Should Sony have waited with PS4 Pro?

[RancidLunchmeat]

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.

I tried a few weeks back to find videos and stories comparing PSVR on the PS4 vs the PS4Pro and wasn't able to find anything of substance. If anybody has any, I'd love to watch/read them because I have the same thoughts and questions.

 

[BadTB25]

The only stuff I've seen is anecdotal from Twitch streamers that say the experience is much better on Pro.

 

[eastmen]

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.

how does it save developers money ? higher resolution textures will cost developers more than textures designed for 1080p.

Also why are we on 1080p why not 480p or lower ? Surely for photorealism that is the best resolution for current systems.

I rather play at 4k than 1080p and 1080p than 480p. If you want to stay on 1080p then do it but I bet your tune will change once you get a 4k monitor or tv and see games at 4k . I'm never going back

 

[rokkerkory]

I think Sony should have wait because they already had the h/w upper hand and sales upper hand. There's no plausible reason why they had to launch PS4 Pro last year? Because of VR? VR isn't really even selling well, if they were banking on VR being the next gaming transformation, then they have mis-judged it.

They had the luxury of waiting.

 

[djskribbles]

I think Sony should have wait because they already had the h/w upper hand and sales upper hand. There's no plausible reason why they had to launch PS4 Pro last year? Because of VR? VR isn't really even selling well, if they were banking on VR being the next gaming transformation, then they have mis-judged it.

They had the luxury of waiting.

They also have the luxury of being the dominant marketshare leader. They have less reason to come up with a more powerful console.

My guess is they caught word that MS was creating a mid-cycle machine and quickly came up with their own... except spending a lot less dollars on development. Even after Scorpio releases, I think that Sony will have a considerable advantage in terms of price.

My prediction is Scorpio will be an immediate success as it will appeal to its current userbase as well as attract a few PS4 owners, but I'm not so sure it will sustain its momentum. I think Sony will price the Pro low enough to take that momentum away.

I'd rather Sony spend time working on the PS5, which they probably are.

 

[Pixel]

Did Microsoft find a novel way to cheaply increase performance significantly on a console via the vapour chamber cooling?

One belief that became more solidified in the post 2008 economic crisis was a need for the next generation consoles to be conservative in with energy usage. I remember hearing about this strong sentiment with console manufacturers in 2010. PS3 launch console ran much hotter than PS4 launch console. So instead of following that trend and increasing die size even larger than what was done, they broken that console gaming tenant that these need to be <200W power devices now days. By shying away from the need to be somewhat conservative with consumer energy bills they found a cheaper way to increase performance without as large an increase in die size, through incorporating the novel vapor chamber cooler.

Could all future midgen premium consoles from Sony/MS be featuring this cooling solution since its too good to pass up for a premium product with a particular consumerbase that are less concerned with energy consumption of the device?

 

[Rurouni]

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 know about Scorpio, but all PS4 games should be playable on both regular and pro. PS4 pro is a mid gen update. They never say that pro is a next gen console. I don't know why you're overreacting like this.

 

[DieH@rd]

No

PS4 Pro is fine, and more importantly, it is priced very well. Pricing and performance makes it a viable alternative for new console buyers, and it offers a noticeable performance bump for current PS4 owners.

We will known full potential of Scorpio only when the pricing is revealed [which has potential to be substantially higher than Pro].

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?

Pro can render VR content in higher resolutions, this enabling use of supersampling [downsampling] during play which produces better image quality. Framerate is same on both [it cannot dip].

 

[ProspectorPete]

Babcat, "milking consumers" would be if they release a new, more expensive console, then stop support for the old one forcing users to upgrade.

PS4 Pro does have an advantage with PSVR and that is image quality. Not anecdotal, measurable. It has better image quality, leading to a much higher perceived resolution in most titles due to supersampling which is great/necessary for VR. Performance should be the same as there are strict VR rules with regards to titles not being allowed frame drops.

For the sake of argument, let's say Scorpio releases at 399 (and costs MS the same to produce as it did Sony a PS4 Pro back in 2016).
Would that make a difference?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

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.

Rubbish. It made Sony extra money and next-gen is still coming and no worse off for it.

These devices are simply pathetic stop gaps that offer nothing really cutting edge or novel.

Neither do most products ever sold. You think TV manufacturers etc. should release one product every five years when there's a really cutting edge or novel new tech to use?

 

[Rodéric]

PS4Pro was released for 4K and VR, it needed to ship around/close to the VR helmet, so it was released at the right time.
It might also be a message that Sony intends to keep hardware compatibility from now on (easy for the x86-64 part, shouldn't be too hard for GCN, even if program patching might be required as instruction set evolves).

 

[babcat]

Rubbish. It made Sony extra money and next-gen is still coming and no worse off for it.
Neither do most products ever sold. You think TV manufacturers etc. should release one product every five years when there's a really cutting edge or novel new tech to use?

Yep. We have too much "junk" on the market. There are a thousand different variations of 1080P televisions that claim small improvements over each other. The consumer would be better off to save his or her money and wait only when there has been some sort of massive improvement or breakthrough. Instead, companies would rather customers buy a new television, new cell phone, or new console every year or two when there is no real significant advantage, most of the time. For example, even for gaming, unless someone is going for 4K resolution and demands 60FPS for all games, is there really a huge improvement going from a 1080gtx to a 1080ti? There may be a 30% improvement in performance, but the games won't look that much better or run visually faster.

I think Sony and Microsoft should have waited until they could have offered consoles that represented either generational leaps or offered true breakthroughs.

 

[ProspectorPete]

Rubbish. It made Sony extra money and next-gen is still coming and no worse off for it.
Neither do most products ever sold. You think TV manufacturers etc. should release one product every five years when there's a really cutting edge or novel new tech to use?

offtopic: Camera companies often do that for certain product lines, release only when there are improvements.
The ecosystem lends itself for it though; both camera bodies and lenses are back- and forward compatible. In general though for DSLRs there are not *that* much advancements seeing as aside from live view there was only megapixel and DR increase and faster/better focus systems.

@babcat: What I think you don't understand is that nobody forces you to upgrade. Yes for example there is a new iPhone every year, but do they brick/disable the old ones after 1 year forcing you to buy a new one? No, they support them for years.
If you need to buy a new one however ; let's say your old one got stolen or destroyed in a terrorist attack, there is always the latest model for you to buy. Or you can buy second hand. If you think the iPhone 9 is not that much faster than the iPhone 8 then you can choose to buy the 8 or 7.
Yearly refreshes are a good thing as long as everything keeps working

 

[McHuj]

If it means waiting longer on a PS5, then no they shouldn't have waited.

 

[babcat]

Babcat, "milking consumers" would be if they release a new, more expensive console, then stop support for the old one forcing users to upgrade.

PS4 Pro does have an advantage with PSVR and that is image quality. Not anecdotal, measurable. It has better image quality, leading to a much higher perceived resolution in most titles due to supersampling which is great/necessary for VR. Performance should be the same as there are strict VR rules with regards to titles not being allowed frame drops.

For the sake of argument, let's say Scorpio releases at 399 (and costs MS the same to produce as it did Sony a PS4 Pro back in 2016).
Would that make a difference?

The best solution would be simply wait a couple more years and then launch a true next gene console when 7nm or 5nm is available. Having a "mid-generation" upgrade creates a situation in which some people may feel compelled to upgrade to play the best looking version of their games although no developer is allowed to produce an exclusive title for the new platform. For dollar spent, people are getting far less than they would get if they waited for the typical console refresh.

I also think that Sony should have waited until the PS5 to launch VR. The PS4 nor the PS4 Pro has the power for close to realistic virtual reality at high resolution and high frame rates (which are both required on VR to avoid the screen door effect and motion sickness).

When it comes to the price of the Scorpio, since people are getting less processing power per dollar than if they waited to upgrade to a truly next gen console, I think the price should be lower than even $399. Perhaps $299

offtopic: Camera companies often do that for certain product lines, release only when there are improvements.
The ecosystem lends itself for it though; both camera bodies and lenses are back- and forward compatible. In general though for DSLRs there are not *that* much advancements seeing as aside from live view there was only megapixel and DR increase and faster/better focus systems.

@babcat: What I think you don't understand is that nobody forces you to upgrade. Yes for example there is a new iPhone every year, but do they brick/disable the old ones after 1 year forcing you to buy a new one? No, they support them for years.
If you need to buy a new one however ; let's say your old one got stolen or destroyed in a terrorist attack, there is always the latest model for you to buy. Or you can buy second hand. If you think the iPhone 9 is not that much faster than the iPhone 8 then you can choose to buy the 8 or 7.
Yearly refreshes are a good thing as long as everything keeps working

I don't think they are a good thing.

- They cost more money because the R and D that would go into each yearly release could be combined into one console every 5-8 years.
- They can get away with innovating less because people don't expect a huge leap in only a short time.
- Customers are constantly tempted to upgrade more often when they really shouldn't. They might not be forced to, but they are influenced to.
- They make the whole industry more complicated. When there is only one console every 5-8 years everyone knows what the "XBox" or "Playstation" means.
- They inhibit developers from going all out with each console because they are forced to make games compatible with previous consoles.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Aren't these mid gen upgrades meant for 4K TV owners that want 4K games on their TV's.
One with 1080p TV should not feel a need to buy a Pro or Scorpio, unless one cares too much about a little better framerate or AA.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a good example, it's very beautiful and fluid with base PS4, no need for Pro if you game in 1080p.
The average 1080p gamer hardly cares for such relatively slight improvements.
If we didn't have such a hard marketing push for 4K TV's, there likely wouldn't be a Pro or Scorpio.

 

[Rodéric]

I don't know anyone who cares about 4K or HDR, people aren't in a hurry to buy a new TV set, granted that's only my limited experience.
(Even at the office people have no interested in new TV sets, but there's a number of Switch around now ^^)

 

[loekf]

TV market is shrinking (slightly) because people watch content more an more in different ways and non linearly.

Most friends/colleagues don't have a clue when I talk about 4K and HDR.

So I think Sony is just using fine. PS owners/fans wont jump to Xbox because there is a 2 TF gap.

 

[liolio]

My belief SOny should have passed, they forced MSFT hands and had them to jump into a generationless approach to the market. On such market my belief is that MSFT has a fundamental edge on them, MSFT got some Xbox games running on the 360, and 360 games on the one, etc. they also have the PC platform which may even allow them to have a tier approach to the market later on.

Now they are not completely out of luck as I think the executive at MSFT are not good they are in reaction vs pushing a vision. They reacted to the pro so they will offer something more powerful than Sony but still bound to same IPs and limitation and a year later.

imho VR not being worse them fractioning their user base was predictable and I think that offering a redesigned, cheaper yet slightly superior Slim design should have been the priority to really grow the market in some emergent countries. The extra money asked for the pro may help maintaining revenues or (somehow) artificially faking some revenues growth but it might not prove a good strategy in the longer run.

 

[Johnglen]

Yes. There was no reason for such a weak "mid gen" console. The PS4 is selling great and the pro is not really a good machine for 4k tv owners (such as myself) or even 1080p owners , with some high profile games not even offering downsampling. For me it was an extremely half -assed attempt at a 4k (????) machine that would have been crucified had it been released by Microsoft . In fact I can't imagine how gaming forums would look like if things were opposite with ms having released something like the pro and Sony preparing something like Scorpio.