Should Sony have waited with PS4 Pro?

[ProspectorPete]

Now that we know what an extra year of development could have meant:

-9.5% faster CPU
-43% more powerful GPU
-49.5% more memory bandwidth
-2.5GB of extra memory available for games

Was it a good decision for Sony to release PS4Pro without all this 6 months ago?

Keep in mind: they already outsold their closest competitor 2 to 1, arguably they already had the better game lineup for the rest of 2016/2017 and they just released a new console PS4 Slim as well as a new peripheral: PSVR. In retro perspective how important was PS4 Pro and it's timing anyway? Could price have been a factor? So many questions!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What you don't know, is the cost.

 

[ProspectorPete]

What you don't know, is the cost.

It is known that memory and technology in general gets cheaper over time (unless there is an earthquake or something)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Technology costs dropping helps you the future, not at launch. PS4 Pro is barely six months old.

 

[Jubei]

No. Sony needs to stick to their own roadmap. Not react to Microsofts plans

 

[Deleted member 11852]

No. Sony needs to stick to their own roadmap. Not react to Microsofts plans

And vice-versa. Sometimes your competitor, or the public's reaction/speculation to it, will do something which will give you pause for thought, but that's it.

It may have looked like Microsoft reacted to Pro with their E3 Scorpio announcement last year but Microsoft were working on that. It was just the announcement that was forced.

 

[Karamazov]

ps4 pro was great value along with PSVR. It's still a good upgrade other standard PS4 which will still be the main focus for Sony for the next few years.

Scorpio being even better will bring great things from both parties. Great times ahead for gamers !

 

[Love_In_Rio]

Now that we know what an extra year of development could have meant:

-9.5% faster CPU
-43% more powerful GPU
-49.5% more memory bandwidth
-2.5GB of extra memory available for games

Was it a good decision for Sony to release PS4Pro without all this 6 months ago?

Keep in mind: they already outsold their closest competitor 2 to 1, arguably they already had the better game lineup for the rest of 2016/2017 and they just released a new console PS4 Slim as well as a new peripheral: PSVR. In retro perspective how important was PS4 Pro and it's timing anyway? Could price have been a factor? So many questions!

You are forgetting that by the time Scorpio is out PS5 launch will be a year less.

 

[temesgen]

Hard to do analysis without considering to the scalability on the software side.

Any upgrade needs to maintain compatibility with legacy games. It's not clear to me what approach Sony has taken with BC and it's generally accepted that PS4 gave developers closer access to the metal so in the absence of more information it's difficult to conclude that a 10% increase in power doesn't introduce other challenges.

Further Sony has been quite clear that the purpose behind PS4p is a 4k experience and they delivered that.

I'm not sure Sony and Microsoft had the same objectives with these machines.

In many ways the goals seem different.

Microsoft seems to have wanted to create a machine that objectively is the most powerful in it's generation which historically was a major selling point.

At this stage with the information available I think both Sony and Microsoft will be pleased on meeting their objectives.

How well those objectives translate into sales will take time to understand.

 

[eastmen]

I think sony should have waited on either the psvr or the ps4 pro . Seems like they both canceled each other out

 

[Goodtwin]

I don't think so. PS4 Pro will not be at a significant disadvantage. Its about the same disadvantage that Xbox One was at compared to PS4. Not to mention that I have a feeling DF is right about the Scorpio price being $499. PS4 Pro could be $349 this Christmas is Sony wants to try and steal some thunder. Bottom line is PS4 is the market leader by a large margin, its going to be the target platform, and for those that want a premium model, they have the Pro for those consumers, at a cheaper price than Scorpio.

 

[Rangers]

I'm going to give you guys a secret tip. Hopefully Sony managment doesn't find this out...

The Scorpio doesn't have much more CU's, it's just 36 vs 40. Sony should just glue a mondo cooling system onto Pro, upclock it to Scorpio levels (or to really twist the knife, even higher). This gets you to 5.5+ TF without any costly redesign or big deal. Launch it fairly quietly, just another revision. Call it PS4 Pro2, or better yet 1.1.

Maybe you still end up below Scorpio, you dont have 384 bit bus or 12GB RAM, but you get closer, you muddy the waters. Ubisoft games are now probably going to look the same on both. Also, if RAM modules are ever available in double density to what's on PS4 Pro, you could go to 16GB RAM. All this would seem pretty easy and cheap to do without redesigning the SOC or anything costly and time consuming.

The key is understanding that what core gamers really want is power. Hence this thread's existence.

I'll take my royalties check anytime, Sony.

 

[bunge]

The PS4 Pro seems fine. There will be some multi platform games that look virtually identical, and some that get better treatment on a specific platform.

Both + systems look to be rooted/tethered in the current generation, at least for now. The plus at this point in a console's lifecycle is probably software. Developers have a lot of experience by now and this will elevate gameplay in a good way for even the PS4 and XBO.

 

[bunge]

The PS4 Pro should have never launched. Sony should have waited until the 7nm or 5nm process was available and launched a true next gene machine.

I disagree. I think Sony and MS have just figured out that you can recreate the wheel at a lower cost and higher MSRP. It's good for their bottom line and for a subset of gamers.

 

[ultragpu]

It's all about the timing I think. See it's fairly easy to release the world's most powerful system or whatever a year after your competition but if taking other factors into account the former narrative could just as easily falls apart. We all know Pro is a midgen upgrade and let's just assume Scorpio is too (would be an utter disaster if it isn't), now since it comes out one year later than the Pro thus one year closer towards the end of the current gen cycle, would it really create such an enticing effect to any smart gamer to invest into Scorpio at this stage? Sony made the right move to release Pro at the right time, it leaves a good few years for gamers to enjoy Pro enhancement and etc before the inevitable PS5, I call this a good balance tact. Regardless of what MS position Scorpio as tho, it's gonna shortly meet with PS5 a couple of years down the road competing with a far superior hardware made for a traditional console gen leap and it's very likely to be backwards compatible with current gen games thanks to the easy to program x86 architecture. So in a way not only you get to play current gen games at minimum 4k/60 at ultra, you also get to enjoy a whole new gen of games at likely 4k/30 baseline on a PS5 which is something Scorpio can't do. For multiplatform centric gamers do invest wisely, would you hold on for another couple of years for a much future proofing reward or settle for the best for the next two years?
I'm not even touching on games that would fully harness Scorpio's power at launch, it would probably take a few extra years for them to come out, but by that time we would have PS5 games to compete with. If anything Sony has the timing locked on, or should I say MS fucked up the timing?

 

[eastmen]

But it is horrible for the majority of gamers whose console investment goes up in the wind. This is another way for MS and Sony to milk their customers out of more money. If they want to launch consoles every two to three years, that is fine. But they should have significant improvements in some fundamental way. The Scorpio and PS4 Pro have nothing revolutionary. Now, if the Scorpio had an advanced ray tracing chip or a revolutionary GPU, everything would be different.

I don't see this . The hardware is a really small amount of your investment. If you bought at launch an xbox one at $500 . That's about 8 games. Ps4 that's about 6 games. Now you can buy a system that will play these games better plus all future games better and in both cases your controllers and other investments seem to keep working. I don't think its horrible for gamers.

4k is just getting cheaper and more people will move to the platform. To me this is like the 360/ps3 in 2005. 1080p tvs were just becoming affordable. I actually used my xbox 360 on my pc monitor at the time since it was 720p and my tv was 480p. I upgrade in 2006 to a 1080p vizio for $600 42 incher. I think right now I can get a 4k tv for about the same but at 50 inches from vizio . Even the nice OLED LGs with hdr are starting to break the $1k mark and that's at 55 inches.

however I don't think that 7nm will be ready next year for the consoles. I think 2019 the xbox one and ps4 will start to be matched by phones and certainly tablets. So I think now was the time . Shorter cycles that you can keep moving your games from. Scorpio improves 360 and one games. If the box after scorpio is 7nm and improves 360 , one and scorpio games then you really have a rolling ball going where you don't need to reset everything each gen.

 

[BRiT]

These new consoles are not required, so anyone talking about 'milking customers out of their money' are being overly reactive drama queens.

 

[BadTB25]

These new consoles are not required, so anyone talking about 'milking customers out of their money' are being overly reactive drama queens.

I think it was needed for Sony's investment in PSVR to really hit their vision. Haven't kept up to much on PS4, but isn't VR on PSPro markedly better than the OG PS4?

 

[BRiT]

I think it was needed for Sony's investment in PSVR to really hit their vision. Haven't kept up to much on PS4, but isn't VR on PSPro markedly better than the OG PS4?

I have the same understanding/questions too, but I haven't seen much news on VR games so not certain if the vast improvements were only for specific titles or if that pattern applies across the board, nor am I certain as to the quantity and quality of the improvement(s). I do think it is an easier message to convey to consumers with having 4Pro and PSVR available at the same time, because it's a single message as opposed to 1 message at end of 2016 and a different message at end of 2017 if 4Pro was delayed until then.

 

[babcat]

These new consoles are not required, so anyone talking about 'milking customers out of their money' are being overly reactive drama queens.

Thanks for the insult! Insults from moderators are especially amusing! The fact is that consumers want better graphics hardware if it is required to run games or not. To satisfy them, Sony and Microsoft are throwing out these mid generation refreshes that constitute nothing new or novel. They hype them up and millions of people will buy them. Basically, this makes the console much more like a PC, except you can't upgrade it yourself. Actually, it makes it more like a cell phone that's upgraded to a new model every year. So they will rake in tons of extra sales while offering very little. Now, if the Scorpio had actually utilized a modern CPU and SOMETHING else to set it apart from previous consoles, I wouldn't consider it a rip off. I would say the most intelligent consumers should know to resist the impulse to buy either one of these mid generation refreshes.

I don't see this . The hardware is a really small amount of your investment. If you bought at launch an xbox one at $500 . That's about 8 games. Ps4 that's about 6 games. Now you can buy a system that will play these games better plus all future games better and in both cases your controllers and other investments seem to keep working. I don't think its horrible for gamers.

4k is just getting cheaper and more people will move to the platform. To me this is like the 360/ps3 in 2005. 1080p tvs were just becoming affordable. I actually used my xbox 360 on my pc monitor at the time since it was 720p and my tv was 480p. I upgrade in 2006 to a 1080p vizio for $600 42 incher. I think right now I can get a 4k tv for about the same but at 50 inches from vizio . Even the nice OLED LGs with hdr are starting to break the $1k mark and that's at 55 inches.

however I don't think that 7nm will be ready next year for the consoles. I think 2019 the xbox one and ps4 will start to be matched by phones and certainly tablets. So I think now was the time . Shorter cycles that you can keep moving your games from. Scorpio improves 360 and one games. If the box after scorpio is 7nm and improves 360 , one and scorpio games then you really have a rolling ball going where you don't need to reset everything each gen.

The whole sudden move to 4K is mostly a scheme to save developers money and find a new product to sell consumers. We moved from 1080P to 4K when 1080P wasn't even close to being maxed out in terms of graphics. By pushing 4K, developers can save tons of money by using up extra processing power on resolution rather than a push towards photorealism.