Sony's mysterious PS4 Neo has been officially revealed as the PS4 Pro, and will be releasing this year on November 10, 2016. The console will cost $399USD/£349GBP, and will support 4K gaming and videos. Playstation VR will get a huge visual boost on the Pro, as well as older games getting "forward support" to allow them to be played in 4K resolution.

You can see the entire conference, and GBAtemp's roundup of the event here.

 

[duffmmann]

I will never understand why people dismiss the Wii U gamepad as just a novelty, I've gotten so much use out of that device, and there are definitely some great games that would never work or would be next to unplayable without such a controller.

 

[zekepliskin]

Absolutely false, all GPU's and CPU's are measured by operations per second, be it Floating Point or Integer. Clock speed means nothing in terms of performance, it's just a measure of cycles the processor completes per second, it doesn't give you a faintest idea what the processor actually does per cycle. What this "tells me" is that the new PS4 is about 2.28 times beefier than the standard 1.84 TFLOP's model.

Hmmm. Sounds like exactly the sort of thinking that led to the bit wars (16-Bit, 32-Bit and so on) including Nintendo naming their console after the bits. It got a bit silly when the Dreamcast touted 128-Bit really.

Literally all that matters is good games. All this hardware will be completely obsolete in a decade, dwarfed by whatever we'll have then. That's what we'll remember; we won't be holding up a game because "oh, it ran on 4.5TFLOPS hardware". Technically the GameCube was just about the most powerful of it's generation (arguably, yes I know...), certainly more capable than the PS2 which outsold it by several orders of magnitude, but I remember it for the many great games that are still fun to play now. And the amazing controller which I still use and have four of.

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I will never understand why people dismiss the Wii U gamepad as just a novelty, I've gotten so much use out of that device, and there are definitely some great games that would never work or would be next to unplayable without such a controller.

I don't think it is either, but a lot of people do. I liked it for how well it worked in Arkham City and Star Fox Zero, plus the off-TV play feature for turning it into a giant handheld...

 

[Foxi4]

Hmmm. Sounds like exactly the sort of thinking that led to the bit wars (16-Bit, 32-Bit and so on) including Nintendo naming their console after the bits. It got a bit silly when the Dreamcast touted 128-Bit really.

Literally all that matters is good games. All this hardware will be completely obsolete in a decade, dwarfed by whatever we'll have then. That's what we'll remember; we won't be holding up a game because "oh, it ran on 4.5TFLOPS hardware". Technically the GameCube was just about the most powerful of it's generation (arguably, yes I know...), certainly more capable than the PS2 which outsold it by several orders of magnitude, but I remember it for the many great games that are still fun to play now. And the amazing controller which I still use and have four of.

I was just editing my post to reference bits as another jerk off metric people were using prior to Hz. See, the bits refer to the length of words used by the processor, they're not a measure of performance either. The longer the word, the bigger the numbers used by the processor (integer) or the more precision you get with decimals (floating point). For instance, an 8-bit processor uses numbers between 0 and 255 (unsigned integer) or -128 and 127 (signed integer), so a total of 256 different numbers - that's the range you can store in 8 bits. It doesn't tell you anything about how much the CPU actually does in a given stretch of time.

Naturally the games matter most, but in this instance we already know them - they'll be the same games as on the vanilla PS4, just better, which is great. Me, I'm a collector and hardware nut, so this stuff just interests me from a technological standpoint, as a snapshot of where we are in terms of tech.

 

[KingVamp]

I will never understand why people dismiss the Wii U gamepad as just a novelty, I've gotten so much use out of that device, and there are definitely some great games that would never work or would be next to unplayable without such a controller.

I wouldn't go as far as to say next to unplayable, but it makes things much more convenient, accessible and fun. Nintendo doesn't even seem like they are dropping the idea, just redoing and thinking it. I mean I see where people are coming from. Why can't they just do a Nintendo Ps4 or even now, Ps4 Pro and leave at that, but some people want more than that.

Even Sony trying to do with VR, but they seem to daring things after a consoles is set and not from the get go.

 

[Harsky]

Wow, I can already see a steady flow of people selling their PS4 consoles already on ebay. Wonder if I should buy now or wait to see how low it can go (not a big fan of the Slim design).

 

[duffmmann]

I wouldn't go as far as to say next to unplayable, but it makes things much more convenient, accessible and fun. Nintendo doesn't even seem like they are dropping the idea, just redoing and thinking it. I mean I see where people are coming from. Why can't they just do a Nintendo Ps4 or even now, Ps4 Pro and leave at that, but some people want more than that.

Even Sony trying to do with VR, but they seem to daring things after a consoles is set and not from the get go.

When isaid next to unplayable, I was meaning: playable, but would be a nightmare and a chore to play rather than a joy. For example the entire level-design mode of Super Mario Maker would be terrible and no fun without the Gamepad.

 

[Deleted member 370671]

See, the bits refer to the length of words used by the processor, they're not a measure of performance either.

Atari Jaguar anyone? :^)

 

[RaMon90]

I think there are difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. I played l.a noire with locked fps, it didnt feel great, just my opinion.With just 750 ti playing full hd gta v .
Anyways I might think of buying this ps4 pro

 

[nl255]

Okay, why do I need this when I have the OG PS4? Same question I asked about the New 3DS and it didn't appeal to me when I heard about it's specks. If it's because it runs faster or it's just 90% of what the PS4 could do, then I'm not buying this.

Well for a hacked N3DS it is significantly faster in several games and even makes a couple of them playable when they weren't before due to huge frame drops. I would guess that with newer games, they might not run very well on the original PS4. Oh sure, you can get used to it after all I played gameboy games at 60-70 percent native speed with no sound on my palm pilot (actually a handspring visor) for quite a while but it won't be anywhere as good as having a steady framerate that isn't 5-10fps or so.

 

[KingVamp]

Wow, I can already see a steady flow of people selling their PS4 consoles already on ebay. Wonder if I should buy now or wait to see how low it can go (not a big fan of the Slim design).

Yeah, and the slim design is looking to phase out the original. Hopefully they are going for the Pro. Don't see the point of selling PS4 to get the slim.

 

[Foxi4]

Atari Jaguar anyone? :^)

Pretty much. The Jaguar could do some amazing things for its time, it was just overly complex, overengineered, not built with a clear purpose in mind and never properly utilised - it was a weird hodgepodge of parts that's fascinating to examine.

 

[duffmmann]

Pretty much. The Jaguar could do some amazing things for its time, it just was just overly complex, overengineered, not built with a clear purpose in mind and never properly utilised - it was a weird hodgepodge of parts that's fascinating to examine.

My understanding is that the SEGA Saturn was very much a similar situation as well.

 

[Foxi4]

I will never understand why people dismiss the Wii U gamepad as just a novelty, I've gotten so much use out of that device, and there are definitely some great games that would never work or would be next to unplayable without such a controller.

It's a cool feature that nobody uses correctly, and a feature is only as good as the people who design software for it, I'm afraid. I love controllers with screens, but in this instance it just didn't work out well.

My understanding is that the SEGA Saturn was very much a similar situation as well.

The Saturn is a similar case, yes. It's got more processors than anyone at the time could handle. In many games the system runs full blast on one core while the other idles because nobody knew how to properly parallelise code. It's powerful, exotic and completely underutilised, which is why I love it so much. It was the PS3 of its generation, except it bombed like a lead zeppelin.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Yay another marginal upgrade for the same price of a brand new system!

 

[nl255]

The Saturn is a similar case, yes. It's got more processors than anyone at the time could handle, which is why I love it so much. It was the PS3 of its generation, except it bombed like a lead zeppelin.

From what I understand the problem with the Saturn was that it was a multiprocessor design but few if any compilers at the time could really handle multithreading. Thus you pretty much had to write multithreaded code using hand crafted assembly in order to get good performance.

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

So "PS4 Neo" is PS4 Pro, that explains why it's not called "PS4 Slim". The design of PS4 Pro looks like a bunch of Lego blocks in three rows, weird console design.

 

[duffmmann]

It's a cool feature that nobody uses correctly, and a feature is only as good as the people who design software for it, I'm afraid. I love controllers with screens, but in this instance it just didn't work out well.

I dunno, off TV play alone is an amazing feature that I've gotten tons of use out of. (It really helps that my apartment is cozy, so I can be in any room including the bathroom without getting disconnected so I can play it anywhere). Couple that with Netflix and WiiMC in the vWii, and it makes for a great portable media device around the place as well. I'll watch a show or movie on the screen while I'm preparing dinner in the kitchen, laying in bed at night, or even sitting on the toilet. Point is I've gotten a ton of great use out of the device, and that isn't even considering the games that make specific and great use out of the touch screen and/or 2-screen gameplay.

 

[Foxi4]

From what I understand the problem with the Saturn was that it was a multiprocessor design but few if any compilers at the time could really handle multithreading. Thus you pretty much had to write multithreaded code using hand crafted assembly in order to get good performance.

Correct. With two CPU's, two VPU's and a bunch of smaller processors to worry about it wasn't ideal to program for without libraries, and those only came along later when SEGA noticed that they made a console nobody knows how to program for. There's only a handful of games that actually tap into its potential, and even they don't push it to the limit. Think Virtua Fighter 2 which runs at what was considered "high resolution" (704x480, if I recall correctly) at the time and 60FPS while being an almost arcade-perfect port.

 

[Kioku]

Doesn't bother me. My TV can only just manage 1080p, it's in no danger of doing 4K resolution any time soon. And I can't afford either the console or a new TV to make the new shiny graphics mean anything.

Also, can we stop arguing about the pissing framerate already? It's so annoying how everyone judges games on whether or not they can hold up 60fps instead of how fun they are. You all act like anything below 60fps is like Atari 2600 stop-motion style blocky crap when the simple fact is that unless the dip is pretty severe, you wouldn't have noticed if your tracker app didn't tell you you momentarily dropped down to 59fps and therefore the game is garbage. How about you switch that shit off and just play the bloody games? It's gotten old.

Eh. While they were clearly joking around? My issue with framerate anymore is consistency. I couldn't care if it runs at 60fps or 30fps. If it doesn't stay there? It's a far less enjoyable experience anymore.

 

[Foxi4]

I dunno, off TV play alone is an amazing feature that I've gotten tons of use out of. (It really helps that my apartment is cozy, so I can be in any room including the bathroom without getting disconnected so I can play it anywhere). Couple that with Netflix and WiiMC in the vWii, and it makes for a great portable media device around the place as well. I'll watch a show or movie on the screen while I'm preparing dinner in the kitchen, laying in bed at night, or even sitting on the toilet. Point is I've gotten a ton of great use out of the device, and that isn't even considering the games that make specific and great use out of the touch screen and/or 2-screen gameplay.

So you made use of it because your system is hacked - most users are interested in how the games use the feature, and that's where the screen is not utilised correctly. If it's just used for off-tv streaming, it's a wasted opportunity. Even item management would be nice and most games don't even do that.