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

[snc]

Just for fun I just counted up the number of GPU's that are roughly at or above the expected capability of the PS5 Pro (3080/6800XT and above) and that comes to about 8.4% or over 11 million PC's. Obviously that number will be a good chunk higher by the time the Pro launches, particularly with the launch of the 4xxx Super series in the interim.

So if it took a little over 3 years for the PS4 Pro to hit 14m units, even if the PS5 Pro sells as well (which seems unlikely), its highly probable to be trailing the PC in unit terms at an equivalent or higher performance level.

Consider too that if the Pro launches in Sep this year then it's likely to be followed with a couple of months by the NV 5xxx series and AMD RDNA4.

11m for two companies and people wonder why sony relasing pro model

 

[Shifty Geezer]

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No, I'll repeat what I say. "And yet it's significantly more than the proportion of high-end GPUs in the PC market.

I heard you wrong as well. To be fair, you said "it's more than the proportion" which sounds like you were talking about the number. Had you said, "it's a higher proportion," that mistake probably wouldn't have happened and we'd have understood it as the relative metric.

On this, because @Dictator thought think 14m was "incredibly low", yet it's a higher percentage of PC users buying top end graphics cards.

No reference measure specified though. What makes it low and what is the importance of that comparison? People have given their observation but not the relevance of it.

From your previous postings I know you're fixated on how console hardware equates to PC hardware performance, but I cannot see the relevance to the habits of console buyers. I've never seen any evidence that console buyers chose a console based on aiming to achieve some arbitrary roughly equivalent performance to a particular PC configuration. The choice available is either the cheapest specification or the most expensive.

pjbiverpool's point was from the perspective of a target demographic. How big a platform is worth targeting? If 14 million PS4 Pros is worth it, then the high-end PC market is likely bigger than PS5 Pro's market.

On the converse, you seem to be saying that as proportionally more PS owners wanted pro than high-end GPUs, 4Pros sales can't be considered that low a number and it'd be unrealistic to expect more sales.

Dictator's point might be unrelated to both. Perhaps a consideration of the cost to bring to market and comparing sales to console platform sales as that's the nearest parallel. Designing and producing console hardware that only sells 14 million units contrasts with most successful console platforms.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

11m for two companies and people wonder why sony relasing pro model

What are AMD and nVidia margins on those GPUs versus Sony's on a Pro?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I heard you wrong as well. To be fair, you said "it's more than the proportion" which sounds like you were talking about the number. Had you said, "it's a higher proportion," that mistake probably wouldn't have happened and we'd have understood it as the relative metric. No reference measure specified though. What makes it low and what is the importance of that comparison? People have given their observation but not the relevance of it.

I am talking in the round addressing @Dictator's comments that he felt 14.3m units sold was "incredibly low". On the console side you have one company (Sony) making one version of a product (PS4 Pro). Sony sold ~50m PS4s between the launch in 2013 and when PS4 Pro launched in 2016, then another 67m units of which 14.3m (around 21%) were PS4 Pros. On the PC side, you have AMD and Nvidia splitting a smaller (let's be generous and use @pjbliverpool's ~9%) but not one product like Pro but multiple products, e.g. Nvidia x080, x090, AMD x800, x900 etc.

pjbiverpool's point was from the perspective of a target demographic. How big a platform is worth targeting? If 14 million PS4 Pros is worth it, then the high-end PC market is likely bigger than PS5 Pro's market.

Sure, but you cannot ignore the different market and economic dynamics. That's why when I responded to @Dictator above, I included a link to the interview Sony's Andrew House gave to the Guardian which explained why PS4 Pro existed. The goal wasn't to sell a lot of PS4 Pro consoles at any kind of profit margin, it was to provide an option for PlayStation owners so fewer would drift to the PC chasing better performance. The motivation isn't performance, it's minimising revenue loss so 14.3m is quite a chunk from Sony's perspective.

On the converse, you seem to be saying that as proportionally more PS owners wanted pro than high-end GPUs, 4Pros sales can't be considered that low a number and it'd be unrealistic to expect more sales.

Nope, just pointing out that in terms of market share terms, once PS4 Pro was available, more PlayStation owners (~21%) were buying their most expensive option compared to PC users buying high-end cards in their market.

 

[snc]

What are AMD and nVidia margins on those GPUs versus Sony's on a Pro?

Much bigger but also cost of r&d much bigger, sony mostly use what amd create with some adjustments

 

[DavidGraham]

Nope, just pointing out that in terms of market share terms, once PS4 Pro was available, more PlayStation owners (~21%) were buying their most expensive option compared to PC users buying high-end cards in their market.

Flawed comparison. You are comparing PS4 Pro against the population of base PS4. You should compare against the combined population of PS3 and PS2 as well. Because on the PC you are comparing the number of high end GPUs of recent generations against generations and generations of old GPUs and iGPUs that weren't replaced with new ones.

 

[Charlietus]

I don't remember if I saw data on this, but it's very likely that those 14.3 milion users who bought a pro were mostly "hardcore gamers", that usually spend more on the platform to have a better experience. For Sony, even without selling 50 millions pro consoles, it's probably still a net positive.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I am talking in the round addressing @Dictator's comments that he felt 14.3m units sold was "incredibly low". On the console side you have one company (Sony) making one version of a product (PS4 Pro). Sony sold ~50m PS4s between the launch in 2013 and when PS4 Pro launched in 2016, then another 67m units of which 14.3m (around 21%) were PS4 Pros. On the PC side, you have AMD and Nvidia splitting a smaller (let's be generous and use @pjbliverpool's ~9%) but not one product like Pro but multiple products, e.g. Nvidia x080, x090, AMD x800, x900 etc.

I think where I'm struggling most with this argument is the assumption that a £350 console which is billed as a "mid gen refresh" of the existing older hardware which launched at the same price should be achieving sales figures in the same range as high end PC GPU's that vary in price from £600 - £1500.

That seems like a pretty low expectation, and is why I assumed you were more coming at it from the angle of addressable market size, which is obviously a relevant metric because it determines the level of effort developers put into supporting the higher end hardware.

Also I really don't think the "PS4P is one platform vs multiple GPU's and vendors on the PC side" has any relevance at all. The multiple GPU's and vendors on the PC side still represent a single platform (DirectX) from a developer perspective, and just 2 revenue streams from NV & AMD's side - which as pointed out by Shifty may or may not represent greater profits, or at least profit margins for NV and AMD.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Much bigger but also cost of r&d much bigger, sony mostly use what amd create with some adjustments

And the cost of R&D is also spread out over the full product range as well as server parts rather than just a single product on Sonys side.

TBH unless someone is willing to go and dig out the actual profits associated with these specific GPU's vs the PS4P hardware (which probably isn't publicly available anyway) then this line of discussion seems like a dead end because its nothing but pure speculation.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Flawed comparison. You are comparing PS4 Pro against the population of base PS4. You should compare against the combined population of PS3 and PS2 as well. Because on the PC you are comparing the number of high end GPUs of recent generations against generations and generations of old GPUs and iGPUs that weren't replaced with new ones.

It is an imperfect comparison but your suggestion wouldn't make it better because at the time when PlayStaton owners had a choice of PS4 or PS4 Pro, you couldn't buy a PS2 or PS3. All that is known is that from October 2016, 21% of PlayStation buyers chose the most expensive system.

Perhaps a better approach would be to look what GPUs were available around that time, i.e. Nvidia 1650, x040, x050, x060, x070 GPUs, along with AMD equivilents and look at the percentages relative to x080/x090 and high-end AMD cards. That will take a quite a bit of cutting and pasting given all the permutations of PC GPUs but a quick eyeball of the percentages of 1650/2050/2060/2070/3050/3060/3070 GPUs numbers show these hugely outnumber the high-end GPUs, and that doesn't even take into account the AMD GPUs.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I think where I'm struggling most with this argument is the assumption that a £350 console which is billed as a "mid gen refresh" of the existing older hardware which launched at the same price should be achieving sales figures in the same range as high end PC GPU's that vary in price from £600 - £1500.

I'm not arguing that. The only thing I'm commenting on is that @Dictator felt 14.3m PS4 Pro consoles sold was "incredibly low". The idea that as many as 1 in 5 people bought a PS4 Pro over a base PS4 is genuinely surprising to me.

Comparison to the PC is kind of pointless but I know @Dictator is a PC guy with a 4090 so I'm putting that into a context that relates. Sony were making a product (the PS4 Pro) which was did not only represent 20% of console sales, it probably kept some users from jumping to PC, and still dwarfed the percentage of high-end GPUs that AMD and Nvidia sell compared to their budget GPUs.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Comparison to the PC is kind of pointless but I know @Dictator is a PC guy with a 4090 so I'm putting that into a context that relates. Sony were making a product (the PS4 Pro) which was did not only represent 20% of console sales, it probably kept some users from jumping to PC, and still dwarfed the percentage of high-end GPUs that AMD and Nvidia sell compared to their budget GPUs.

Depends how you define dwarfed and also how you define high end and budget GPU's. In the context of the 3xxx series only for example, can you really call the 3070 and 3070Ti budget GPU's? But even if we do make that assumption then according to Steam, "high end Amperes" as defined by the 3080 and upwards currently make up a little under 14% of the total Ampere presence.

If you include the 3070 and 3070Ti in the "high end" category rather than the "budget" category (in the context of the Ampere range in isolation) then the high end gets a massive uplift to almost 32%.

EDIT: running the same numbers for the 40xx series putting only the 4080 and 4090 in the "high end" category, we come in at basically 20% of 40xx series sales being "high end"

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Depends how you define dwarfed and also how you define high end and budget GPU's.

I'm happy defer to Digital Foundry on what is high-end and what is not. By 'budget', I mean not end high.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

The R&D is part of why I'm rather surprised by the rumours of a 50-60CU GPU with some architectural improvements.

I was expecting basically the same APU with no disabled CU's, clocks pushed as high as possible, and 18gbps GDDR6. Maybe some Infinity Cache too, if incorporating RDNA3's chiplet cache wouldn't be too costly to manufacture/assemble.

But maybe, when porting the PS5 to 5nm, R&D costs for one more configuration - with more CU's and features from the pre-existing 5nm architecture - are relatively low?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The R&D is part of why I'm rather surprised by the rumours of a 50-60CU GPU with some architectural improvements.

Would there be a much R&D in taking a bunch of tried and tested tech and deploying it in a different package? It's not like the large hadron collider where there were genuine fears turning it on could end the universe. AMD already make a lot of variations of these individual technology building blocks, as they did for the tech in PS4, XBO, PS4 Pro, One X, PS5 and Xbox Series.

The tech that goes into consoles is typically well trodden, the real trick is manufacturing the boxes as cheaply as possible.

 

[Remij]

Would there be a much R&D in taking a bunch of tried and tested tech and deploying it in a different package? It's not like the large hadron collider where there were genuine fears turning it on could end the universe. AMD already make a lot of variations of these individual technology building blocks, as they did for the tech in PS4, XBO, PS4 Pro, One X, PS5 and Xbox Series.

The tech that goes into consoles is typically well trodden, the real trick is manufacturing the boxes as cheaply as possible.

Aren't the rumors about the PS5 Pro being that it's sporting brand new RDNA3 and 4 tech and features? That it's got some super duper new upscaling tech, and that it will be the first chiplet based console?

Everything *actually interesting* that's been said about the PS5 Pro.. is referring to things that don't exist in the console space yet.. If it's just a bog ass PS5 chip with some extra cores and the same CPU and Memory config albeit with slightly higher clocks.. then no.. not as much R&D costs. Also it will be far less interesting.

Want to sell more consoles? Drop the prices. Make products cheaper and innovate in other areas.

 

[chris1515]

Aren't the rumors about the PS5 Pro being that it's sporting brand new RDNA3 and 4 tech and features? That it's got some super duper new upscaling tech, and that it will be the first chiplet based console?

Everything *actually interesting* that's been said about the PS5 Pro.. is referring to things that don't exist in the console space yet.. If it's just a bog ass PS5 chip with some extra cores and the same CPU and Memory config albeit with slightly higher clocks.. then no.. not as much R&D costs. Also it will be far less interesting.

Want to sell more consoles? Drop the prices. Make products cheaper and innovate in other areas.

PS5 pro doesn't mean PS5 price will stay the same in 2024 or 2025. I expect a permanent price drop during the next two years.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

EDIT: running the same numbers for the 40xx series putting only the 4080 and 4090 in the "high end" category, we come in at basically 20% of 40xx series sales being "high end"

Now, I'm back at my laptop this is what I have using the Steam Hardware Survey numbers for December 2023. This is with the older hardware removed.

AMD and Nvidia high-end: 9.47%
Everything else: 66.21%

High-end cards



Everything else

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nope, just pointing out that in terms of market share terms, once PS4 Pro was available, more PlayStation owners (~21%) were buying their most expensive option compared to PC users buying high-end cards in their market.

Are you saying Dictator is wrong, or right, or not commenting on that position at all?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Are you saying Dictator is wrong, or right, or not commenting on that position at all?

It's Dictator's opinion against what must have been ambitious sales expectations for PS4 Pro, ergo it cannot be wrong. I'm trying to introduce a perspective on the percentage of Pro consoles sold to a PC-centric gamer who favours high-end hardware in the context of how many of those cards are actually used.

I'm afraid there is no ulterior motive.