Sony PlayStation 5 Pro

[Cyan]

people don't stop complaining but it is going to sell in droves.

The PS5 Disc Drive Is Selling Out Online After PS5 Pro Reveal

According to one site, the PS5 Blu-ray drive is outselling recently released platformer Astro Bot

kotaku.com

 

[Maillog]

is 20 and 10?

No. Ps5 gpu is based on rdna 2 and wave64 does not give advantage in the number of operations because it is executed in two cycles and CU has one SIMD32 path
Ps5 pro gpu is based on RDNA3 CU(very likely, not official) and wave64 has one cycle execution. Wave64 is preferred in RDNA3 because of the new CU structure
However in practice amd is talking about 9% performance improvement in real tasks, theoretical numbers are very hard to achieve
So 30tf ps5 gpu is a number we will never see in reality.

 

[arandomguy]

people don't stop complaining but it is going to sell in droves.

The PS5 Disc Drive Is Selling Out Online After PS5 Pro Reveal

According to one site, the PS5 Blu-ray drive is outselling recently released platformer Astro Bot

kotaku.com

That hasn’t stopped a few people from already trying to flip the disc drive on eBay for more than its retail price.

Generous return policies means everyone should buy in advance these days unless they have poor/no credit.

 

[arandomguy]

But the thing is, when PS5 has been stable or even going more expensive in pricing, with Pro being so expensive and even more expensive in EU, what price reductions can we expect until let's say 2027 that will allow the PS6 to be priced at $600?
In 4 years we got a mid gen upgrade priced at 700-800+ without a disc drive.

Surely they will rely on image and framerate reconstruction to save silicon.

But still, it's going to be more powerful than a PS5 Pro for sure. I don't see the PS5 dropping at $400 and the PS5 pro at $500 anytime soon and expect at least double the performance on PS6 charging only $100 more.

The pricing/cost stability (or even increase) of this console gen is unprecedented

Just to clarify I'm not necessarily suggesting the PS5 Pro is priced higher at the moment just to absorb demand (or at least entirely) but that I think companies may be somewhat rethinking too low pricing. It's both leaving money on the table and just due to the different nature of things now also can generate bad will due to everything involved around that (good will from low pricing isn't a given, when it's just frustration at not being able to buy one without paying a premium to a third party).

We're also coming out of significant economic disruption, so things going forward might be more steady. Inflation, income, and the optics of both will eventually settle on a new equilibrium. Right now everything is still adjusting to the other.

That's what I refer to in terms of alternative rendering. We're getting basically multiple generations of uplift both on the hardware and software side with ML. Wherea's we're running into dimishing returns in terms of the hardware cost for raster and even the software efficiencies for raster. Even outside of ML such as with RT there is likely a better fidelity for the cost going forward.

With the above the next gen doesn't neccesarily need to focus the big leap on raster (or tflops). Can they increase the user experience in other ways? Well think about it, if we normalize 60 fps for example with this gen that won't need to be basically sacrificed in the performance budget for next gen. If 60 fps is standard next gen can we then have frame gen as a standard with VRR? 80-120fps frame gen with 4k AI upscalers I would say is a pretty big user experience jump in itself and in theory punches way above it's weight in transitor cost.

 

[rntongo]

I feel something that came to light during the pandemic was the issue of pricing items too low at launch and leaving money on the tablet (much of which is taken by scalpers). The idea of pricing something so low relative to demand (what the public is willing to pay, not neccesarily what they want to pay) right on the onset and having prolonged shortages really is becoming more questionable from a business stand point.

As for the PS6 (or next gen in general) I do feel there are some factors that work in their favor. They can fully lean into VRR I feel (due to more proliferation of TVs and displays). They won't need to accomodate the 30 -> 60 fps issue if we basically spent this gen normalizing 60 fps. They can go more in with "alternative" rendering technology that likely has more growth growth potential both on the hardware and software scaling side. Price optics will also likely have shifted, remember the base PS5 didn't really have a perceived pricing issue at $500, as such I'm guessing the PS6 has $600 at least to work with.

I think you're partly right, I think they just had issues producing enough PS5s and there's supply chain issues in making new chips as well as getting large orders of chips. But you can see things like memory and flash storage have gone down in price while processor chips have not since those have supply issues. I think it benefits Sony more if they get as many PS5s out there because of additional revenue from software and services, rather than just looking at individual hw sales. If they dont eventually cut down the price of the PS5 pro I think it will be because they just couldnt build as many of them so they might as well keep the prices relatively high. But I agree they must have looked at the demand for the PS5 and decided they might as well keep higher prices. Because the PS5 is not anywhere as expensive to produce as it was at launch. And the PS5 pro is soberly speaking a GPU/accelerator bump.

What are the chances AMD are sick of being ridden hard and put away wet in regards to the margin on their console socs and this is where some of the increased cost has come from?

This is plausible as well. I read they are even moving to focus more on AI cards than consumer gaming GPUs. So its very plausible they decided to twist Sony's arm. But when you look at the PS5 pro its still the same CPU, same amount of RAM at 16GB, 2TB SSD costs like $120 off Amazon so Sony must be getting it way less than that. They are making a killing on this machine at $699. I would say its a $400 box. PS5 has been profitable since the second year of launch and its currently selling at $459 for the disc less model. The additional cost of going with higher bandwidth memory in the pro at the large quantities Sony orders must be small. And the CPU is still the same, that all leaves the major cost the GPU and the accelerators. Thats not $250 worth of extra cost.

 

[Charlietus]

Honestly, thinking about it, I'm not totally against a console that's crazy expansive for the enthusiasts. But even while selling at a profit, it's gotta have no compromises. And that zen 2 CPU being the same as a PS5 is a compromise. Big price=big expectations. It was understandable for the PS4 pro at that price, but for PS5 pro? No. (Also just 45% higher raster is really low).

 

[snc]

Ign uploaded higher qulity video from presentation

 

[see colon]

Back then people didn't really want to play the same thing at higher resolution as not that many people had 4K TVs (way less than 75%). Many of them wanted more stable / better framerates. Now 75% of people actively want and select higher framerate and finally Sony have the perfect product for that. 75% of people would be ready to upgrade to PS5 Pro! Scalpers are going to have a field day and Sony may have been eventually right with their pricing strategy.

I was more talking about how they are being marketed. The PS4 Pro and One X were marketed as base console games at 4k, but in the real world the advent of performance/quality toggles exposed peoples desire for performance. The PS5 Pro is being marketed for quality mode visuals with performance mode framerates.

I'm downright baffled by the approach they took to reveal PS5Pro, showing off games that were available on PS4 and sort of bragged about how much better they will run on fancy new hardware. He actually said that 30fps is choppy. What does that mean for PS4's library? Why does Sony ship most games with a 30fps mode if it's so choppy? He lamented the existence of choice, and offered the solution by removing that choice. If you are anti-choice, why not make the games the way they are supposed to be and not offer a choppy choice?

Having a low stream quality didn't help with the comparisons. It's pretty hard to show the advantages of framerate in video in general but when you are disadvantaging your image quality contrasts, that's sort of shooting yourself in the foot. And the "Big 3"? One of the 3's is a larger GPU - The hardware that enables the other 2. WTF does that even mean? We should buy a console with a bigger GPU because why? If you told us this 3 years ago we would have all bought a series X. Hell, right now, the biggest GPU in the console space is still Series X. And when Pro launches, Series X will still have the second biggest GPU.

Sony obviously has the user data, and they've shaded some of it with us. Like the example that roughly 75% of users choose performance mode. But I don't know how scientific that data is. Do 75% games ship with performance as default, and a toggle up to quality? Maybe people aren't choosing performance at all. Are users that choose performance indifferent enough to image quality that a theoretical Pro 60fps quality mode would still be less favorable than a 120fps mode?

I think companies may be somewhat rethinking too low pricing.

That's called greed.

 

[TopSpoiler]

If PS5 had a modular design, we could get the exact same upgrades for $300..

 

[Karamazov]

I wonder if the Pro will be able to run the Croc remaster we all asked for at native 8K.

 

[London Geezer]

dollars price is without sale tax but even then the £ price should be probably little lower

A little? Even at 20% we get to $838 or £642...

 

[London Geezer]

How do you showcase double the framerate on pics? Trolls are having a lot of fun on social medias.


Sony said the clocks are up to 2.35 ghz. But they also have been very careful with specs this time. There could be 2 different clocks the way RDNA3 GPUs work and they could use different (higher) clocks for PS5 BC.

If we believe the 67 TFLOPS FP16 leak then it should be 16.75 TFLOPS in classical FP32 terms. But with PSSR and new RT in the picture this is a very different scenario than previous gens.

Yeah I'll reserve final judgement but a lot of the commentary seems to be about how the PS5 and Pro comparisons looked "the same" when comparing quality (30fps) to the Pro running at 60fps, which is the whole point!

 

[Nesh]

Just to clarify I'm not necessarily suggesting the PS5 Pro is priced higher at the moment just to absorb demand (or at least entirely) but that I think companies may be somewhat rethinking too low pricing. It's both leaving money on the table and just due to the different nature of things now also can generate bad will due to everything involved around that (good will from low pricing isn't a given, when it's just frustration at not being able to buy one without paying a premium to a third party).

We're also coming out of significant economic disruption, so things going forward might be more steady. Inflation, income, and the optics of both will eventually settle on a new equilibrium. Right now everything is still adjusting to the other.

That's what I refer to in terms of alternative rendering. We're getting basically multiple generations of uplift both on the hardware and software side with ML. Wherea's we're running into dimishing returns in terms of the hardware cost for raster and even the software efficiencies for raster. Even outside of ML such as with RT there is likely a better fidelity for the cost going forward.

With the above the next gen doesn't neccesarily need to focus the big leap on raster (or tflops). Can they increase the user experience in other ways? Well think about it, if we normalize 60 fps for example with this gen that won't need to be basically sacrificed in the performance budget for next gen. If 60 fps is standard next gen can we then have frame gen as a standard with VRR? 80-120fps frame gen with 4k AI upscalers I would say is a pretty big user experience jump in itself and in theory punches way above it's weight in transitor cost.

I didn't think that you were suggesting high price to absorb demand. I understand it as a phenomenon of high costs of production and distribution which I don't believe will ever improve enough to facilitate a $600 PS6 and be a significant upgrade over PS5 Pro even with new image and framerate reconstruction tech

 

[Charlietus]

I didn't think that you were suggesting high price to absorb demand. I understand it as a phenomenon of high costs of production and distribution which I don't believe will ever improve enough to facilitate a $600 PS6 and be a significant upgrade over PS5 Pro even with new image and framerate reconstruction tech

If we consider that the PS5 PRO is being sold at a profit, then a PS6 base at 600$ makes sense (with multiple tiers at higher and lower prices).

Taking in to consideration third parties, they have a responsibility to offer them a install base that's big enough to sustain them. And a 700$ PS6 would get the casuals to take their phone out of their pockets and to play watherver slop that is in there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah I'll reserve final judgement but a lot of the commentary seems to be about how the PS5 and Pro comparisons looked "the same" when comparing quality (30fps) to the Pro running at 60fps, which is the whole point!

I think a big aspect is whether you are viewing a decent 4K stream on a decent 4K TV with good eyes. YouTube and 1080p eliminates the fidelity advantage that comes alongside the framerate advantage.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If we consider that the PS5 PRO is being sold at a profit, then a PS6 base at 600$ makes sense.

And it'll be 50% faster than PS5 Pro, and bring what to the market? Cerny's next side-by-side comparisons will be highlighting how many more blades of grass and pebbles PS6 can render over the crusty old PS5?

Taking in to consideration third parties, they have a responsibility to offer them a install base that's big enough to sustain them. And a 700$ PS6 would get the casuals to take their phone out of their pockets and to play watherver slop that is in there.

Yes. But at whatever price, if the improvement in experience isn't there, it's not worth it. Loads of people are happy to carry on with PS4 as PS5 is just a bit better. PS6 will be even less improved, meaning even less reason to get a new console to play Fortnite etc. All the software will be cross-gen for a decade+ past PS6's release.

 

[London Geezer]

Loads of people are happy to carry on with PS4 as PS5 is just a bit better. PS6 will be even less improved, meaning even less reason to get a new console to play Fortnite etc. All the software will be cross-gen for a decade+ past PS6's release.

I don't know that PS5 is a 'little' better than PS4. Putting graphics aside, even just for the loading times, sound, controller and even noise it's a huge upgrade, to me. Graphics are what they are these days.

Now, the PS6? Who knows, not really sure where they can go from here and graphics are only going to improve so much.

 

[Charlietus]

And it'll be 50% faster than PS5 Pro, and bring what to the market? Cerny's next side-by-side comparisons will be highlighting how many more blades of grass and pebbles PS6 can render over the crusty old PS5?

Yes. But at whatever price, if the improvement in experience isn't there, it's not worth it. Loads of people are happy to carry on with PS4 as PS5 is just a bit better. PS6 will be even less improved, meaning even less reason to get a new console to play Fortnite etc. All the software will be cross-gen for a decade+ past PS6's release.

The PS6 gen may actually be the last to offer big improvements to visuals.
They can build a chip that brings small improvements to rasterization while concentrating on ray tracing and ML.
Teraflop numbers may not even be a marketing point. After that, it's going to be like smartphones, small incremental improvements.

And there is nothing they can do to convince the Fortnite and live service crowd to move on, unless they stop supporting the PS4.

But thinking that Sony will stop making playstation consoles is misguided. It's like thinking that apple will stop making new iphones because sales have plateaued. Like Sony, it's their flagship product, they will try to make it better and sell more until they don't exist anymore.

 

[snc]

And it'll be 50% faster than PS5 Pro, and bring what to the market?

Cpu !

 

[GhostofWar]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1833571790997885060

So there is no dedicated AI block in this at all? It's like XeSS on none intel hardware?

Has there been any info on exactly what the RT improvements actually are? I've seen people saying it will perform in RT like a 4070 but this doesn't help much either, do they mean light RT loads where AMD does ok or do they mean what a 4070 can do with heavy RT loads like something like cyberpunk pathtracing including features like shader execution reordering.