Playstation 4 Post-Release Examination

[deathindustrial]

This is probably devolving into whining but the library is still anemic as far as indie games goes. Where are they all? We're edging into the 9th month of availability and for a system that was supposed to be "3 months to triangle" and is supposed to make for easy PC ports it is seeing surprisingly few games show up in the release list. Even Minecraft which was supposed to be a launch game still hasn't shown up. How did Shovel Knight make it onto the Wii-U but not the PS4?

Cheers

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think the Sony red tape is still a significant barrier. It's still a pain in the butt to get anything on PS platforms, in stark contrast to more open platforms.

 

[Brad Grenz]

How did Shovel Knight make it onto the Wii-U but not the PS4?

Because the developers making that Nintendo nostalgia piece wanted it on Nintendo hardware first?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I don't see SSD happening. Sony and MS will always go for a HDD with the lowest cost per MB.
(...)
I also don't expect PS5 to come in no sooner than 2019.

You're assuming that hard disk drives will forever remain as the solution with lowest cost per GB, or at least until 2019.
With 3D NAND (or V-NAND) now being used, I find that very difficult. Here's a snippet from Anandtech's review of Samsung's V-NAND SSDs:

As for how far Samsung believes their V-NAND can scale, their roadmap shows a 1Tbit die planned for 2017. That is very aggressive because it essentially implies that the die capacity will double every year (256Gbit next year, 512Gbit in 2016 and finally 1Tbit in 2017). The most interesting part is that Samsung is confident that they can do this simply by increasing the layer count, meaning that the process node will stay at 40nm.

We're talking about 8TB SSDs in 2017, inside a 2,5" package, without even shrinking the process node from 40nm. In 2019 we may be looking at 16TB SSDs within the same volume. That evolution speed will catchup with HDDs very fast.

In 2019 the HDDs are very likely to be almost gone from the shelves, at least in the consumer market.

 

[orangpelupa]

but by the time SSD got that big and chep, doesnt HDD will be much bigger and cheaper?
if Thailand did not get flooded, today HDD also should be cheaper.

 

[MrFox]

You're assuming that hard disk drives will forever remain as the solution with lowest cost per GB, or at least until 2019.
With 3D NAND (or V-NAND) now being used, I find that very difficult. Here's a snippet from Anandtech's review of Samsung's V-NAND SSDs:


We're talking about 8TB SSDs in 2017, inside a 2,5" package, without even shrinking the process node from 40nm. In 2019 we may be looking at 16TB SSDs within the same volume. That evolution speed will catchup with HDDs very fast.

In 2019 the HDDs are very likely to be almost gone from the shelves, at least in the consumer market.

More silicon == more money. NAND price is tied to silicon process improvements, and it will have significant problem in the future, because the cells will be too small to have enough charge and will have too much leakage and degrade quickly, it's hitting a wall. There's no way it could be anywhere near parity in 2019. But the capacity of flash might be enough for most consumer usage scenario, and that would make HDD much less interesting in the consumer space. HDDs can only have a low cost per GB at their highest capacity, while SSD can be lower cost at small capacities. So if 1TB of flash is enough for a console, it doesn't matter that a 10TB HDD is the same price.

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.c...pricing-seven-myths-that-need-correcting.html

SSDs will still be about $0.15/GB in 2020 ($0.06 more than HDDs are today), while the HDDs vendors are promising may be as low as $0.03/GB.

 

[Grall]

but by the time SSD got that big and chep, doesnt HDD will be much bigger and cheaper?

There's a limit to how much storage a person really needs. Past say, 4TB, basically nobody will hit capacity ceiling, apart from a tiny minority of data hoarders (movie and/or movie pirates for the most part.)

if Thailand did not get flooded, today HDD also should be cheaper.

The thai floods were mostly used as an excuse to raise prices/moneygrab by the manufacturers. They did not have that significant an impact on the market.

 

[manux]

More silicon == more money. NAND price is tied to silicon process improvements, and it will have significant problem in the future, because the cells will be too small to have enough charge and will have too much leakage and degrade quickly, it's hitting a wall.

Samsung did hit reset button pretty well by introducing the new V-NAND. There is plenty of scaling left. Read the anandtech article/review of the new samsung ssd drive that was linked above.

 

[patsu]

What happened to CrossBar RRAM ?

 

[MrFox]

Samsung did hit reset button pretty well by introducing the new V-NAND. There is plenty of scaling left. Read the anandtech article/review of the new samsung ssd drive that was linked above.

Thanks, I agree this is extremely cool, if it works it's a game changer :smile:

 

[dobwal]

Well I wouldn't mind if there was actually a lot to play on it! As it stands, it's 'gaming focused' with not much to play, and a level of media features that force me to keep my PS3 around. Such a complete eye sore.

I'd bet the vast majority of the potential PS4 owners would have been upset if Sony had told the market that the PS4 was not ready for launch because it was ironing out a bunch of ancillary features.

In a year you will have a more media rich PS4 along with a wave of 2nd/3rd gen games hitting or getting ready to hit the market.

 

[London Geezer]

I'd bet the vast majority of the potential PS4 owners would have been upset if Sony had told the market that the PS4 was not ready for launch because it was ironing out a bunch of ancillary features.

In a year you will have a more media rich PS4 along with a wave of 2nd/3rd gen games hitting or getting ready to hit the market.

I'm waiting...........

 

[Arwin]

I'd expect something halfway between now and holiday season. Perhaps around the GTA V (re)launch?