Do you think there will be a mid gen refresh console from Sony and Microsoft?

I don't think it's an either or. I think a PS5 slim is coming regardless.

I just think it's likely that a PS5 Pro is coming as well. Put it this way: a pricey PS5 Pro would have a lot more sales potential than VR 2 imo....
PS5 Pro would be quite good for PSVR2, i suppose. as currently people already complains some PSVR2 games are blurry.
 
I don't think it's an either or. I think a PS5 slim is coming regardless.

I just think it's likely that a PS5 Pro is coming as well. Put it this way: a pricey PS5 Pro would have a lot more sales potential than VR 2 imo....
But what would the offering be to market PS5 Pro? PS4 Pro was justified due to the emergence of 4k TVs and gave us checkerboard with some mild performance boost. The PS5 is providing multiple performance options as is just like PS4 Pro, and 8k is out of the picture. RT is still a limited visual upgrade. I m trying to see what Sony is going to market for such an Upgrade.
 
But what would the offering be to market PS5 Pro? PS4 Pro was justified due to the emergence of 4k TVs and gave us checkerboard with some mild performance boost. The PS5 is providing multiple performance options as is just like PS4 Pro, and 8k is out of the picture. RT is still a limited visual upgrade. I m trying to see what Sony is going to market for such an Upgrade.

Simply better performance is probably enough of a selling point.
 
Simply better performance is probably enough of a selling point.
I dont think it is unless it is substantial. Which I dont think it will be. At this point, considering that the PS5 is already hitting near or full 4k and/or 60fps, with VRR for cpable displays which adds a balance mode too, the better performance is going to be less perceivable than lets say between PS4 and PS4 Pro. The existence of PS4 Pro became somewhat of a necessity when 4k TVs and content were becoming the new mainstream.
We didnt get any similar context for a PS5 Pro.
 
I dont think it is unless it is substantial. Which I dont think it will be. At this point, considering that the PS5 is already hitting near or full 4k and/or 60fps, with VRR for cpable displays which adds a balance mode too, the better performance is going to be less perceivable than lets say between PS4 and PS4 Pro.

It's still running last gen games and game engines, give it another 12-18 months and we'll see that drop substantially and that is where the difference between PS5 and a Pro model could/should be very visible.
 
It was about 4k last time with the 4Pro but iirc they also said it was also about not losing so much ground to PC near the end of the gen like they did in the PS3 gen. Because they said console players were switching over to PC.

This an apples to oranges comparison but the PS4 Pro had around the same TFlops as the GTX 1060 and came out around the same time. If PS5 Pro comes out next year it's going to be a year+ behind the RTX 4060TI.

So to me a PS5 Pro isn't that far fetched. There is a question about how it would manage to still handle BC though. I forget how it works.
 
I dont think it is unless it is substantial. Which I dont think it will be. At this point, considering that the PS5 is already hitting near or full 4k and/or 60fps, with VRR for cpable displays which adds a balance mode too, the better performance is going to be less perceivable than lets say between PS4 and PS4 Pro. The existence of PS4 Pro became somewhat of a necessity when 4k TVs and content were becoming the new mainstream.
We didnt get any similar context for a PS5 Pro.
We don't have a 4K context, obviously. But remember than at 4K-ish we are talking about PS4 era graphics, not the true next-gen flavor: RT graphics.

What's the main problem on those consoles multiplats currently? Many of those games have 2 modes, quality and performance. The current problem is those quality modes perform badly and most of time are already lacking plenty of graphical features compared to high end PC.

If Sony want people to buy their consoles instead of a high end PC then the context is obvious, current consoles really suck at doing RT properly, and what they must do, focus on RT performance, is IMO a no-brainer. Are they going to succeed? We'll see.
 
current consoles really suck at doing RT properly, and what they must do, focus on RT performance
Just how much input do sony and microsoft really have with the hardware designs they use from AMD? Just say they want dedicated RT hardware on the chip like intel and nvidia but AMD are not going down that path, is it even possible for them to get something that big of a change from AMD's base designs made?
 
Just how much input do sony and microsoft really have with the hardware designs they use from AMD? Just say they want dedicated RT hardware on the chip like intel and nvidia but AMD are not going down that path, is it even possible for them to get something that big of a change from AMD's base designs made?
No way we could really answer that. But I would guess that no, they cant just go up to AMD and ask for major features that aren't already on their roadmap. Radeon will already be full at work with what they have determined to be the best avenue for future graphics and cant just dedicate a whole new team to developing some core architectural branching just cuz one customer thinks it'd be better to do things differently than AMD were doing it. I mean, even if Radeon isn't Nvidia, they are still foremost experts on this stuff, and I doubt that Sony/MS have much to tell AMD that AMD doesn't already know. It's not like consoles are some niche use case that has special needs compared to Radeon's existing goals.
 
Ok, apparently PS5 Pro will happen in late 2024.
Now the question is not if it's a possibility, but what can they achieve by that timeframe.
 
Just how much input do sony and microsoft really have with the hardware designs they use from AMD? Just say they want dedicated RT hardware on the chip like intel and nvidia but AMD are not going down that path, is it even possible for them to get something that big of a change from AMD's base designs made?
It's semi custom. Meaning they can alter the existing IP within some limits of keeping the design more or less the same. Massive changes would just be 'custom' at a certain level.

What makes these chips semi-custom is the bundling of these particular CPU and GPU together. AMD doesn't have this particular SKU on the PC market. Other changes are the amount of hardware blocks they would like.

I think MCM and Chiplet APUs would be a level beyond semi-custom, but I could be wrong and pleasantly surprised.
 
One other console question we put to Zelnick is that of mid-generation console refreshes. It was about this point in the last console cycle that Microsoft first announced what would be the Xbox One X, and Sony soon followed with the PlayStation 4 Pro. We ask if we should expect to see such iterative hardware this time around, and whether or how they impacted Take-Two's business in the previous generation. "We probably will," Zelnick says, "and they did not affect the business very much."

The Take Two CEO think there will be mid gen consoles again and told to Take Two shareholder.
 
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Maybe from Sony, not from MS. At least in terms of % chance, Sony has to be much higher than MS.

I think so too, but perhaps MS have changed their minds. Also, given their relatively low guaranteed clocks MS might be able to make shrinks of their current consoles that run faster. Particularly if they decide to allow for opportunistic boosting. Assuming that games can handle that without the logic breaking (downside of guaranteeing clocks is that those clocks are guaranteed).

Clockspeed has been a relative performance booster for PS5 in many games compared to the SX AFAICS. And this isn't an accident - Cerny knew which bottlenecks he was trying to minimise, at least in the 3D pipeline dominated era where it probably mattered most.
 
Question is, will they raise the price of games by $5 cause of all the mid-gen upgrade work required?

Who knows what they'll 'justify', but there's little technical reason for that - publishers already have to factor in far more scaling for the Series S and PC versions. It's not like the architecture is going to change substantially. Up the res or just up the dynamic res target, maybe add in higher precision RT, that's probably going to be it.

Plenty of games already have unlocked modes now. Those may not even need a patch at all, but again depends on how they realize these GPU gains. It's one thing to automatically scale to a higher mhz, it's another when you potentially could be working with chiplets or far more CU's. Dunno how the PS5 SDK would deal with this.

I think the general public is pretty much at their limit with $70-$100 games regardless, especially in this economic climate.
 
120 fps was transformational for me on a high refresh-rate monitor, almost as big as the jump from 30 to 60. It's to the point that I would rather drop the resolution to 1440p from 4k if that gets me >100 fps. Is that worth it on a console--maybe not given many seem satisfied with 30 fps with more eye candy (something that I'd find entirely unacceptable).
 
I think so too, but perhaps MS have changed their minds. Also, given their relatively low guaranteed clocks MS might be able to make shrinks of their current consoles that run faster. Particularly if they decide to allow for opportunistic boosting. Assuming that games can handle that without the logic breaking (downside of guaranteeing clocks is that those clocks are guaranteed).

Clockspeed has been a relative performance booster for PS5 in many games compared to the SX AFAICS. And this isn't an accident - Cerny knew which bottlenecks he was trying to minimise, at least in the 3D pipeline dominated era where it probably mattered most.
The shrinking would improve yield and reduce costs on cooling. They could increase the clock speed a touch but not to the point of calling it a mid gen refresh.

I would rather see if they decided last minute to change their binning strategy when series consoles launched. If so, and they gave themselves reasonable cut off ranges they could in theory employ a variable clock range 3 years later to compete without needing a midgen refresh.

I have my doubts on both though. I give both barely < 5% on happening
 
Would it be wise for Microsoft to have three SKU's?

Their first party studio's can't even make exceptional looking titles with the SKU's they already have so what will adding another SKU do?
 
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