Sony Confirms Next-Gen PlayStation Features: 8K Resolution and Backwards Compatibility

[SestoScudo]

You're going to have to join those dots for me, because I can't see how backwards compatibility for PS5 invalidates the reasons for not having backwards compatibility for PS4.

If xbox one can have BC what stops the PS4?

 

[Famine]

If xbox one can have BC what stops the PS4?

That's not so much joining the dots as throwing another dot out there. What's the connection?

 

[Tired Tyres]

Affordable? The cheapest 8K TV is over $8000; I don't think they'll suddenly drop to $1000 in the next year. My dad bought a 4K TV for the living room quite recently, and I got one for the playroom 3 days ago. 3 days! And we can't even use the 4K resolution because the standard PS4 can't use it, and digital TV has JUST started using 4K, and that's only for selected shows at the moment. The idea of jumping up to 8K after using our older TV's for 10 and 7 years respectively sounds ludicrous. 8K will not become the norm for AT LEAST another decade, so there is no point developing a console to handle it! Technology for the sake of it mate, that's all it is.

I said MORE affordable. You can get a 4K with HDR for around £400 with the word Panasonic on it now. I paid approximately that for 1080P two or three years ago.

The second gen of 8K will be cheaper. It will be more affordable. Does that mean most people will be able to? No. I won't buy one until I can justify it.

 

[SestoScudo]

That's not so much joining the dots as throwing another dot out there. What's the connection?

Actually sorry my bad I just realised PS3 used the cell architecture which makes it incompatible with PS4's architecture.

I guess im wrong here. Keep on forgetting that PS3 used Cell architecture.

 

[Novalee]

Sony doesnt even sell xperia products in Canada.

I bought mine in canada

 

[Moglet]

I'd love to see some pictures of the dev kit, there were supposedly some floating around but I'm pretty sure they are fake. Plenty of genuine PS4 ones being misrepresented as click bait though.

Just pick the ugliest one and it'll be that.

 

[Doubleducks]

The menu is easily my biggest complaint with the current PS. The delays, especially when heading to the TV section or hitting the Share button mid-game, are incredibly frustrating, especially when it's on the Pro!



Eh, it's inconclusive at best. It's focusing on PS4 because that's the most recent generation, and it's the one without BC. I imagine PS1 and PS2 emulation are easy enough to just do from a software side, unless Sony wants to keep them on PS Now to encourage signups of that service.

I really like how MS deals with BC right now on XB1. If you have a compatible XB or X360 disc, you just pop it in and it triggers a download. Plus, a good chunk of titles even have One X updates, meaning you can play them at a level of detail closer to current-gen. That's a great move, and part of the reason I've been expanding my previous-gen multi-platform library on the One X instead of the PS4 Pro.

That said, I'm really excited about the PS5. It sounds like Sony is addressing the handful of weaknesses it has currently without sacrificing its strengths. The next gen console lineup from both it and MS should be a truly exceptional one.

My pro with an SSD, mid game sharing is extremely fast. 1-2 seconds tops.

 

[ScottPuss20]

I said MORE affordable. You can get a 4K with HDR for around £400 with the word Panasonic on it now. I paid approximately that for 1080P two or three years ago.

The second gen of 8K will be cheaper. It will be more affordable. Does that mean most people will be able to? No. I won't buy one until I can justify it.

Now that is something I agree with. But it will take a while for 8K to become commonplace.

 

[GTV0819]

Given that the PS5 will be much more modern than its predecessor, I'm wondering how much the games will cost. I'm guessing around $70-80? It will also surely come in Blue-ray, definitely.

 

[sesselpupser]

@GTV0819 why would you think that? The cost of games hasn't increased significantly since at least the mid-'90s, I remember my Mum buying me Atomic Runner on the Mega Drive back in 1993 or 94 (I would've been 7) for £40. I also remember her buying me Zone of the Enders for my 14th birthday in 2001, also for £40.

Since 2010 though I can probably count the number of times I've spent £40 or more on a game on my fingers, admittedly I don't buy many AAA games and rarely buy things on day one unless I really want them badly. Games are quite unusual in their resistance to inflation, if Atomic Runner was £40 in 1994 then games should be £78.90 or so now and yet very few games have breached the £50 mark for a non-special edition.

 

[GTV0819]

@GTV0819 why would you think that? The cost of games hasn't increased significantly since at least the mid-'90s, I remember my Mum buying me Atomic Runner on the Mega Drive back in 1993 or 94 (I would've been 7) for £40. I also remember her buying me Zone of the Enders for my 14th birthday in 2001, also for £40.

Since 2010 though I can probably count the number of times I've spent £40 or more on a game on my fingers, admittedly I don't buy many AAA games and rarely buy things on day one unless I really want them badly. Games are quite unusual in their resistance to inflation, if Atomic Runner was £40 in 1994 then games should be £78.90 or so now and yet very few games have breached the £50 mark for a non-special edition.

Didn't you even see my point there? Like I said, the PS5 is a next-generation console. So there's a possibility that there will also be a jack up for the price of its games, just like what happened before with Nintendo's DS and its successor, the 3DS. And aside from that 2010 you're saying, what you're talking about was a long time ago, where games are much cheaper because it's a generation where they don't come in HD yet. It's only either 2D or 3D.

 

[Marqus]

With pre-orders, special editions, and huge season passes becoming ever more necessary for a complete experience, most AAA games don't really cost $60 anymore. $60 gets you in, but that's when the monetization starts.

 

[GTV0819]

With pre-orders, special editions, and huge season passes becoming ever more necessary for a complete experience, most AAA games don't really cost $60 anymore. $60 gets you in, but that's when the monetization starts.

Well, that's a good thing to know. I've never owned a PS4 yet until now so that's why I only assumed about this stuff. Getting more games for lesser the price is nice.

 

[sesselpupser]

@GTV0819 what? I said games in 1994 were £40, games in 2001 were £40, games now are £40. Prices haven't changed significantly regardless of console generation, even looking at just Playstations - by your logic, if games were £40 on the PS1 then they should've been £50 on the PS2, £60 on PS3, £70 on PS4 and will be £80 on PS5, that hasn't happened.

The generational jump was arguably biggest between PS2 and PS3 (there was no price hike there) and smallest between PS3 and PS4. The jump from PS4 to PS5 will be even smaller for the same reason that generational differences between smartphones are tiny now, i.e. diminishing returns where the cost of making significant improvements beyond the usual incrementals of "more RAM, faster storage, faster processors" is far too high and isn't actually necessary because enough people will upgrade for them to turn a profit. As a result - and let's not forget the actual underlying platform is essentially the same, negating the need for any retooling in development - games aren't going to be harder to develop for the PS5, in fact they'll be easier because increased resources means developers won't need to try as hard to make optimisations.

If you think it was cheaper and/or easier to develop games on old consoles than it is now I suggest you do some research, this is a pretty good example of how hard developers had to push the limits of the devices they were developing for:



These days, developers have huge amounts of storage, H.264 codecs built into the silicon of the processors they're coding for and all the massively advanced video rendering and authoring tools. It has never been easier to make a game for a console, so I don't see any reason for prices to go up.

Nintendo is unusual though as they have much more control over their platforms than anyone else because of the gimmicks and novelty features they build into their consoles, whereas PS4, Xbox and PC are broadly compatible with one another; the controllers are the same, target resolutions the same, use cases, sharing features, hardware specs, processor architectures... They're very similar across the board. Nintendo's platforms aren't like that so they can and do do what they want without risking too much.

 

[Silver Arrows]

I should remind people that game prices aren't all static across the board. Most new AAA titles in Canada have been $80 since this generation, and probably even earlier. Even Nintendo products.

 

[huiop2]

Until 8K TVs become widely available and affordable (below $2000) I see absolutely no point in 8K gaming for consoles. Running 8K on a 4K screen is pointless. It's not the same as running 4K on 1080p which is essentially a very demanding but also very effective AA method. 4K already greatly reduces static aliasing and you'd only need some post-process AA methods to get rid of the temporal aliasing.

 

[GTV0819]

I should remind people that game prices aren't all static across the board. Most new AAA titles in Canada have been $80 since this generation, and probably even earlier. Even Nintendo products.

I concur.

 

[Famine]

Until 8K TVs become widely available and affordable (below $2000) I see absolutely no point in 8K gaming for consoles.

I remember when people said that about 4K and 4K screens. That's not exactly a feat of memory, because it was four years ago - and slightly further back people were literally dismissing the possibility of the PS4 ever running 4K back in 2013.

I also remember when people were saying the same thing about "Full HD", although that was cracking on for 15 years back now.


In fact, selling the consoles is the key to selling the screens. Who'd buy an 8K screen if there wasn't an 8K source to exploit it? As the early adopters scramble for both, the prices of the panels comes down, just like it did with "HD Ready" screens, then "Full HD" screens, then 4K screens. 3D seems to have died a death though, thankfully.

 

[mark5917]

PS5 games will not run nativity at 4k.

That depends from the game in question.

PS4 Pro and XBOX one X does support a native 4K resolution on some games.

And considering the PS5 may have up to 12TF combined computational power (CPU+GPU), everything is possible.

That's double the power of an XBOX One X!

With the above said, i don't expect anything less than 4K and 30fps (locked), and should be the norm for the next gen. consoles.

 

[huiop2]

In fact, selling the consoles is the key to selling the screens. Who'd buy an 8K screen if there wasn't an 8K source to exploit it? As the early adopters scramble for both, the prices of the panels comes down, just like it did with "HD Ready" screens, then "Full HD" screens, then 4K screens. 3D seems to have died a death though, thankfully.

I disagree. FHD screens had already become mainstream long before FHD consoles were introduced. Back in 2009 you could already buy FHD screens for pretty low prices and they could be found in almost every shops that sell electronics despite the fact that we only had Xbox 360 and PS3 which were essentially HD consoles (the menus might be FHD but the games were rendered at HD or even lower). So FHD consoles were not the key to selling FHD screens, they might have make FHD screens even more popular but that's it.

Same goes for 4K screens. Strictly speaking we don't even have a true 4K console yet, but 4K TVs have already become mainstream before PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were introduced. Even after they were introduced most people still chose not to upgrade. Which means most console gamers are gaming at FHD or lower on their 4K TVs. Therefore those "4K consoles" are not the key to selling 4k screens.

Another reason I don't think we should be too quick to jump to 8K is diminishing return. The perceivable difference between the image quality of 8K and 4K won't be nearly as significant as that of 4K and FHD, just like the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS is far greater than the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS. Because as we gradually increase the resolution we get closer to the limit of what our eyes and brain can differentiate. I'd rather the developers use the extra computing power for more spectacular and/or realistic effects (such as ray tracing) than increasing the resolution which is a brute force sort of way to improve image quality and becomes less effective past a certain point.

IMO you dont don't need 8K consoles (just to be clear the next-gen consoles are not 8K consoles they just have 8K support for some games and contents) to sell 8K screens. People are more than happy to connect their consoles to screens that support higher resolutions than their consoles can output. This has been the case for FHD and 4K screens and will most likely be the case for 8K screens.

 

[Novalee]

https://www.slashgear.com/sonys-70k-android-tv-is-ps5s-secret-weapon-22574300/


Introduced this week was a Sony MASTER Series Z9G 8K HDR TV, 98″ Class (97.5″ diagonal), smart TV (Android TV), available in June. This is one of two sets in the category – the other is an 85″ Class (84.6″ diagonal). The smaller of the two sets is approximately $13k USD, while the larger is approximately $70k USD. 8K: 7,680 x 4,320 pixels.

 

[kikie]

'Dreaming' out loud:

A native 8K PS5 with a native 4K next gen PSVR playing GT7.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

PS5 games will not run nativity at 4k.

I don't see why not. The XB1 will run games at a native 4K resolution — even at a steady 60fps in the case of FM7. The PS5 will be significantly more powerful.

Just like this generation, I'm sure we'll see a variety of resolutions based on developer needs and desires, and 30fps will still be pretty common thanks to its more cinematic feel. But given the sheer power of the next generation, I imagine sub-4K resolutions will be few and far between.

and slightly further back people were literally dismissing the possibility of the PS4 ever running 4K back in 2013.

The distinction here is those people ended up being right.

 

[JvM]

30fps will still be pretty common thanks to its more cinematic feel

Oh please.

It's been common exactly because the hardware hasn't been able to do better, thats it.


Unless 'cinematic' = eye-irritating these days.

 

[Disco_Volante]

I don't see the point of 8K, but honestly I don't understand why some would complain about it. If you aim for 8K, you need to have a buttload of power, well beyond what you'd need for 60fps at 1080p.

It's like giving a car more power. You can make it have a higher top speed, higher acceleration, or a bit of both.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

Oh please.

It's been common exactly because the hardware hasn't been able to do better, thats it.


Unless 'cinematic' = eye-irritating these days.

Unless your eyes are irritated by the vast majority of video out there, and pretty much all movies, no, cinematic means cinematic. It was one of the major complaints some people had about the visuals of The Hobbit when it released actually: Jackson filmed it at twice the traditional framerate (48fps vs 24fps).

I'm not suggesting 30fps is good for all genres — racing and shooting games need the extra frames — but I also don't subscribe to the more-is-always-better mindset either. That same reasoning leads to the 8K target.

I don't see the point of 8K, but honestly I don't understand why some would complain about it. If you aim for 8K, you need to have a buttload of power, well beyond what you'd need for 60fps at 1080p.

It's like giving a car more power. You can make it have a higher top speed, higher acceleration, or a bit of both.

It's a fair point. I imagine most people agree — the extra horsepower of the next gen can be used for many things, not just a bump in resolution — but IMO, the complaints stem from Sony already stating 8K as a target. Like I said before, it's a bit like the digital camera market early on, where the top number on any camera was always its megapixel count, before anything else. It's an easy marketing tool: bigger is better in the eyes of many.

I'd argue HDR is far more of a game-changer than increased resolution, especially for displays under 50". But everybody I know who's bought a TV in the last few years looks at the inches and the resolution; some don't even know (or care) what HDR is.

 

[JvM]

Unless your eyes are irritated by the vast majority of video out there, and pretty much all movies, no, cinematic means cinematic.

Rendering 3d versus watching a pre-edited, cut and all around prepared video/movie isn't quite the same. Although yes, if even a video has faster panning from side to side my eyes are definitely more pleased with 50+ fps video.

 

[TJ13]

Latest rumor has the PS5 coming in at $399.99
Which at 180/210$ for the processor alone at end of 2019 early 2020.
Meaning much more room for that SSD.
And also has even hinted more of a GT7 launch title.

 

[baldgye]

I don't see why not. The XB1 will run games at a native 4K resolution — even at a steady 60fps in the case of FM7. The PS5 will be significantly more powerful.

Just like this generation, I'm sure we'll see a variety of resolutions based on developer needs and desires, and 30fps will still be pretty common thanks to its more cinematic feel. But given the sheer power of the next generation, I imagine sub-4K resolutions will be few and far between.

The number one reason for my logic is that 4K tv isn't massively popular and requires a hell of a lot of work to look as good as the best 1080p 60fps stuff.
Why would publishers push 4k when literally everyone has a least a HD TV?

You can improve the look of the next gen games and still keep the fairly low res of 1080p for a decent budget, and if the focus is on more ray-tracing type technologies wouldn't money and horse power go into those, rather than higher resolutions?

I was being a little flippant, with my statement but I'd be surprised if 4k became the standard resolution for games on the next gen systems.

 

[Tornado]

More frames are always better for games. There are genres where trading it off with straight image quality (like rendering resolutio, or ray tracing) is much more defensible than others, but framerate is otherwise directly related to gameplay in a way that image quality tangibles are not.