No. I've asked numerous times for people to put forward a usage scenario that requires multiple GBs of RAM. All you've said is immediacy. Immediacy of what? The only thing I can think of is swapping between common tasks, as I listed.
Of whatever user wants to do. Immediacy was the single unswerving message of the February 2013 reveal, that drum was bang a lot.
As for what the RAM could be used for? Well if Sony have not decided whether to support multitasking apps along with the game, that is a conversation they are having now. Often when I'm remote playing, my girlfriend is watching Netflix. At the moment she uses the PS3 but it's a usage case that shouldn't stretch the PS4. And I want it too, we want to retire the PS3 because we need that space and HDMI connection for the inevitable Xbox One purchase.
As for the market for apps on a console, well I remember a lot of scepticism about the demand for apps on mobile phones a few years ago. Who'd want to run a cut-down desktop app on their phone? Nobody, right!?! It's easy to dismiss that which can't be foreseen without the benefit of hindsight. Before you write off the creativity and imagination of hundreds of thousands of app writers, perhaps you should give them some time and a chance first.
Yes there is, unless one considers 'wait and see' a plan. "We have 8 GBs. Nobody needs that much for games yet. We'll reserve 3 GBs for future expansion but may never use it." That's possibly what's going on, but that's not a plan.
I am certain that a small portion of that 3Gb is wait-and-see, an overhead reserved for the unknown future. Why? Because it's the obvious engineering decision for a device that has to still be relevant in 5-10 years.
But most of that 3Gb will likely be conservatively-reserved for a number of features in the roadmap for the next 12-18 months. The console didn't launch ready; it's missing suspend/resume, jumping into somebody else's game, has limited sharing and isn't anywhere near as immediate as Sony promised.
And Sony don't have Microsoft's experience with operating systems or applications. Any OS function or application that Sony write I would expect Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, to be able to produce faster, optimise better and use less resources. That initial high RAM overhead means Sony can release updates (although still painfully fucking slowly it seems) without agonising about RAM. Then later then, they can optimise and release RAM back.
A plan determines future expansion requirements ahead of needing them, allocates appropriately, and applies actual foresight instead of doing nothing and making the decision later.
If you're making a product with a lifespan of a year or two, that approach is viable. With a product designed to last 5-10 years, you are limited in planning for the technology on the horizon. But you don't need to determine expansion requirements, only plan for expansion. Early computers, prior to early standard local buses like Zorro and PCI, came with expansion ports that allowed some unknown hardware connector or cartridge to connect to the CPU, RAM, ROM, and I/O. The designer didn't need to know what it was, just provide a pathway. It's easier with software, you just need a CPU and RAM reserve, or a plan to make that available later by anticipating obsolescence.
That's a valid approach for the future, but it's not planning.
It's called it planning for the unknown, or an alternative methodology to fact-based and assumption-based planning.
XB360 showed all the network, friend lists and chat can fit into 32 MBs. But I'm not suggesting 32 MBs is enough for the current gen (except for those basics).
So that 32mb wasn't doing all of that I listed. I'm not surprised, as I said you'd struggle to fit just one of PS4's standard features into that memory footprint.
If some console game OS is failing to provide everything in that much space, it's badly implemented or possibly overreaching.
Again, you're looking at just the OS and not what the sure might want to also be running in parallel with the game. At the very least, I'd like to be able to switch between a game and DVD/Blu-ray playback or a streaming service like Netflix - without having to terminate the game or the video app being used.
Immediacy. And the PS4 isn't close to being what they promised yet.
People like you defending the reservation do so with an arm-waving justification.
Woah, people like me? What kind of people am I? That weird slight aside I'm not justifying the RAM reservation - try reading my posts. I posted, as I'm now stated for about the third time, at your assertion that Sony have no plan.
Go through the maths. What would two 1080p framebuffers require? 16 MBs at 32 bits.
6mb a frame at 24 bits - it's video encoding. You'll need a minimum of two frames for encoding. How much space are you reserving quantisation? Motion estimation? Now you need two frame buffers for the target device, the current one being sent, and the one your building to send next. Now add in audio, space to multiplex the whole thing for streaming. It's realtime, remember. How much RAM have you used now?
There's no need to excuse Sony with the assumption they have a great plan. We can count out the MB's usage until we reach a realistic requirement.
I'm not excusing Sony of your accusations of no plan. But please, go for it. Most of my code runs on BSD systems but you'll want to rethink your estimates if you think you can do realtime streaming in 32mb even with hardware encode.
Or more simply, we can look at a myriad of 1GB devices out there capable of doing everything a console could possible want with room to spare.
Third, fourth and fifth gen iPads have 1Gb and a nice big screen. They also run on a BSD-derived operating system. It's a good platform for comparison.
We can look at what is accomplished with core gaming features on 32MB and 512 MB gaming devices to see that the core gaming stuff doesn't need GBs to be implemented.
If you want to see what difference RAM makes running an OS, yank a lot of it out of your computer. Even when your computer is idling it's doing a ton of stuff in the background and excess RAM makes all the difference.
I get you want to know what it's being reserved for but it's Sony and they aren't going to share this until they are ready to announce actual features or changes themselves.
