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

I feel like I'm crazy all the time for not liking upgrades like this. I even didn't like series S originally which comes with its own drawbacks. It splits the market and makes too much work for devs. And people will respond with "don't you like options bro"

I mean yeah I guess. I would not be in Xbox ecosystem again without the S. But the cons are just very annoying to have to consider with all these skus both from consumer perspective and dev perspective
 
I think twice the performance compared to current console hardware is not enough to make a spectacular difference at the console level. RT? If they wanted a pro console because of Ray-tracing, that alone cannot mass sell that new console. Ray-tracing does not make a significant visual difference in every game compared to the traditional cubemap technique.

I think it's totally pointless. Considering that the Xbox Series and PS5 consoles are only just starting to really take advantage of SSD I/O performance. In addition, using UE5's TSR, you can achieve pretty good visuals with current consoles.

The rumours are that it could be $499 at launch. A big if, as everything about this supposed console needs to be prefaced with at this point sure, but if so - a doubling of performance for the same retail price 4 years later? That's on the upper end of improvements you can expect in PC GPU's across 2 generations for the same msrp.

Doubling of performance would mean 30fps fidelity modes now become the new performance modes. Performance modes could be the new 120fps mode. Yes, there's CPU bottlenecks that prevent the PS5 from reaching that in games now - but even assuming no clock speed increase, the massive jump from Zen2 to Zen4 will bring significant IPC boosts. That, and potentially a machine-learning implementation of reconstruction, and potentially frame generation. It is not impossible to imagine in late 2024, a 30dps Fidelity mode game could be made 100+ fps with frame gen.

All that being said, the purpose of these new consoles isn't necessarily to pressure the existing userbase to 'upgrade', some will sure - but it's to entice new buyers to join the ecosystem. You will have a choice to spend $150-$200 more to get a substantially better system. No different upsell than any other consumer electronics.

I mean yeah I guess. I would not be in Xbox ecosystem again without the S. But the cons are just very annoying to have to consider with all these skus both from consumer perspective and dev perspective

The increased development effort is relatively trivial in comparison to the PC, who's development teams are usually much smaller wrt AAA releases. So from the perspective of needing software tailored to unique hardware, Xbox would have ~3 SKU's, PS5 two. If that's a huge development hurdle, PC gaming would not exist.
 
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If that is truly the "Slim", then lol - but everything I've read about it is the disk drive will be a detachable option, so either the rumours were bunk or this isn't it.* There's not much that's 'slim' about this, like we're maybe talking space savings of a couple of inches, if that?

I guess one improvement due to the design it can be laid horizontally without a stand and still get airflow, so there's that. I would have liked to see them move away from the Alienware aesthetic though, it's just so futuristic-tryhard.

*Really the bulk of seems to be the optical drive bay, without that it would fit the definition of 'slim' much better, so I guess there's going to be a digital version specific SKU of this too.

** - I would assume the video would have shown it if so, but it's also possible that the optical drive is 'detachable' in that that's the entire right half/top half of that console - the optical add-on replaces that top half entirely, so then it becomes more integrated, rather than acting like an external USB drive.

(page just refreshed when I wrote that and @mpg1 came to the same conclusion)
 
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I think twice the performance compared to current console hardware is not enough to make a spectacular difference at the console level. RT? If they wanted a pro console because of Ray-tracing, that alone cannot mass sell that new console. Ray-tracing does not make a significant visual difference in every game compared to the traditional cubemap technique.

Excuse me? RT vs cube map reflections are night and day difference and more importantly, RT goes FAR beyond reflections. The rumored rt hardware for ps5 pro would allow the console to easily surpass AMDs current flagship card. The current fidelity modes will have the power to run native 4k60 which is what so many have been complaining about with current gen consoles. It will be an easy sell.
 
Source for what? I already stated that it's rumored. This thread is speculative by nature. Although Kepler has been a very reliable source when it comes to these discussions so I don't know why you've chosen to cast skepticism on my comment in particular.

"Easily surpass" a 7900xtx is a statement that at least deserves a link to the original source, speculative or otherwise.
 
"Easily surpass" a 7900xtx is a statement that at least deserves a link to the original source, speculative or otherwise.

Oh, I thought the pj guy was questioning inclusion of RT hardware. Well yes in that case if PS5 Pro has RDNA 4 based RT which almost assuredly has the hardware necessary to process ray traversal outside of shaders, why should that be seen as doubtful? In cyberpunk RT workloads, the 7900xtx only sometimes matches 3080. Traversal engine hardware equipped inside a PS5 Pro would expectedly trounce 7900xtx in RT workloads.
 
One way or another, traversal engine hardware will be in PS5 Pro. It is Cerny's next push. Could be AMD could be custom Sony HW. Could be collaboration between both.

 
The increased development effort is relatively trivial in comparison to the PC, who's development teams are usually much smaller wrt AAA releases. So from the perspective of needing software tailored to unique hardware, Xbox would have ~3 SKU's, PS5 two. If that's a huge development hurdle, PC gaming would not exist.

This is my perspective as well. I was surprised when Alex said he thought a PS5 Pro sku inclusion would make development process more difficult. Him being a PC player, I am surprised he would have a conflicting perspective.
 
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