't care less about 4K Blu-Ray movie discs but everyone seems to think that that's what the deal-breaker is, if you really want to watch a 4K movie on your PS4 Pro then you could probably just buy it from the PS Store if streaming is a problem.

A 4K Blu-ray will still be a very big file size though, it'll probably take a long time for the movie to actually download. There's also the issue of running out of storage space.

 

[Lain]

A 4K Blu-ray will still be a very big file size though, it'll probably take a long time for the movie to actually download. There's also the issue of running out of storage space.

Nevermind the whole DRM thing. If you want your movies locked to Sony platforms, that's your choice... but it's definitely not what I'll be choosing.

 

[GranTurismo guy]

I'm personally one of those people that actually have left physical based media behind as much as I can and as such this lack of a blu ray drive wouldn't affect me. But a lot of people here and elsewhere still prefer/are comfortable and satisfied with physical copies for varying reasons, and I completely respect and understand that. And hence even I can see that having no 4k blu ray player, especially when your arch rival does have one on their cheapest model is a fatal error.