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

[Inuhanyou]

I still am iffy about this rumor. I don't really see the point at all. either economically or in terms of what they could actually do that would justify such resources when PS5 is already selling fine now that people can actually buy one.

People are infinitely more interested in a PS5 slim that cheaper on a smaller process node in combination with the optional plug and play disc drive than a more powerful sku

I tell you FSR2 and DLSS2 have made the reasoning for mid gen machines obsolete. Most games are rocking very solid 60fps modes at decent image quality for 4k displays already in general terms and that goes for cross gen games and next gen only games like ratchet, demon souls, final fantasy 16, dead space and others

 

[iroboto]

With mid gen consoles last gen, we went went from 1.3-1.8 Tflops base consoles with 8 GBs of DRAM to 4.2-6.0 Tflops with 8-12 GBs of DRAM. All for $400-$500.

Can Sony or MS put out a mid gen console with 28-46 Tflops of performance and rocking up to 24 GBs of DRAM for $500 in 2024?

I highly doubt it. Inflation has been so bad that if MS and Sony put out a console today for $500 it probably would be spec’d similarly to what we already have now. An extra year would make little to no difference.

Mid gen consoles for this gen don’t make a lot of economic sense especially given certain realities. Inflated prices for PC gaming hardware doesn’t make for an attractive incentive for consoles gamers to migrate to PC hardware. Nor does the less than flattering reports of all the stuttering displayed by PC titles at launch. The main motivating factors for releasing mid gen last gen aren’t so motivating today.

Yup. Precisely the reason why MS launched with Series S and X at the same time. They had made a calculation that a mid Gen refresh was not possible.

It would be a massive blunder for them if Sony pulls this off.

 

[Globalisateur]

The leak is coming from a very reliable guy who already leaked the detachable disk drive. The Pro is coming guy. And that leak has not being contradicted by any other serious leaker / journalists in the industry.

Yup. Precisely the reason why MS launched with Series S and X at the same time. They had made a calculation that a mid Gen refresh was not possible.

It would be a massive blunder for them if Sony pulls this off.

That was absolutely not the reason. They did that because they thought it was a smart idea to sell a cheaper next-gen console.

Xbox is also going to release a premium model because Sony is going to. They'll never let Sony alone with a Pro product on the market. I still think MS made the decision to make the X1X after having heard the first time about the Pro as they released the X1X about 17 months after the first big leak. That should be just sufficient to design and release a console using off-the shelf components. Here I think they won't make the same mistake twice (releasing their premium console 1 year after).

 

[iroboto]

The leak is coming from a very reliable guy who already leaked the detachable disk drive. The Pro is coming guy. And that leak has not being contradicted by any other serious leaker / journalists in the industry.

That was absolutely not the reason. They did that because they thought it was a smart idea to sell a cheaper next-gen console.

Xbox is also going to release a premium model because Sony is going to. They'll never let Sony alone with a Pro product on the market. I still think MS made the decision to make the X1X after having heard the first time about the Pro as they released the X1X about 17 months after the first big leak. That should be just sufficient to design and release a console using off-the shelf components. Here I think they won't make the same mistake twice (releasing their premium console 1 year after).

Pretty sure they said that the rising cost in silicon would make the mid Gen refresh impossible due to cost scaling. The only thing getting cheaper is ssd memory.
You can jump your compute sure, but you need bandwidth to match. XSX is already at 10 chips. PS5 at 8. An additional 6 more chips for XSX would jump a high price, and then you need to double it's compute, and the R&D and cooling and somehow keep the whole package under $500. I don't see enough cost reductions (according to this graph) for this to be feasible until next gen arrives.

as per the hotchips slide

 

[mr magoo]

So to summarize things mid gen refresh dosent make sense
from technology perspective as adding custom silicone may be difficult if not impossible
I’d dosent make sense from financial perspective as it would be significant expensive than current machine.
It doesn’t make sense from sales perspective as Sony still can’t fully satisfy demand.
And most important one this refresh dosent make sense from consumer perspective who is this for? Nobody is asking for that. People who are obsessed with RT are most probably running powerful pcs. People who just got ps5 will they be keen to buy ps5 pro? And for what? What is the selling point? Slightly better RT?

 

[Globalisateur]

Pretty sure they said that the rising cost in silicon would make the mid Gen refresh impossible due to cost scaling. The only thing getting cheaper is ssd memory.
You can jump your compute sure, but you need bandwidth to match. XSX is already at 10 chips. PS5 at 8. An additional 6 more chips for XSX would jump a high price, and then you need to double it's compute, and the R&D and cooling and somehow keep the whole package under $500. I don't see enough cost reductions (according to this graph) for this to be feasible until next gen arrives.

as per the hotchips slide

Maybe this applies for MS but for Sony (which already have a $400 model) there is an easy solution: Sell it 200$ more than the base model instead of 100$ for PS4 Pro. And Sony are good at producing cheap hardware. My bet is that they are going to keep 16GB ram and add cheaper and slower DDR4 memory for the OS, allocating more GDDR6 ram for games. They did this for PS4 Pro.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So to summarize things mid gen refresh dosent make sense
from technology perspective as adding custom silicone may be difficult if not impossible
I’d dosent make sense from financial perspective as it would be significant expensive than current machine.
It doesn’t make sense from sales perspective as Sony still can’t fully satisfy demand.
And most important one this refresh dosent make sense from consumer perspective who is this for? Nobody is asking for that. People who are obsessed with RT are most probably running powerful pcs. People who just got ps5 will they be keen to buy ps5 pro? And for what? What is the selling point? Slightly better RT?

And yet it's happening! So either the estimates are all wrong, or Sony is going crazy. Or rumour is untrue.

 

[iroboto]

Maybe this applies for MS but for Sony (which already have a $400 model) there is an easy solution: Sell it 200$ more than the base model instead of 100$ for PS4 Pro. And Sony are good at producing cheap hardware. My bet is that they are going to keep 16GB ram and add cheaper and slower DDR4 memory for the OS, allocating more GDDR6 ram for games. They did this for PS4 Pro.

What do you think the pro spec will be here?
Clockspeeds - you're already at 2200
Hardware?
CUs?
CPU?
Memory
Bandwidth
Shader Engines

I think MS is done. I mean, they lose 200 on each Series S, and 100+ on Series X. They're a long way from profitability.
I'm not sure people would go for a $699 PS5 Pro. And I'm not really convinced there is much improvement.

Whatever the case, I don't see MS responding. Having 3 SKUs is too much confusion and too much development work. And switching the generation in 2024 would lose customer faith.

 

[iroboto]

And yet it's happening! So either the estimates are all wrong, or Sony is going crazy. Or rumour is untrue.

lol... that's everything everywhere all at once.
Schrodingers PS5 Pro

 

[snc]

So to summarize things mid gen refresh dosent make sense
from technology perspective as adding custom silicone may be difficult if not impossible
I’d dosent make sense from financial perspective as it would be significant expensive than current machine.
It doesn’t make sense from sales perspective as Sony still can’t fully satisfy demand.
And most important one this refresh dosent make sense from consumer perspective who is this for? Nobody is asking for that. People who are obsessed with RT are most probably running powerful pcs. People who just got ps5 will they be keen to buy ps5 pro? And for what? What is the selling point? Slightly better RT?

Not sure how this is any different than ps4pro. Sony doesnt want to players drift towards pc and still want to make money on realising games on this platform so they wont go back to keeping exclusives on playstation forever but instead will refresh hw midgen in console cycle. In the end on 2024 base ps5 should get price decrease and they can have two variants like now microsoft has with xss and xsx. Also not true nobody wants it, at least I want and will buy it day 1 ;d

 

[iroboto]

Sony doesnt want to players drift towards pc and still want to make money on realising games on this platform so they wont go back to keeping exclusives on playstation forever but instead will refresh hw midgen in console cycle

But I mean, they are releasing more titles on PC than ever, including their exclusives. Seems to me that they are embracing PC not the opposite.

 

[snc]

But I mean, they are releasing more titles on PC than ever, including their exclusives. Seems to me that they are embracing PC not the opposite.

Thats what I wrote, and in terms to not push playstation users to pc platforms they have to keep up with hw more often than once per 7 years.

 

[Karamazov]

What if....ps5 pro is a PC "PS store" ready ?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Sony doesnt want to players drift towards pc and still want to make money on realising games on this platform so they wont go back to keeping exclusives on playstation forever but instead will refresh hw midgen in console cycle.

They didn't want that to happen so they released PS4-P. It's quite likely that their metrics and data analysis from the PS4-P release showed that it had almost no effect on whether players went to PC or not. Basically someone that primarily games on console is unlikely to switch to primarily gaming on PC and vice versa.

That's a major motivator for them committing to releasing their games on PC. Basically it's a far more profitable move than investing in a mid-gen release.

In the end on 2024 base ps5 should get price decrease and they can have two variants like now microsoft has with xss and xsx. Also not true nobody wants it, at least I want and will buy it day 1 ;d

Unless they want to start selling the base PS5 at a loss, I'm not sure it's going to happen. Consoles haven't gotten any cheaper to manufacture now than back when they launched, so there isn't any room to reduce price without selling at a loss.

Moving to a smaller node isn't going to help because it's still more expensive per transistor to release on 5 nm versus 7 nm. It's one of the reasons that orders for 7 nm wafer starts increased substantially versus 5 nm for TSMC in the past year. Tech companies need to have a very good reason to move to 5 nm versus 7 nm (power savings, performance bump) because they aren't going to have to spend more money per transistor to release a chip on 5 nm versus 7 nm.

I could see Sony potentially moving to 5 nm in order to simplify their cooling but at best they'd be trading a cheaper cooling solution for a more expensive SOC. And that's if they just go for a shrink. Increasing performance is going to increase power consumption significantly as well as increasing cost significantly.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

Increasing performance is going to increase power consumption significantly as well as increasing cost significantly.

PS5 Pro is pretty much locked to the same 2200 variable algorithm that PS5 has for BC. Which means it must go up to 2200 and it cannot dilly dally below that.
Doubling the CUs will throw power up a lot more, you're basically in Series X in terms of size.
Having more hardware geometry units and ROPS will increase the size of the chip significantly, which is what Series X removed and everyone points at for imbalances.
You need additional memory (a much larger bus) to compensate for the increased compute, which... also series X compromised for to keep costs down.

It's an interesting concept and I would love to see what Sony does. But, using the knowledge we have today, I don't see a compelling case for a cost effective Pro unit.

 

[snc]

It's quite likely that their metrics and data analysis from the PS4-P release showed that it had almost no effect on whether players went to PC or not.

Sure, thats why they will release ps5pro ;d

Unless they want to start selling the base PS5 at a loss,

Nah, ssd is quite impactful for ps5 price and will be much cheaper in late 2024

 

[Globalisateur]

What do you think the pro spec will be here?
Clockspeeds - you're already at 2200
Hardware?
CUs?
CPU?
Memory
Bandwidth
Shader Engines

I think MS is done. I mean, they lose 200 on each Series S, and 100+ on Series X. They're a long way from profitability.
I'm not sure people would go for a $699 PS5 Pro. And I'm not really convinced there is much improvement.

Whatever the case, I don't see MS responding. Having 3 SKUs is too much confusion and too much development work. And switching the generation in 2024 would lose customer faith.

I expect it to be $600 for Sony. 72 CUs (double PS5), faster ram (still 16GB though), DDR4 ram for OS (to give more ram for games).

Maybe they are going to use L3 (infinity) cache for the GPU to improve bandwith and RT performance. Also maybe 3D cache for the CPU (could be expensive though but an easy way to improve CPU performance at a low power cost). A big maybe for those 2 things though.

Small overclocks for GPUs and CPU compared to PS5 though. And obviously much improved RT performance by accelerating more RT rendering (adding traversal logic + stack management to current RDNA2 solution).

I think MS will still release a new model even if they lose 200$ by unit. Just to have a high end SKU against Sony. But like X1X they won't produce it in high volume.

Doubling the CUs will throw power up a lot more, you're basically in Series X in terms of size.
Having more hardware geometry units and ROPS will increase the size of the chip significantly, which is what Series X removed and everyone points at for imbalances.
You need additional memory (a much larger bus) to compensate for the increased compute, which... also series X compromised for to keep costs down.

It's an interesting concept and I would love to see what Sony does. But, using the knowledge we have today, I don't see a compelling case for a cost effective Pro unit.

For bandwidth GPU L3 cache could be a great solution (if they succeed at designing it around PS5 BC). And the rest of the power consumption issues will be taken care by (an improved) variable clocks design. Currently PS5 is at max 230W, I could see max 250W for Pro.

 

[iroboto]

I expect it to be $600 for Sony. 72 CUs (double PS5), faster ram (still 16GB though), DDR4 ram for OS (to give more ram for games).

Maybe they are going to use L3 (infinity) cache for the GPU to improve bandwith and RT performance. Also maybe 3D cache for the CPU (could be expensive though but an easy way to improve CPU performance at a low power cost). A big maybe for those 2 things though.

Small overclocks for GPUs and CPU compared to PS5 though. And obviously much improved RT performance by accelerating more RT rendering (adding traversal logic + stack management to current RDNA2 solution).

I think MS will still release a new model even if they lose 200$ by unit. Just to have a high end SKU against Sony. But like X1X they won't produce it in high volume.


For bandwidth GPU L3 cache could be a great solution (if they succeed at designing it around PS5 BC). And the rest of the power consumption issues will be taken care by (an improved) variable clocks design. Currently PS5 is at max 230W, I could see max 250W for Pro.

You're suggesting essentially it's going to become a 6800XT with some reduced CUs for redundancy with a CPU and SSD for $600.

I mean it's an option, but in the face of what they've accomplished with RDNA 3, it's not very forward looking.

 

[Seanspeed]

I could see Sony potentially moving to 5 nm in order to simplify their cooling but at best they'd be trading a cheaper cooling solution for a more expensive SOC. And that's if they just go for a shrink. Increasing performance is going to increase power consumption significantly as well as increasing cost significantly.

I fully expect they're gonna go for a 5nm shrink with a proper PS5 Slim at some point. That more efficient process will have big knock on effects for the rest of the package and components. Smaller heatsink, smaller fan, smaller PSU, smaller motherboard smaller case, etc. A bit unrelated, but they can also reconfigure their SSD to a more basic controller with less chips. They will also be getting a lot more main SoC chips out of every wafer. And of course this will all lead to a smaller and lighter product package as a whole that reduces storage and shipping costs considerably.

I think the main thing is that the cost savings here will almost certainly make sense for Sony, because they'll pocket most of it themselves rather than passing much, if any to consumers. But they would have some more wiggle room to do so if needed, if console sales did somehow start taking a downturn at some point.

As for a Pro at $600 with 5nm and hugely increased specs - no way.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I expect it to be $600 for Sony. 72 CUs (double PS5), faster ram (still 16GB though), DDR4 ram for OS (to give more ram for games).

What does the PS5 enthusiast get for their $600 making it worth it?