Post Xbox One Two Scorpio, what should Sony do next? *spawn* (oh, and Nintendo?)

[BRiT]

The reason people are saying Fall 2016 was because of the AMD news of landing 3 new console design wins starting in the Fall of 2016. Everyone thought PS4K to go along with PSVR (October 13, 2016) because VR on a 1.8 TF system isnt going to be that great. Especially with all the leaks about the PS4k/NEO. Nintendo NX for Spring 2017. Then something for MS.

However, the way I now see it is as follows:

Fall 2016 is Xbox One S
Fall 2017 is Xbox Scorpio
Somewhere between Fall 2016 and Fall 2017 is PS4k.

Nintendo NX is an Nvidia Tegra Stream like product.

 

[3dilettante]

The wording yesterday in the Scorpio reveal was carefully chosen to address all the concerns of Xbox supporters, power, compatibility, etc and also to emphasise the leaked weak points of the NEO.

All the games will be compatible, 4k and VR without compromises, and DEVS could take advantage of the extra power.

Will it force the hand of Sony?? to loosen its requisites??

Which constraints for Sony are contradictory to the concerns addressed by Microsoft?
4K and VR are going to be handled or not handled for Neo based on whether it can sustain the necessary performance.
Compatibility is what Sony is stressing with many of its requirements.

 

[Kaotik]

Unless MS is going with a bigger GPU, cut down Vega at very modest 800-850 MHz like DF suggested.

There's pretty much zero chance there's an actual CPU and GPU instead of APU inside Scorpio, no matter what DF suggests. The "oh it's so expensive to put CPU and GPU on same chip" is no reason whatsoever, and AMD is bringing Zen-APUs out in 2017 anyway, so they're surely available for semi-custom customers too.

 

[-Sweeper_]

There's pretty much zero chance there's an actual CPU and GPU instead of APU inside Scorpio, no matter what DF suggests. The "oh it's so expensive to put CPU and GPU on same chip" is no reason whatsoever, and AMD is bringing Zen-APUs out in 2017 anyway, so they're surely available for semi-custom customers too.

Nobody suggested it's not an APU. You don't expect me to mention 'iGPU', do you?

 

[Michellstar]

Which constraints for Sony are contradictory to the concerns addressed by Microsoft?
4K and VR are going to be handled or not handled for Neo based on whether it can sustain the necessary performance.
Compatibility is what Sony is stressing with many of its requirements.

Well Sony exec explicitly said that most games would run, and regarding the 4k and VR, was more a matter of giving the message of more power against the competition.

Now i see, the way I worded lol

Anyway, the speech was to get the message that Xbox will top technically the Sony counterpart, IMO it won´t matter in the long run...

 

[liolio]

At this point, I think Sony should have the gut to can project Neo as Nintendo did before going for the Wii /overclocked GameCube.
They should focus on their next hardware. In these days and age it seems that a tiered approach to console is made possible by the strong convergence in both hardware and software solutions available.
In their seat, I would develop a custom Zen cpu and go with 2 of the shelves gpu matching their performance targets for both SKUs. I can save time and allow them to respond to msft move within half an year while providing one sku competitive or better with Scorpio and a really cheap low-end one that yet leaves both the OneS and the Ps4 behind.

 

[Scott_Arm]

What do you think the chances are that Sony can jump to 16GB of RAM? Either that or they stick with 8GB and fight on price. Maybe PS4 will have earned them enough loyalty that the specs will be "good enough" if they have a large price advantage of $100 or more. Going to be a battle of price vs performance. Should be interesting.

 

[Kaotik]

Nobody suggested it's not an APU. You don't expect me to mention 'iGPU', do you?

Considering you were talking about "cut down Vega", yes, I'd expect you to specify you still mean iGPU, since iGPUs are always their own designs, not "cut down this and that"

 

[milk]

Scorpio will be a machine to play xbone/ps4 games at native 4k, while kaio-ken will render them somewhere between 1080-4k and upscale.
Basically scorpio will be the ps4 of the 8th gen+ and ps4k will be the xbone of it. Quite the irony. Good to clean xbox brand's image a bit, and regain some good will from the hardcore. Yet I doubt that's the thing that will turn the tables market-share wise. I still think power diferential was the lesser factor behind xbone's sales, and I think its gonna be an even lesser of a factor on a 1.5 niche system. MS can still change the game, but releasing a stronger console is just one very small step in that direction. Great value, services and titles is the real key, and they seem to be after that as well, so thats very good for consumers.

 

[ramr]

Well, I really expected them to use a Vega setup fitting their power budget and HBM2 because of the release window.

What's the point to wait until late 2017 for a tuned version of what Sony releases late 2016 or early 2017?

Given what we know, scorpio should release this holiday with those specs at $499.

 

[AlNom]

Gonna have to source some 16-Gbit chips soon.

 

[Liandry]

I can tell what Sony should do. Cancel PS4 Neo, focus on exclusive games, as they always did, make price cut, launch PS5 in the end of 2018, and that will be win.

 

[eastmen]

Guys remember there is more to a graphics card than flops. MS may have gone with a lot of rops and tmus to draw/fill at the 4k resolution.

We also don't know if its higher clocked Polaris or if its vega. If its vega it may have new tech in it which could make it more efficient than polaris

 

[Scott_Arm]

Another thing I'm wondering is how much the performance difference of Scorpio will really show, especially on a 1080p tv. I mean, 4k is starting to kick off, but a lot of people will still be using 1080p sets. My personal opinion is diminishing returns is a real thing, and I don't know if PS4 being less sub-4k than Scorpio is going to be noticeable to anyone but pixel counters. That's the likely scenario, that they are both 1080p+ and scale to 4k. A $50-100 price difference to get 3200x1800 instead of 2560x1440, or something like that? Who knows. I don't think people would notice the resolution at all, if that's how it worked out.

 

[wco81]

More and more 4K sets are being sold every month. By the time Scorpio launches, there will be a big holiday buying season followed by Superbowl, which moves a lot of those big-screen TVs, which above say $1000 are probably going to be mostly 4K TVs.

Direct TV is broadcasting some baseball games in 4K. If NFL and NBA agrees to 4K broadcasts or streams, sales should really take off.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The other case is you get devs using msaa-based coarse shading, or other msaa exploiting tricks that sebbbi has posted about to get from 1080p to 4k. In that case, you'd probably have differences where one version runs at "high" and the other with some settings at "medium". Depending on what it is, those differences may also not be apparent to people playing the games. I really think diminishing returns is a real thing, but maybe I'll be proven wrong. The only games where I thought Xbox One showed really poor against PS4 were the frostbite games where it was 720p on Xbox One. Whenever it was 1080p vs 900p, I didn't think the differences were that noticeable.

 

[scf]

There is newer comment from Sony regarding neo and its E3 absence

BBC: You have a new PlayStation, or upgraded PlayStation 4 in the works, why aren't we seeing that at E3 this year?

House: Really, very very simple. Just as was the case with PlayStation VR we feel that it's important to show people the new hardware, the new platform, when we have got the full range of experiences that can take advantage of it.

BBC: Now, PlayStations have had refreshes over the course of the lifecycle of every single generation of PlayStation, but this is a slightly different refresh, isn't it, because it's a hardware refresh as well, it's not just cosmetic. Is this indicative of a new strategy for the PlayStation, that there's going to be more heavy-duty upgrades over the course of a console's lifecycle?

House: Well, to be very clear, the high end PS4, codenamed Neo, that we are working on, is an addition to the existing lineup, not a replacement. Perhaps we have an opportunity to move slightly away from just a static console that remains absolutely the same for a period of six, seven, eight years. And perhaps offer, in addition to
the current PS4, something a little extra. Particularly, and I should stress this, in the area of graphic fidelity, and games that will essentially play an awful lot prettier than games have previously.

 

[eastmen]

very odd statement when the leaked info points to it being twice as powerful. This isn't them just boosting clock speeds .

maybe they are worried that they will have to put out a real console in 2018 because of scorpio >?

 

[eastmen]

I can tell what Sony should do. Cancel PS4 Neo, focus on exclusive games, as they always did, make price cut, launch PS5 in the end of 2018, and that will be win.

and turn a ton of people off vr in the process ?

What they need to do is just stick to their guns and launch the neo and remove the artificial constraints they are placing on it. If they do that they should be fine . Perhaps they will be in another ps3/xbox 360 generation where they are tied but without the massive losses.

 

[Liandry]

By people of VR you mean that absolute minority? Same as people with 4K TV?