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

[cheapchips]

Aren't RAM prices a bit of a sticking point for a mid gen refresh? In 3-4 years prices won't have reduced enough to include significantly more RAM.

Faster frame rates don't need it, if that's the selling point? Better raytracing does?

 

[eastmen]

Aren't RAM prices a bit of a sticking point for a mid gen refresh? In 3-4 years prices won't have reduced enough to include significantly more RAM.

Faster frame rates don't need it, if that's the selling point? Better raytracing does?

It depends . If they stick with AMD and they continue down the route of Infinity cache it might not be a big deal. The 6800xt has 128megs but perhaps 256megs of stacked cache would keep chip size down and still allow for slower less costly ram in consoles. MS already did a split design. Maybe we will see that combined in the refresh.

RDNA 3/4 with 256 megs infinity cache with a split pool of say 16/8 gigs of ram ?

 

[manux]

Aren't RAM prices a bit of a sticking point for a mid gen refresh? In 3-4 years prices won't have reduced enough to include significantly more RAM.

Faster frame rates don't need it, if that's the selling point? Better raytracing does?

Do we really need more ram? Consoles have gone fully into streaming. Fast ssd alleviates ram pressure. Consoles will still keep being 4k and possibly scale to 8k so resolution increases will not be driving memory consumption higher. It could be more beneficial to add even faster ssd and even better compression to console than adding more ram.

 

[RobertR1]

Of course. These are off the shelf parts that can be replaced with newer off the shelf parts for not too much more in cost or r&d. However it lets them kickstart a whole new marketing platform and keep the ASP high.

 

[Rikimaru]

There won’t be a mid gen refresh.

Cost per transistor does not come down anymore. Current gen is too expensive already.

 

[manux]

I believe into rolling generations. New console every 3-5 years similar to new phone model every year. Rolling generation is BC and more of the same. Depending what consumers can stomach the new consoles could come into higher price points while current and previous gen consoles hold cheaper price points.

Only reason to do new generation in my mind is that if machine learning in games really takes off in future. It could be that "next gen" would have ridiculously fast accelerator for machine learning providing fancy ways to scale textures, buffers, cancel noise, animate, increase framerate etc. If this happens then the heavily machine learnt games would have no chance on running in old hw.

For example textures in ssd could be first decompressed, then processed(upscale+add detail) via dnn and then used by gpu. This potentially could save a ton of disk space while moving the cost to dnn processing. Texture upscale should be easier problem than what dlss tries to solve. Games could use material specific dnn's to upscale or even hallucinate(procedural) textures.

edit. Jim Keller talked about using dnn's to render graphics in lex fridmann podcast. He seemed to be optimistic that rendering would be done via machine learning in future. When that happens is anybody's guess.

 

[Nisaaru]

There won’t be a mid gen refresh.

Cost per transistor does not come down anymore. Current gen is too expensive already.

That's my thought too if "everything" would be normal.

But then there is the extremely dangerous political, social, economical and geo-strategical situation which might lead to an outcome we have far more serious concerns than some console.

I know gaming is pure escapism but if we discuss the "future" here when the "future" isn't guaranteed for "everybody" anymore it needs to be said.

 

[The-Nastiest]

I wanted to have this discussion but I wasn't sure where to post this. So instead of starting a new thread, I will pose the question in here.

In regards to mid-generation refreshes, do we still think they are coming this gen?

I feel like it has been a forgone conclusion by many that since PS4/Xbox One gen had refreshes that this gen will have it too.

I would like to say that I don't think thats the case for a few reasons.

Cost:

Richard from DF has stated that in his conversations with MS that he was informed that the prices of memory is not expected to drop enough to make any upgrades tangible while still hitting an attractive price point.

We have just witnessed Sony increase the price of Playstation 5 almost 2 years after launch due to global economic pressures. So, a fair assumption can be made is that we will not see a significant price drop within the next 12-18 months. This price drop would be needed to make a more powerful and expensive machine still viable in the market.

In general, we know how expensive it is to bring new hardware to market. Its more than just the bill of materials. Its also R&D, administration, shipping and some other costs that are associated with it that may deter these companies to rethink the strategy. Why take the loss if you don't have to?

Corporations in general have been looking at cutting spending due to economic uncertainty.

Incentive:

Playstation executives have been on record stating that the PS4 Pro was released to stop users from migrating to PC. Well, the times and strategies have changed. Playstation is in the process of developing their PS PC brand so instead of launching new hardware, they will just support those gamers who moved to PC by releasing titles for them.

Xbox is in a similar situation as well. Honestly, the Xbox brand seems to be PC first at this point. It seems like all of their marketing efforts this year have been about PC Game Pass as that has been looked at as a key area for growth. So, with that thought process in mind, why launch more powerful hardware, the people who crave the highest end stuff will still be the ecosystem through services.

Ease of development:

For a variety of reasons we still have cross gen titles. Also, we still havent even seen any 1P Xbox exclusives launch to really showcase the system. I believe that our current XSX/PS5 systems can still be leveraged to produce pretty visuals so why burden them with another SKU to worry about testing for?

Even the biggest developers have limited resources. The more platforms/skus you have to develop for will have a negative effect on optimization per sku. Certain hardware features like mesh shaders already require a ton of debugging, so why give them the extra work?

Any thoughts of this? Or am I rehashing a topic that has already been discussed to death.

 

[BRiT]

I'm not sure anymore. There's so much going on in the world from a socioeconomic standpoint that I don't see it as being optimal conditions for mid-gen refreshes.

I thought that if they do anything it might be easier to aim for rolling-generation using newer technology. That was until I saw just how long Sony and developers are supporting last-generation products. There will be titles releasing in 2024 still targeting the base PS4.

 

[iroboto]

I think if software somehow manages to catch up quickly, it may make sense to bring forward that mid-gen refresh. But currently we appear to be stuck on transitioning from last generation and I don't see that mid-gen refresh coming anytime soon. If it comes too late you may as well release next-gen, and the second question really comes from whether the benefits to shrinking that node make a lot of sense. You don't want to be in a situation where your next best economical node size for your next console is used for your mid=gen refresh and now you suddenly can't release anything.

 

[Jay]

I'm not sure anymore. There's so much going on in the world from a socioeconomic standpoint that I don't see it as being optimal conditions for mid-gen refreshes.

I thought that if they do anything it might be easier to aim for rolling-generation using newer technology. That was until I saw just how long Sony and developers are supporting last-generation products. There will be titles releasing in 2024 still targeting the base PS4.

The fact that cross gen has lasted so long and will now be a thing going forward has changed things.
So I think we've already moved into a rolling gen situation. More so out of circumstances than it being planned.

So I can see new consoles coming out not being mid gens but with shorter gens, with long cross gen development, making it seem like a mid gen.

So if a mid gen was 4 years, then this would possibly be 6.

 

[PSman1700]

Not seeing it happen either, last time it was mostly to cover the rise of 4k displays.

 

[dobwal]

I can hardly justify the performance added value of my current gen purchase never mind mid-gen. I bought the PS5 simply because I skipped the PS4, so all the value is from the great first-party titles released last-gen. I can't even pull the trigger on the XSX because the OX and GP are still serving me admirably.

The type of greater visuals I expect from a next-generation purchase hasn't arrived and it's been disappointing.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

I can hardly justify the performance added value of my current gen purchase never mind mid-gen. I bought the PS5 simply because I skipped the PS4, so all the value is from the great first-party titles released last-gen. I can't even pull the trigger on the XSX because the OX and GP are still serving me admirably.

The type of greater visuals I expect from a next-generation purchase hasn't arrived and it's been disappointing.

I think the problem with availability has hampered 'true' next-gen releases sure, there's just too many PS4/PS4 Pro/Xbones out there and too few (relatively) next gen machines available to ignore that massive combined market for many developers, still 2 years in.

That being said though, I think the midgen refreshes of last gen have maybe set expectations up a little too high for this gen in some aspects. They're considered 'last gen' because they ran the same software, but they're kinda not, relative to our understanding of what a 'generation' was before that. I realize you never owned a PS4 Pro yourself, but you've no doubt seen the games that ran on them and have your expectations set from the One X too - maybe you were expecting something that just isn't quite possible given what they brought to the table.

There's the revelatory increase in storage speed and CPU yes, but other critical areas relative to the Pro/OneX, they're far more meagre. Ram has 'only' doubled (and in the case of OneX, just 33% more), GPU rasterization power is roughly doubled, bandwidth is doubled (more from Pro->PS5, less than doubled in Series X). The storage speed could certainly be better utilized I guess, but then as others have noted, if you're really designing a game that needs 5+ gb/sec of assets to be streamed, where are they coming from? What kind of artistic budget is that, and how big would the game be?

The CPU could perhaps be stressed more the future, but then again titles not being that stressed is what allows all these 120fps modes now. I'm sure games 2 years from now will look better, perhaps substantially so - but I'm not really sure what people are expecting. Maybe the Matrix demo is setting those expectations up - but it's also struggling to hit 30fps. There will be tradeoffs.

 

[PSman1700]

If were were coming from the regular PS4 and Xbox One, I think even with the same titles, people would be feeling that next-gen effect far more I suspect. But I suspect many people, especially ones that are on forums like this, are coming into this gen as owners of a Pro/One X. Those were decently large jumps themselves, and in the case of One X, was a large jump over the One - it was only 3 years old when this gen hit.

True, though all the OneX/Pro did was mostly increasing resolutions and framerates, and no games where redesigned for those either. Mostly the same versions of the base consoles. But yea, they brought '4k' and higher or more stable framerates which otherwise wouldve ment 1080p to 4k and higher fps coming from base consoles, which wouldve helped ofcourse.

Edit: i think some games went with higher settings on the mid gens, doom eternal for example?

 

[Caayn]

I think the problem with availability has hampered 'true' next-gen releases sure, there's just too many PS4/PS4 Pro/Xbones out there and too few (relatively) next gen machines available to ignore that massive combined market for many developers, still 2 years in.

Is that still truly the case? At this point there should be roughly 35~40 million PS5 and XSX|S combined sold. A significant chunk of the "active" last-gen userbase has moved on. Certain games already sell a lot more on current-gen then they do on last-gen hardware. 80% of Gran Turismo 7's sales were on PS5 for example.

Grabbing a new unit off the store shelf without a reservation/pre-order is still difficult but that doesn't tell the whole story.

 

[Remij]

Nah, I don't think so. There's no new technology out there which they're trying to sell you at the moment. With the PS4 Pro and X1X it was "4K"... That's firmly established.. and 8K ain't happening any time soon.

I think this gen has had an obviously prolonged introduction, and about the time where we'd be seeing "mid gen upgrades" we'll instead be seeing actual titles developed specifically, and only, for the current generation of hardware out there.

That, plus a "slim" refresh SKU.. will carry the generation to the proper next generation.

 

[Sonic]

I see the feasibility of a mid gen refresh if it were set to the appropriate price of $700 to $800. That would allow MS/Sony to have a decent upgrade in hardware while retaining a price the market can bare.

 

[The-Nastiest]

Well, it seems like everyone is in general agreement here in regards to mid-gen console refreshes.

Is that still truly the case? At this point there should be roughly 35~40 million PS5 and XSX|S combined sold. A significant chunk of the "active" last-gen userbase has moved on. Certain games already sell a lot more on current-gen then they do on last-gen hardware. 80% of Gran Turismo 7's sales were on PS5 for example.

Grabbing a new unit off the store shelf without a reservation/pre-order is still difficult but that doesn't tell the whole story.

I think we should be careful when citing overall unit sales. Total unit sales equals a games total addressable market, but it doesn't equal the target market for a release.

While a tangible amount of people have moved to next gen, Sony still reported that 65% of PS Store revenue from April 2021 - March 2022 were from PS4 (Source - Page 14)

While total sales are a good indicator of health, interest and trends, it's just one of the metrics needed to determine the viability of a release. I'm going to use the PS4 as an example since we have official sale numbers. It's total addressable market is 117 million, but, of that total who are publishers targeting with their releases?

There are many PS4's that are sitting dusty on shelves, the owners moved to other platforms, the owners have stopped gaming completely, the owners are invisible since they haven't spent money on that platform in the past "X" amount of months, or haven't logged into PSN to be tracked as MAU in many months. Now, of the active users remaining, how many of them even like the genre of game you are releasing?

So we take that 117 million total and reduce it to maybe half or even one-third of the total sales amount (if its a popular genre) and we will get a realistic target market.

So now, we look at a current gen estimate of 35-40 million Xbox Series + PS5s and apply a similar line of thinking and the target market reduces to an amount that may not even recoup the costs of today's expensive AAA titles. Risk is still too high.

 

[see colon]

So now, we look at a current gen estimate of 35-40 million Xbox Series + PS5s and apply a similar line of thinking and the target market reduces to an amount that may not even recoup the costs of today's expensive AAA titles. Risk is still too high.

This has been an economic reality since console generations became a thing, though. It wasn't ever a hinderance enough to stop development of next gen only titles, until maybe now. Honestly, I do believe that Microsoft coming into this gen with a "cross-gen ride or die" attitude was both seen as pro consumer enough to win some good will, and that the underlying technology of modern games is usually scalable enough to hit both targets with a playable experience.

To be honest, it isn't like sales of next gen only titles have really suffered, have they? Rift Apart moved a million copies in just over a month didn't it? A quality game will do that. There are also plenty of examples of quality software released on last generation hardware selling poorly. That's why games like Megaman 6 on NES and Shante on Gameboy Color cost so much now. Because nobody bought them back then. Shante is a prime example, because GBA would have played that via BC. I'm sure there are example of PS1 games or PS2 games that fit that bill as well. Rule of Rose comes to mind. There is a risk in not making your game for next gen as well.