I'd rather have that than midgen refreshes.
Depends entirely on when they plan to release the next gen where they think the tech will have advanced enough to call it a new generation. It was speculated recently that they would come in 2026, if that is the case then yeah, just wait for that. But if it is indeed more in the 2028 range then a midgen refresh makes more sense.
I just dont get what the point will be. PS4 Pro and XB1X had 4k screens and a large uplift in GPU performance to help make use of such new displays. What will the selling point of a PS5 Pro be, exactly? And how on earth do they deliver it at anything less than like $600-700? Do we really think they're gonna discount the PS5 so soon, as well as it's selling?
Yeah this is a valid point, Sony had 4K TV's to push at the time. The PS4/Xbox One came about right as 4K's were taking off and couldn't take advantage of them.
One potential way they could extend whatever meagre hardware improvements they could make at a reasonable price point as well is to perhaps invest in more advanced reconstruction tech with machine learning- something clearly superior to FSR, and potentially more performant. So maybe you only increase fillrate by 50% at a decent price point - but your reconstruction tech doubles performance but looks better than native? Dunno.
~2 years is still a ways away though. I also agree that it's questionable if 'better ray tracing' is really something console users are clamoring for atm. I mean confirmation bias and all that as this is only based on online forums where it's a skewed sample sure, but the biggest worry I see among console owners is 30fps coming back as the standard for new games, and secondly ~1080p resolutions being the target. People still want res and framerate.
There is no doubt ray tracing can have a huge impact, but if this refresh were to provide that, that also somewhat goes against the philosophy of the previous midgen refresh, which was basically 'More power, but with minimal friction'. Meaning that the games didn't substantially change from either the gamers or the developers perspective, the midgens provided better performance and maybe better texture quality, but beyond that they were the same games. If this refresh mainly differs in substantially better RT hardware, how do you really showcase that without significant differences in the engine for a game? Otherwise it's just higher resolution effects, and I can't see 'sharper reflections' really being much of a selling point.
60fps and something that resembles native 4k though vs 30 and ~1440p, that's a far more easily communicated upgrade.
www.theregister.com
