Topic: Do you think it’s a good thing that the PS4 pro exists?

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@Ryall I think the PS4 Pro needed to exist otherwise we would have seen the PS5 much sooner. 4k TV's arrived in 2014 and despite the PS4 being the 'top dog' in the console space, hasn't been able to maintain a full HD image quality across the board. Not talking about Exclusives which can be tweaked and tailored to ensure there is never too much load for either CPU or GPU to handle, but for the other 80% (or more) games that release on the system. A full HD perhaps wouldn't be 'too bad' on a 4k screen, a bit soft and blurry because of the 4x upscale needed - meaning 75% of the pixels are 'interpolated', added to fill the screen after the image is stretched out rather than have a tiny 1:1 pixel mapped image in the middle of the screen and massive black bars all around.

However, as we known, quite a lot of games aren't full HD even if 1080p is achievable occasionally because of the 'dynamic resolution scaling'. In the past, we had 'dynamic frame rate scaling' where it could hit 30 or 60fps but because the game was too busy, the frame rate would drop but more often in this generation, we see games that are 'capped' at 1080p but can drop as low as 720p to try and keep the frame rate consistent. Those game boxes that say a game is 1080p, doesn't mean you are getting that resolution consistently. Obviously its worse on Xbox One but we are not discussing that here.

The fact that some games can't even do a full HD and with the increasing number of 4k TV's on the market, meant that Sony had to do something - either make a PS5 sooner or make something to bridge that gap. I have already said that a full 1080p looks soft and blurry with 75% of the pixels having to be added by the TV via interpolation as it stretches that 1080p image to fit the screen but it gets worse when you have a 900p native image that is a bit soft because the PS4 upscales that to 1080p to send to the TV and then the 4k TV stretches that out to fit the 4k screen.

A lot of people with 4k screens also went up in screen size so making the 'blurry' soft looking game look even worse. 900p is ~75% of the size of 1080p and needs to be upscaled by 33% to get to 1080p which then has to upscale by 400% to get to the size of a 4k screen. The Pro though has bought Sony time. Those games that were looking worse, becoming more blurry, more noticeable when the game dropped resolution to keep performance more consistent, would have been more an issue as more and more people bought into 4k. The jump up in image size is bigger than the jump up between the PS3 and PS4. Its more akin to going from PS2 to PS4 (just in terms of resolution - not in terms of polygon counts, colour depth, etc etc) so the PS4 Pro bought Sony time. The Pro helped boost visual quality even if it used temporal reconstruction (Chequerboard rendering), using data from the previous frame(s) to fill in the gaps that the GPU had to leave to keep up the frame rate, but it meant that the worst case scenario would be an upscale of 400% - 1080p and numerous games that had zero or minor upscale 1800p-2160p. No longer looking like a blurry mess of interpolated pixels being interpolated again when the 4k TV upscaled.

Those who owned regular HD TV's maybe don't understand how 'bad' by comparison a 900p image looks because on their 1080p TV, that's only a bit softer, a 33% upscale from the native image. All I will say is that the 'equivalent' amount of upscaling a 900p image to a 4k screen for HD TV owners is 450p. For 4k TV owners, its the equivalent of HD TV owners playing games that are up to 540p and you will notice the pixel count drop to 450p with Dynamic Resolution in place. What the Pro offers 4k TV owners is games that will never run below 1080p (equivalent of 540p to HD TV owners) but, with clever reconstruction can run at 1800-2160p (like games running between 900 and 1080p on HD TV's - pretty much where the PS4 sits for them now) with some that choose to run 'native' at around 1440p (720p for HD TV's) with some -pushing into the 1600's and others dropping down below 1200p BUT they are all 1080p or better.

Other benefits have come along too - some games offering the choice of performance or visual quality, some that benefit by locking the console output at 1080p to force the game to display at full HD and the extra resources used to ensure the frame-rate stay locked to its 'capped' level - this alone often makes the games the most playable on consoles - inc XB1X consoles that don't allow you to lock the game to 1080p (as it will ALWAYS super-sample down). Other benefits like loading times and online MP are less publicised but you often have an advantage in Online games like Battlefield for example. In the big map battles particularly, whilst the game is 'considered 60fps, the Pro gets much closer and runs more often at that level whilst standard PS4 owners can drop into the 40's and high 30's - gives the Pro player an advantage in those occasions. Its not just the visual boost.

Its difficult to know how things may of played out differently had Sony not released the PS4 Pro. I do think though that with the growing number of users with 4k TV's and the reducing quality in performance, I think Sony would have been forced to launch a PS5 sooner. Reducing quality in performance isn't 'just' frame rates but as games look 'prettier' with more going on, the resolution or frame rate has to take a hit. You don't get many games that run at a 'locked' resolution or frame rate - something has to drop meaning a drop in performance or visual quality.

As for do I think that the Pro impacted on Days Gone, the answer is an easy NO. Sony Bend don't make 2 versions of the game - they make 1 version and then have different 'settings' depending on the system the game detects. PC owners get to do their own game settings because there is such a vast array of different hardware. They get to choose the output resolution, the shadow quality etc etc where as Sony Bend will decide which settings to tweak and by how much to make the best use of the resources of either hardware. The reason its more of a buggy mess is because the developers were too ambitious for their talent and you also have to remember that this team was making games for Vita - nothing as ambitious as this, nothing in a big open world sandbox before etc. Its even more ambitious than GG opting to make H:ZD - go from 1st to third person, linear to open-world. At least GG had been making big AAA console games and made a PS4 game before opting to take on H:ZD. Killzone:SF had fairly sizeable areas too but Sony Bend really set the bar high - too high it seems - for what they could deliver with their first 'really big' project. That's why its not as polished as other games. Having both a PS4 and Pro on the market didn't affect games like H:ZD, God of War, Spider-Man etc...