Sony Playstation Meeting September 7 2016 [PS4 Slim, PS4 Pro, Rumors, Speculations, and News]

[iroboto]

Whaaaaat? Wasn't the MSRP of that thing lower than $400?
The GPU market has gone completely nuts.

Canada
It is also over clocked quite a bit, I could have saved a little of cash.

But I guess the concern is the price for performance. It's really hard to ignore the AMD series.

Buying nvidia was perhaps not my real mistake, but buying into gsync. It does make you lock into a premium price point that I'm now regretting.

I think a capable 144Hz monitor would suffice would have saved me $200 and I would not lock in. At the time of choosing I wanted the absolute best, but if you're going casual over time this no longer makes sense.

I also bought an SLI Board for crossfire/SLI. And the ecosystem for dual GPU setups aren't quite there yet. The stutter is something I want to avoid and also something I thought gsync would naturally help with. But I have no real proof of that either.

Ugg. Anyway it's fine. I can make use of the 1070. This is my third nvidia card. I only used to run ATI/AMD when I was younger.

All this talk about performance of these consoles does really get you thinking. If you can do more for less, that's a great thing. It may not be the highest end, but we're talking bang for buck. And these mid generation consoles are doing exactly that. (If you only want to just game). And indirectly/directly so are the new AMD series.

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[MrFox]

Sony said their internal market research have shown that the majority of PS4 owners are using physical media to play games, but very few ever used the PS4 for physical media playback, while the majority are using streaming services. With UHD bluray it's going to be a fraction this, specially for the next couple years.

That's their justification, but there is an important missing point. The reason many of us never used the PS4 for bluray is because we have better devices for this already (including the PS3, duh...) This is not the case at the launch of PS4 Pro.

As much as there is demand for UHD bluray, the overlap with consoles is probably not enough to justify raising the retail price right now. We're already mid-gen, so by the time PS5 comes out there might be a larger market, a lower cost UHD drive, and at that point they will need a higher disc capacity for games anyway, so it will pay for itself. Launching sooner at a lower price looks like the winning strategy. A year advantage is much more impactful when new hardware launches only 3 to 4 years later, as opposed to 6 to 8 years later.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Yes, I'm sure there are many examples like yours - unfortunately I'm also fairly sure there are far more examples of people who would rather just save $50 given the option.

Is this hypothetical $50 supposed to be the difference between UHD BD vs BD or UHD BD vs digital distribution only?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sony said their internal market research have shown that the majority of PS4 owners are using physical media to play games, but very few ever used the PS4 for physical media playback, while the majority are using streaming services. With UHD bluray it's going to be a fraction this, specially for the next couple years.

A caveat on this data, if people aren't going online with their PS4 and are using it to play game and film disks offline, how would Sony ever know? What we need is qualifying data of what proportion of PS4's are connected to the internet.

 

[MrFox]

A caveat on this data, if people aren't going online with their PS4 and are using it to play game and film disks offline, how would Sony ever know? What we need is qualifying data of what proportion of PS4's are connected to the internet.

I would guess this is not direct metric, they usually use firms to do online surveys, I received them a few times since the PS3 came out.

Okay, well, the surveys require the person to have at least registered a PSN account but the percentage of people who bought a PS4 and never downloaded a single day-1 patch is probably not skewing the result enough to matter.

Physical sales versus digital is easy since they can compare titles sales. It's not counting overlap like me (about 60% physical, 40% digital) but again the survey data can be combined.

 

[wco81]

Well Sony has announced its first UHD player but not the price. It's an ES model so it might be pricey.

Nice thing about PS3 and Blu Ray is that it was a way for people to try out Blu-Ray discs, which was a new format back then. It was also priced lower than most dedicated players back then.

At $400, PS4 Pro would be on the lower end of UHD Blu Ray players currently available or before the end of the year.

 

[one]

As for the Blu-ray and PS3 case (and the DVD and PS2 case) it was a self-fulfilling prediction for market spread with all units equipped with the drive, but this time Xbox One S is the only platform with considerable numbers, and it's basically in the US. Panasonic, who is the flag bearer of UHD BD, is probably revising its YoY disc sales target now. Who knows, there may be a UHD BD player for PS4 if the demand is expected just like the Xbox 360 HD DVD addon!

 

[milk]

Still wondering how much of a damn the average consumer is gonna give about any of these halfmeasure machines. When digital foundry highlights frame pacing issues or spots differences between platforms using a magnifying lense, they tend to use such colorful terms as "revelatory". I'm afraid the only thing revelatory to the average consumer will be the fact that he's being asked to spend 400 dollars on differences he can barely perceive. (If you actually believe most people give a damn about stuff like anisotrophic filtering, or a bunch of dropped frames, or about the sub par shadow draw distance in Fallout 4, you really need to get out more).

Although I don't fully agree with your ultimate conclusion, I think we can't emphasize enough around hear how irrelevant most of the stuff we talk about here truly is in the real world.
That's why I think sony did the right thing in sticking to 4k and not much else as a selling-point. It's the easiest to convey to consumers.

 

[BRiT]

Sony said their internal market research have shown that the majority of PS4 owners are using physical media to play games, but very few ever used the PS4 for physical media playback, while the majority are using streaming services.

Sony needs to be careful in believing too much of their internal market data. That is what caused Microsoft to trip up with the Xbox One and TV TV TV.

 

[iroboto]

Sony needs to be careful in believing too much of their internal market data. That is what caused Microsoft to trip up with the Xbox One and TV TV TV.

And motion controls.


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[London Geezer]

MEH

 

[goonergaz]

Is this hypothetical $50 supposed to be the difference between UHD BD vs BD or UHD BD vs digital distribution only?

I'm just saying the console would cost more and there will be more people interested in saving money than paying for a feature they will never use.

Sony needs to be careful in believing too much of their internal market data. That is what caused Microsoft to trip up with the Xbox One and TV TV TV.

You mean the same data that they used for PS4?

 

[AzBat]

You mean the same data that they used for PS4?

So you're saying they're using data that's at least 3 years out of date? Just out of curiosity since I have no idea, but does Sony have a site where they can gauge interest from actual users on the kind of features & products they're interested in seeing? Maybe they're using that data? 4K Blu-ray support was on Microsoft's site, but only has about 130 votes. There was more interest for a smaller console(570 votes), but what really got the votes was the ability to trade-in an older system for a newer one(3813 votes). If it was missing on the Xbox I doubt it would have been a big deal. I know Microsoft never showed that kind of interest before. I do think it's a head-scratcher for Sony though. Personally, I won't ever use it, but it's nice for future proofing if I ever change my mind. Who knows I might decide to get a 4K TV later & being able to watch my Batman movies in 4K would be my only incentive.

For Sony it seems profitability is the bigger reason for it's exclusion, but they need to unsterstand their competition isn't just going to roll over. Guess we'll see next year whether it was the right decision or not.

Tommy McClain

 

[MrFox]

It's pure genius. There is more love for bluray in gaming than there ever was in the last 10 years. All the narrative about the future being an ODD-less console have evaporated.

Personally, I won't ever use it, but it's nice for future proofing if I ever change my mind. Who knows I might decide to get a 4K TV later & being able to watch my Batman movies in 4K would be my only incentive.

Maybe one day you'll even use stamps.

 

[AzBat]

Maybe one day you'll even use stamps.

But I do. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

I think the reason you're having a problem with this new love for physical media is that MS has a legitimate differentiator between they're newest offering & Sony's. Will it be big enough to change the sales momentum Sony has most likely no. I do think it helps Microsoft slow their market share loss a bit. I think a lower price would do a better job though & they might still have to do that this holiday season. Sony has less reason to do it. In fact I don't see Sony dropping the price on either of the newer models for at least a year. Better to soak up those profits while they can.

BTW, I would buy a ODD-less console in a heartbeat if it was smaller & cheaper. I have not bought one single disc game for my XB1. Nor do I ever plan to. But I do buy movies on DVD & Blu-ray only for the reason of portability to my kid's TVs where they don't have streaming devices. And I use the digital copy that comes with the disc to use on my XB1 or the Roku in my bedroom. I don't see that changing for a few more years since my kids are all under the age of 3.

Tommy McClain

 

[London Geezer]

When did we all start spending money on stuff that we actually need?

 

[upnorthsox]

When did we all start spending money on stuff that we actually need?

It started just the other day...........but I didn't realize it at the time.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What would be nice IMO is a drive module, where you can have drive-less SKU, BRD or UHD. We can do that now that optical streaming isn't used as everything's installed. That'd keep everyone happy, more or less, unless inventory of a particular drive is undersupplied. But this may not be in the console company's best interests. Depends if the increased appeal due to cheaper/more capable machine offsets the costs and hassle of managing more products.

 

[upnorthsox]

Sounds costly.

 

[Nesh]

Just out of curiosity, what is it that which prevents the PS4 vanilla not stream 4K media? The HDMI 1.4 version?