Sony know that a console gen refresh every 6 years is the best way to keep everyone engaged and excited about the game industry, which is even bigger than the film and music industry.
PS5 does not have to be a complete new direction like CELL, cutting all ties with the past. That was a big mistake. It can remain within the scaleable PC architecture via AMD and play PS4 games as normal, but offer stuff way beyond what the PS4 could achieve.
Unlike previous gens, back compat on PS5 is a must now because the PS4 game graphics will age well and need to be replayed on PS5 long after the PS4 dies.
PS4 Pro has already reached a threshold of graphical fidelity that is hard to improve without a huge boost in hardware. PC is the same. The differences between PC and console are very slight. 10 years ago, the difference was huge. Today, the PC has an extra shadow detail here and there, or a sharper tree. 10 years ago the console port was a totally different game on console, the tree was gone, whole buildings were gone, whole maps were redesigned on a smaller scale.
That was night and day. Not the tiny difference between PC and console that the PC master race are calling night and day today. They are too young to have seen what night and day really looks like. The gap has closed dramatically.
I laugh when I see these PC tech demos showing a state of the art forest scene that looks almost identical to the forest scenes in Far Cry Primal or Far Cry 5 on PS4 Pro, apart from a few tiny extra details. It's not night and day. Or the guy pulling hilariously painful grimaces with his cheeks. It's all tech and no art. Uncharted 4 is doing the tech and the art already.
So if you squint your eyes, the PS5 version with look very similar to the PS4 Pro version. All the extra power will go into the little details that are hard to do, such as 60fps, better physics, better AI and a systemic integration of all the parts to form an immersive living world.
I would not be surprised if the PS5 still used checkerboard rendering to save processing power for other uses, such as checkerboard at 6K and downsample to 4K for superior anti-aliasing, or checkerboard at 4k and use the extra power for ray traced reflections. All those smart solutions will look visually superior to native 4K.
Wow this is embarrassing, but needs to be highlighted. Ignore all my comments about the stutter on the left joystick in Far Cry 3 Classic Edition on PS4 Pro. The problem has nothing to do with CPU overload or bad programming by Ubisoft.
One of my controllers developed a really strange fault that severely throttled the output of the left joystick. It was intermittent so hard to track down but it's definitely cured with that controller out of the mix. Apologies to Ubisoft.
To be clear, the game runs perfect and is very smooth with a really nice graphical upgrade. I have to give credit where credit is due. Ubisoft did an amazing job and giving it free with the season pass is massive value for money. The game has not aged at all and is still great fun to play.
@NoCode23 No they haven't fixed it but the problem goes away naturally after about 6hrs in as you skill up. It now runs perfectly smooth and is a huge upgrade over the PS3 version. Two hours ago it was unplayable. I've upgraded a few health skills and the hip fire stuff.
We now get the full colour palette the PC had with rock solid detailed graphics and lush veg on the PS4 Pro. It has none of the PS3 fuzzy shimmering blur or screen tear.
The lighting looks far more transparent now with god rays and lens flare. Still no water refraction though. Each individual blade of dense grass now reflects light from a low sun or moon like we saw in Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm liking the treatment because it looks really tropical now with a humid atmosphere.
@Heynow I've just tested the controllers as well just incase one controller was faulty, but it works fine on both controllers at this stage. I use one controller while the other is charging, so both have had a go during my 6hr play through. It's not a hardware issue.
@Heynow I'm glad it does not happen to everyone then. You would know it when it happens. The game is like walking in treacle stuttering to a crawl, then freezes you on the spot. FC3 actually fixed itself 6hrs in so I'm enjoying it now. Hours Of Darkness went the full 10hrs to the end without fixing itself.
They are related because it's the same issue I have never seen before in a game. I don't think it's a hardware issue because I've just completed God Of War without any problem.
The game is still bust and it's not the dead zone. I started the game after the patch to avoid the issue, but hit it full on. The good news is that when you reach about 6hrs in, the problem completely goes away and you get glorious smooth movement on the PS4 Pro. I'm still in the first region but I appear to have skilled up out of the bug problem. I haven't even visited Dr Ernhart yet.
Anyone 6hrs in will have reached the part where it clears up naturally and think its the recent patch working. Classic case of a causality error.
The L joystick was not getting CPU access time. Forward motion simply stutters to a complete stop. You can demonstrate the problem by pushing the L sitck at a diagonal halfway between straight and hard right. Zero forward motion occurs. You are nailed to the spot. 6hrs in and the diagonal movement works. It's not the dead zone.
Another related issue. Aim with the bow while walking forward with L stick, then let go of L stick to stand still as you draw the arrow. You continue to creep forward causing you to mess the shop up. This completely goes away 6 hrs in. Again the L stick not talking to the CPU properly updating the current state.
Ubi need to fix it because I nearly deleted the game in disgust because it was unplayble, but I carried on and it works fine now. First impressions are crucial.
When FC3 started, I liked the graphical upgrade. Yes the distant views were a little blurred but it looked fine. But sadly the game now plays like crap. It really is unplayable. Ubisoft have bust it on PS4 Pro. The left stick to moved forward has a weird latency that gets starved of processor attention.
When you push forward, you move forward in slow stutters, getting slower and slower until it just stops. The stick is still pushing forward flat out but the forward motion just stops. It runs out of gas. The only way to reset it is to let go of the stick and push again, but the same thing happens. Useless.
In order to get the thing running with the improved graphics, Ubisoft have had to put the joystick command at the back of the queue for CPU attention. It gets starved and goes into a dormant state.
The FC5 DLC Hours Of Darkness suffers exactly the same left stick issue. Which programmer thought this was OK. And trying to fix it by just altering the dead zone is the same horse crap we got from the Prey dev, until the fixed it properly by optimising the actual game code.
No wonder Ubi gave FC3 away free with the season pass. It's worthless. Although I really enjoyed the FC5 campaign, the DLC and map editor are full of game busting bugs. The excellent map editor has lots of audio glitches that mute the sound and sometimes AI don't spawn in when triggered which makes your assault maps unplayable because they cannot be completed. A real shame because the quality and versatility is second to none.
I'm starting to think Far Cry is going the way of AC Unity with a sloppy drop in quality. The Gold Edition doesn't look very gold now due to all the content being bust, so that is making me doubt whether to buy all these gold editions. I might just buy the standard edition of AC Odyssey incase it spreads.
@Obake
Game streaming is OK as a low budget option for those that cannot afford the local native game code running on local native hardware, but if they force us all to adopt it then I'm finished with gaming. A lower quality gaming experience may be fine for you, that's your choice, but you do not speak for everyone.
That Ubisoft boss better hope he is wrong and simply talking bullsh!t because if the console games industry goes total streaming over the internet, I'm out. No more gaming. No more Ubisoft game purchases. I will not suffer a downgrade just so devs can make more profit by doing less work. Sure, it makes economic sense. Just build the game once and simply stream it out to all compatible devices like a web page.
This is not like streaming movies, music or a web page. Interactive games require 100% accuracy with low latency or the gameplay turns to frustration. It's bad enough suffering latency in the hardware, but relying on the unreliable internet will simply kill the golden goose for me. It's a red line for sure.
Yes the internet will get better but games will also get more advanced with more instructions being passed back and forth, so the status quo never changes. Even fast connections suffer random dropouts due to traffic issues. If your ISP goes down for maintenance, you're left twiddling your thumbs. At present, if it goes down now, you just play a game instead. You have to be able to rely on something. All your eggs in one basket is asking for trouble.
Then you have ISP's throttling connections or charging for data transfers duo to excessive usage. All the cost of product distribution is passed onto the consumer without any price drop to compensate. Just look at digital game purchases on PSN. The game is a third more expensive and you get no disk or packaging, and they pay no delivery charges, and you pay to have the data transferred to your console. It's a scam. Some people are just stupid and don't see the con trick.
You cannot beat native local game code running on native local hardware, with the games running 100% perfect at the quality the hardware allows. A digital download is local game code so in theory that's OK, but they need to drop the price and stop ripping us off.
I'm getting flashbacks to GTAV. Everyone was saying it was a PS3 title and that it would not scale up to PS4, but I was claiming it will because they make it with hi res assets for PC.
This will definitely be on the PS5. I do understand their problem, if they admit it everyone will conclude they are definitely getting the PS5 so they may as well wait to play it properly and avoid buying it twice.
The strange thing is that the dev is indicating that it won't be out for 2 years and the PS5 will be out in 2 years (2020). That makes the buy twice thing a non entity, so why don't they announce it's next gen as well. The only reason why they would still hide it is if the game was going to come out early in a years time.
This article asks a question that actually provides the answer. Durrr… Yes those two games have created a surge, and yes, console manufacture is running flat out. Manufacturers don't send 2 consoles to each store so that they all have the same in stock. They send out batches when ready that fulfil a specific order.
Amazon is a large player, so they will be sending in a very large order that will take time to complete. If you are basing the overall trend on a simple look at how Amazon are doing, then you're going to come to the wrong conclusion. Amazon buy big to make a big profit, but they don't have a priority over other retailers.
I'm not attacking Amazon because I use them the same as everyone else and get a good service. I'm just stating an obvious fact.
No way is xbox still at 30 with PS at 80. Xbox will be at 35 now and PS is at 80, so that's 45 million ahead. The PS user base is now more than twice the size of xbox. It's falling back, not reducing the gap.
MS need to focus on games, but great games that could be considered a masterpiece take a talented studio 4 years to make, so that's not going to happen this gen. MS have been sleeping on the job in that department trying to fix the lame hardware with an XB1X update.
Right now xbox gamers have no future. They are all just reliving the 360 good old days of the past, because they have no epic new games worth playing. Plus the multiplayer servers are probably barren due to the low user base, hence the reason why MS was pushing for crossplay to join Sony's party.
The XB1S is still underpowered for gaming compared to the similarly priced base PS4. so limited sales there. Only a fool would buy a 'future proof' XB1X with the powerful next gen PS5 and XB2 just 2 years away. The PS4 Pro is still worth buying because it's offering graphics very close to an XB1X at $100 less.
One thing is for sure, the PS5 needs to be backwards compatible with PS4 Pro games, because the graphical quality of Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4, God Of War, AC Origins and Far Cry 5 have past the threshold where they will now age well and not require a remaster. No more Lara with square fists lol.
For the first time in history on any platform, I will not be dumping the previous console gen and saying "it was great but good riddance.' I will still want to replay those games after my PS4 Pro hardware eventually dies. Let's hope AMD have made the Zen based Ryzen CPU architecture, 100% backwards compatible with Jaguar.
Sony need it for their gamers. Not only to make the jump to PS5 more attractive and guarantee success, but also for PS5 gamers who have not played those games and want to give them a try. The graphical quality has reached CGI Toy Story quality so just like classic movies, they can now be sold into the next gen and become timeless classics.
Sony needs to sort this quick by enforcing it's rule that the PS4 Pro frame rate on any game must not be lower than the base PS4 version. It's not acceptable that devs can just run the hardware into the ground in order to wow use with eye candy.
The reports also claim they are even introducing screen tear as well so they can push the graphics further. I'm out of here is we get screen tear again like the PS3.
It's really not going to end well if this trend continues. Gamers are expecting a smoother ride, not worse. The CPU and memory bandwidth are perfectly fine for a smooth frame rate as long as they don't overload it with graphics that the console cannot handle.
In the past, PC's were running games at 60fps with a similar hardware spec, so all that's changed is the games with the devs piling on way too much eye candy and ramping up the pixel count in order to sell Sony 4K HDR TV's.
I'm not ready to upgrade my TV yet, but all this isn't endearing me to buy a Sony TV at a later date if they just allow devs to create an inferior product for the 1080p gamers.
It's looking like 1080p gamers are taking the same hit as the 4K gamers but not getting the benefit of 4K or HDR to justify it. That is not right.
Hey Naughty Dog… here's the deal. I'm a huge Uncharted fan but I'll only buy your story DLC after you give us the promised coop. We are well into Autumn now and there is not a single word from you about coop.
@finalstan Think about it. You don't need to be a tech wizard because it's common sense. Just strip way all the geek blurb.
Speed 6 is twice as fast as speed 3, so theory if a game takes 30 seconds to load at speed 3, it's going to take 15 seconds to load at speed 6. Is that a worthwhile improvement.
@Mega-Gazz
That's a very good point. Higher resolutions just allow bigger screens so you cannot see the pixels when viewed from the same distance. The individual pixels on a 1080p screen cannot be seen by the human eye from a normal 6 feet viewing distance.
What you can see though is fine detail pixel shimmer because this involves several pixels animating, but this can be cured by high quality anti aliasing. Most PS4 Pro games seem to be upscaling 2K (1440p) to 4K via a clever supersampling checkerboard technique.
If you simply downsample 1440p to 1080p, you instantly get the best anti aliasing solution achievable at no extra cost and it will result in an incredibly smooth 1080p image. It would give games that Toy Story look in 1080p and that's incredible. Bear in mind that detail gets a boost when the 1080p image is generated by a higher resolution.
Try watching a 1080p video via Youtube on a 1080p computer screen, then watch it again in 4K on your 1080p computer screen. The resolution of your computer screen does not change but there is a huge boost in detail sharpness due to higher quality screen pixels.
Don't laugh. On it's own, a pixel is a pixel and cannot be improved, but it's relation to the surrounding pixels can. Downsampling from a higher resolution creates very high quality pixels that blend seamlessly with surrounding pixels, creating a very high quality image with increased sharpness.
PS4 Pro is a no brainer. It's cheap, it's powerful, it will generate a very higher quality 1080p image and generates a very high quality 4K image by upscaling from 2K to 4K using a smart supersampling checkerboard technique that looks really close to native 4K. It's not a bog standard upscale you get from an XB1 or inside your TV.
The quality of the PS4 Pro 4K output is very close to native, making the XB Scorpio look like a very expensive brute force native route to achieve the same result. MS are worried that it makes the XB Scorpio obsolete, hence their recent attack claiming PS4 Pro cannot do native 4K gaming. But the truth is it does not need to. The quality of the upscale means they only need to generate 2k with very cheap hardware and use a cutting edge upscale technique, so gamers win with huge value for money.
Then we have HDR which actually adds even more detail than 4K. HDR is only available on 4K TV's. 4K adds resolution detail, but HDR adds colour and shade detail which is vast. Think about it, an image with every pixel the same colour looks exactly the same on a 1080p and 4K screen. The resolution benefit disappears. HDR adds a huge amount of extra gradients, so you see detail in areas that were simply the same colour on a normal RGB screen.
In RGB, shadow areas and highlight areas are made up of just one or two different colour shade gradients, but in HDR you have much more shades so details and texture not seen in RGB suddenly form to add extra detail. The range of pixel colours and gradients is called the colour space, the colour gamut or the dynamic range, hence High Dynamic Range (HDR).
The classic example of dynamic range is when you take a picture of a blue sky with your camera and the picture ends up with a white sky. Nature has the full dynamic range but when you try to capture it on a camera with a narrow dynamic range, bright colours are trimmed to white, dark colours are trimmed to black and some mid shades simply disappear. HDR makes all those extra colour shades visible.
Without doubt, PS4 Pro will look awesome on a 4K HDR screen, but most people only have a 1080p screen and will do so for the next 5 years. The devs need to make their game look great at 1080p as well if they want sales. The image quality is sorted, so that just leaves frame rate. Gamers are expecting a frame rate improvement as well.
The quality you are getting for £345 is incredible value for money. No PC can match this quality in the same price range. Even high end PC gamers cannot see HDR detail because all computer monitors are RGB, unless you own an expensive industrial monitor used by the devs, but you won't have any HDR content to view on the computer.
We will get lots of silly PC fanboys comparing PC and PS4 Pro screenshots in limited RGB because that is all they can see on their computer, but if you look at the HDR TV image generated via a PS4 Pro, there will be a vast HDR detail range that is missing from the high end PC screen. The problem is how to you demonstrate that on peoples computer via an RBG monitor. The real answer is you can't. The internet cannot transmit that quality either because everything is an RGB colour space infrastructure.
The only way to view the quality on offer is to watch it with your real eyes on the real kit, hence Sony's smart move to take the gear on a roadshow around the country to invite gamers to see it with their own eyes.
Sorry I wrote far more than I intended there, but it's all valuable information that everyone can benefit from. Share the knowledge.
The PS4 Pro will sell well if Sony and the devs demonstrate tangible benefits for 1080p TV owners because they are the core market. Gamers want to see 1080p smooth 60fps, lush environments, increased eye candy, and a high quality anti aliasing.
They have to do it quick because they only have a year to grab as many sales as they can. Most people can only afford one console so the first to market grabs all the sales. Once the superior MS Scorpio comes out, Sony will struggle because those that can afford it will buy the MS Scorpio.
Can someone explain how whispers from North America supposedly confirm the remaster's existence. Are we also to assume this article is also confirmed as true due to the original whisper confirmation. This is a pyramid of paper tissues.
Confirmation is a strong word. Confirmation is only true when someone who has the authority to confirm it, actually does so. We can have several facts aligning to indicate it might be true. But that is still not confirmation. Just a high probability as we saw with the Neo rumour until Sony told us it existed.
Personally, I think there is a high probability we will see a RDR remaster as a way to get people excited for RDR 2, because Rockstar will have ported the RDR game engine over to PS4 and XB1 when starting work on RDR 2 as a prototype test.
The rumour of RDR 2 being used as a demonstration for the Neo announcement was a bit far fetched, so maybe that rumour got distorted in transit and it's really the RDR remaster that will be shown singing and dancing on Neo.
It looks real to me with the metal sockets and it looks really nice. I love the Mac inspired minimalist rounded corner design. No wasted space, just compact and neat. Yes it does look dark but I think it's the cheap camera struggling to get any detail out of the black matt finish. In real life you will see the matt texture clearly.
It does lack colour through, but then again, this is the budget model going forward. PS4 Neo will be the elite model, with more colourful trimmings to stamp it as the prestige model. I expect PS4 Neo to be larger as well.
After being stabbed in the back for being a loyal fan, I'm now back on board with buying this game day one on PS4, because I feel the dev has given us compensation for the delay.
Zero screen tear, low input latency, a coop mode and a zombie mode that plays like The Last Of Us are the high points for me. Well done I'm sold
I still can't stand that big over sentimental bird dog thing. And why is the bird dog rendered in black and white grey, while the rest of the game has a colour tint similar to Ico.
@Gamer83 No worries then, because if it is funded by MS or Nintendo, it won't be very good because neither will fund it adequately due to low sales from the small user base.
PS4 was the cash cow but Square Enix shot themselves in the foot due to short term greed.
If we are talking about VR games that won't play on a Standard PS4 without VR, then I would say that's pretty important information, not messy. Print it loud and clear.
No way. This dev is going crazy at the PS4 cash cow. They sewed their seed with XB1 exclusivity on the first so it does not wash coming to PS4 now that they realise how much money they have been loosing.
I did not miss the first and I won't miss this either. The game is just a shallow COD sim in a robotic nanosuit. COD is a dinosaur that's greedily spawning every 6 months and even that is going out of space now to try and spice it up a bit with gimmicks. Perverse.
This looked great at the start of the trailer until we saw game footage. In this day and age, I'm always sceptical when we see an absolutely huge divide in quality between the cut scenes and the gameplay. That's going to bust the immersion. GTAV and Uncharted 4 have an almost seemless transition that keeps you fixed inside the world.
This is just another example of the devs lack of polish. No surprise because the game on PS3 was really clunky with zero polish. On PS3 the frame rate stuttered like crazy when in doors. Lots of screen tear and the grass was just a paint green floor.
I'm just not convinced this game deserved a sequel. I know Ubisoft would like it to become a large successful franchise, but the first was so boring and dull I couldn't even be bothered to finish it. The hacking is just not exciting enough and the lead character was dreadfully plain. I actually disliked him for being such a nosey shady weasel.
You hack someone apartment and get some boring lame 6 second cameo. I want to discover evidence on some serial killer or something and track him down or maybe a large conspiracy to explore, but no. It just fizzled out like a burst balloon.
@Sanquine I read your link and it's does not say coop is coming. It claims they might patch in 'couch coop' which is split screen LAN. Uncharted has always got the terminology a bit confused. If you clicked the coop button in Uncharted, you were taken to the split screen LAN. You always had to select multiplayer and then go to a subsection to reach the proper coop which always confused people.
So I'm still not totally convinced, but I hope you're right.
No coop. That's a 9/10 then because although the campaign will be awesome, you cannot give a perfect 10 when the best part of Uncharted is missing.
Instead of playing it for 3 hours every night for 3 years. It looks like I'll play the 40 hour campaign twice and different difficulties and then never play it again. Big difference in longevity and value for money.
I have an awful lot of PSN friends that are going to be gutted at this news. A lots of us actually met via Uncharted coop and there's nothing else to replace it in any of the other games.
I suspected this would happen with the dynamic duo at the helm after The Last Of Us did not having coop either. Getting coop a year later sounds like a bit of an after thought. A promise that may never be kept.
Fallout 4 is an amazing game. Lots of variety: FPS, stealth exploration, gathering and a it gives you full creativity with the excellent settlement builder. These improvements are great, but not enough to make me return to the game. I loved the game and played it to death, but now I have to move on.
Yes it's in the devs interest to keep us playing the game so that the franchise remains relevant, but the only thing that will make me return to replay it with all these lovely improvements is if the devs released a free Neo optimisation patch, so I enjoy it again in higher quality like a free remaster on PS4 Neo.
The whole game industry is hyped about this. It's a masterstroke, whether Sony intended it or has been dragged into it.
If the new PS4.5 or PS4K is twice the power giving me 1080p 60fps with all the eye candy turned to max and a very large hard drive, I'm in.
If it just turns out to be a bog standard lame PS4 slim with no extra power and a 4K media player, then there is going to be a lot of people with egg on their faces and masses of angry gamers, bitter with disappointment.
I'm definitely getting this remaster trilogy on PS4 when it arrives. I loved the first game but didn't buy the other two because the series had horrendous screen tear on PS3.
I played Infinite free on PSN plus and loved it, but not as much as the first game. It will be a treat to play all three in 1080p clarity without any screen tear.
What was that? "Fixes Just Cause 2's biggest problem – being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no means of transportation." Rubbish. You always had your grapple hook and parachute. U could stay in the air forever with the parachute by using the grapple to pull you up.
It was by far the best way to travel. Faster than any of the vehicles in the game and you could go anywhere at any time with it. How was that a problem. Maybe it was a problem if you did not know about it.
Not want I wanted to hear. Not what we wanted. We wanted them for free. Sony are making enough money off the games. The eco system that we play them in should be free. Are they going to charge for changing the interface colours as well.
Avatars are our identity within that eco system so they should also be free, otherwise rich gamers get the fancy identity and poor players get the bog standard identity. Paying for avatars is not an equal inclusive for all closed gaming system hosted by Sony. MS win that one.
@Matroska I agree with everything you said, instances of an object take up far less memory than the original object, but we are not talking about large objects or textures when discussing No Man's Sky. The whole thing is math based on procedurally generated vector assets. That all has to be done on the CPU in rapid succession because no one is using GPU compute yet on the PS4.
@Cron_13 How can you say a PS4 Elite can never happen. The concept has arose because Sony are considering it and asking what consumers think. The new consoles are like PC's. They are not an open system but they are scaleable like a PC. It's expensive to jump a gen because they have to make a completely new console design with its own set of games and target vision. It's much better to have a PS4.5 or PS4 Elite mid gen to simulate the effect of PC's upgrading in order to keep pace.
You seem to be in favour of steam machines when in fact they are basically scaleable consoles in exactly the same way. You would not tolerate one steam console owner being annoyed when another steam machine comes out offering better performance, so why treat Sony any different.
@Boerewors I agree. PS4 Elite is the way to go. Those that consider such a move as a stab in the bag are just sucking sour grapes because they will still get the same performance in future games whether the PS4 Elite exists or no not.
Sony made a wise move dumping the CELL and going for the scaleable x86 architecture because that allows them to introduce enhanced consoles mid gen that run in parallel with existing hardware in a way that is transparent to the user. That could not happen with PS3 otherwise you would have two types of game disc adding expense and confusion.
It's better to have a closed two tier console system playing a one tier game, than two tier consoles playing two tier games. Managing a close two tier console system is easy to achieve. PC is an open system with unlimited tiers of hardware permutation so devs struggle to please everyone with a fully optimised game dedicated to their configuration.
Pop a game disc into the PS4 standard and the game will detect the hardware and output 1080p 30fps PC mid/high graphics with standard AA and struggle with vector intensive games.
But pop the same game disc into a PS4 Elite and the game will output 1080p 60fps PC ultra graphics, high quality AA, less pop in, larger draw distances and render vector intensive games perfectly. Plus you would not be required to delete games from your hard drive if they gave us 4TB.
A PS4 Elite would basically negate all the positives PC gamers enjoy. You would basically get a cutting edge PS4 Elite for less than the cost of upgrading your PC gaming rig. My guess is that PC gamers with economic sense would jump ship to a PS4 Elite if Sony went down that road.
For me a PS4 Elite a no brainer, but Sony have to be careful not to upset the loyal user base who are extremely reactionary and don't like the thought of anyone having better on the same system, hence testing the waters first. I'm pretty sure it will happen and gamers will be educated to expect it as the norm from now on. But right now, Sony have to break a few traditions that are treated like moral code of practice.
@Boerewors
Everything you say is about right. The PS4 has a weak link in that its CPU is underpowered. It's just not fast enough to process floods of tiny instructions in rapid succession and the fact that the RAM is GDDR5 does not help, because that adds a bit of latency as well when passing data to the CPU. CPU cache memory is too small to hold game code instructions permanently, so they are loaded into the GDDR5 RAM when the game boots up which has slow latency getting those instructions to the CPU when needed.
PS4 works best with games that are graphics heavy with lots of high res textures, complex lighting and lots of assets that get reused, because that makes good use of its powerful GPU. Games that require a lot of small vector calculations such as No Man's Sky, where everything is flat shaded vector artwork procedurally generated in rapid succession, puts excessive strain on the weak CPU.
Latency and speed are totally different, but equally important. It's best described using the internet as an example. Data speed is the speed the data travels. Latency is the short delay before the data starts traveling. As an extreme example, it does not matter if a 10GB download takes 1 second to start (latency), if it downloads in 10 minutes (speed). But in multiplayer gaming, a one second delay in sending the data of you shooting someone is just not going to work. Small instructions in rapid succession require low latency because they all add up very quickly.
The powerful GPU inside the PS4 and large capacity fast GDDR5 RAM are underused by No Man's Sky because there are no high res textures and no assets that get loaded and reused. Everything is procedurally generated fresh in real time where ever you go. The PS4 hardware is not well suited to that type of game.
AC Unity hit a CPU bottleneck as well by overloading the CPU with massive floods of AI, and all the AI streaming animations and physics. This then affects the CPU's ability to manage a steady frame rate because the powerful GPU was then left waiting for instructions to process. Another side effect of overloading the CPU is that it then generates controller latency, so that there is a delay in responding to the players controller instructions because the CPU is too busy or CPU bound (no spare resources). AC Unity suffers bad controller latency as a result, but it did use high quality textures and reused assets, so it did make use of a broad range of the PS4 hardware.
The PS4 runs into problems when a game is not designed well to make use of all the hardware equally. If the game produces excessive CPU activity, leaves the GPU idle and does not make use of the fast GDDR5 RAM, then the performance will suffer. The XB1 is the opposite because MS raised the CPU clock speed slightly and use low latency DDR3 RAM, so it performs a little better on the vector stuff, but performs poorly on the high res texture stuff because of its weak GPU and zero GDDR5 RAM. That is why the XB1 can only manage 900p on most games. A version of No Man's Sky on the XB1 may be able to push out 1080p, but it would be very tight.
No Man's Sky is possibly the worse game you could put on PS4 because it is not a good match. That is not No Man's Sky's fault. It is because Sony had to make the PS4 to a budget and chose to save money on the CPU side which was entirely valid at the time. Normally that is not a problem, but occasionally a game comes along that just spams the CPU.
I'm hoping Sony release the PS4 Elite they are considering. They can then fix the limitations in the PS4 standard edition. Three PS4 weakness's need to be addressed in the PS4 Elite.
1 - The CPU needs to be beefed up and run at a higher clock speed to cater for vector and physics intensive games.
2 - 4GB of low latency DDR3 RAM needs to be added to feed the CPU so the high latency fast speed GDDR5 RAM can just be used to feed the powerful GPU.
3 - A 4TB hard drive (2 x 2TB) should be added to store games because gamers are now avoiding buying games they want because they don't have the room for them without deleting their favourite games. A ticking time bomb for Sony that they need to address quickly.
The PS4 Elite and PS4 standard can exist side by side playing the same game disc because the architecture is scaleable. Games can be made to automatically sense the hardware and deliver the required optimisation that each PS4 version can handle.
Existing PS4 gamers will still be able to play the future games at the quality they have at present, so their investment is protected, but anyone that can afford to upgrade to a PS4 Elite will be rewarded by better performance.
In the short term Sony need to manufacture an optional hard drive expansion unit that clips onto the left side of the PS4 adding 4TB of RAM (2 x 2TB) that includes an empty slot for the existing internal hard drive to make it a simple hot swap installation with no data copying. That will keep the PS4 standard version running until the end of its lifespan without players needing to delete games.
There is an argument that a hard drive extension unit should be heavily subsidised by Sony because they gain financially with all the game sales it prevents them from loosing. Sony need to run the numbers and see if they loose more by not providing a subsidy with gamers not buying games, or provide a hardware subsidy and sell more games.
I'm really looking forward to this, but I hope they have excellent coop survival/arena as a major part of the package, because that was the best thing about U2 and U3 that kept us playing it 3 hours every night year after year.
The Last Of Us was the best game ever made on any platform but it did not have coop survival. Why?
A great game, but it's all too late. I've finished the game and deleted it to make space for new games. That will continue to happen, until Sony makes a hard drive expansion module to plug into the side of our PS4.
@Elodin I know what you mean but take AC4 for example. They broke with tradition and added battleship sailing and it was awesome. The game cannot survive strict adherence to the original formula. We should be sailing down the Nile by now, assassinating Pharos inside Egyptian temples and climbing the pyramids. Instead we get boring London streets and thug gangs. Dull.
Why do they insist on setting the game so close to the present day, making the character look weird and out of place. This game should be doing ancient China, ancient Egypt, ancient Japan, the Inca's, the Aztecs. The possibilities for interesting stuff is tremendous but the game designers have just boxed themselves into a small corner. Totally boring.
AC4 on PS4 was great, but ACU on PS4 killed the series for me. Never again was I going to pre-order another AC game. A year is too early to heal the wounds, let alone fix the mess they had created and re-write the whole game engine to make better use of the PS4. That was never going to happen and this proves it.
ACU had some good points but even after all the updates, the bad points still dominated. I actually don't mind the tower climb to open areas thing. It's very versatile. The problem was controller latency that made navigation and fighting unplayably frustrating. The missions were just way to simple and repetitive. The main character and his girl were great, but everyone else was constantly forgettable and boring, same with the story.
Everything I read about this new game indicates more of the same, so AC is finished for me. Just give me Far Cry 5 and a comprehensive map editor for coop and I'll be happy.
Ofcourse the Uncharted Trilogy is a system seller. There is nothing to match it or The Last Of Us on the xbox consoles. Tomb Raider comes close but nowhere near close enough. I'm playing the first game right now on PS4 and even though I've already played the games on PS3, I'm loving every second. It feels fresh and plays like a dream with awesome graphics.
The compressed Youtube comparison videos make the two versions look similar, but when you see the PS4 version in the flesh, the clarity of the graphics, lighting and texture work is outstanding. All gamers should be enjoying this. If you're not on PS4 you're on the wrong console because this is incredible value for money. Three of the best games ever made for £40, remastered in epic quality.
80% percent of PS4 gamers are in for one hell of a ride if they have not played them. I'm in for one hell of a ride and I've already played them. As I always say, it's a great time to be gamer if you're on PS4. Even more so now.
I cannot believe Sony is going to kill the series off with the fourth game. Crazy.
@SanderEvers
Playing dirty is never smart or justified. PS4 gamers will never move over to XB1 to chase a game, because it involves a step down in performance. That fact just makes the gamer angry and they stay put.
Regarding mac and PC, the Windows OS and the MS OS both own tech that they allow the other side to use. Both sides benefit and are equal. Office is an actual product that is making money for them. If they remove the sale they loose money and could make the mac fail, loosing them a customer as well. It's in their interest to keep the mac alive because it is a customer to sell to that offers no threat.
The latest consoles are different because MS made a design error and is left in a weak position of their own making. As a result, they are tempted not to play fair to try and even things up. That is a very different situation and can never be right.
If you are in a running race, you don't just smack your opponent in the knee caps because you did not do as much training as him.
"Nothing to worry about." It's like letting the fox guard the chickens. MS don't have the moral dignity to be trusted to play fair regarding global tech. You have to earn trust and dignity. MS constantly demonstrate they are unable to play fair. Just look at the next Tomb Raider if you want proof of how MS predator capitalism works. It's dirty. It's corrupt. It hurts gamers.
They could easily deny the Havoc tech licence to all versions of a game running on Sony consoles now that they own it. When backed into the corner and desperate, lame cowards will always press the nuclear button and detonate. You don't have to believe me. You will see it happen for yourselves. MS will eventually kill the gaming industry.
Ofcourse Horizon: Zero Dawn will be a big hit in the east. Although it is a western style RPG open world, it has been designed to incorporate features that would appeal to the east and JRPG fans as well.
It's 'Monster Hunter', it's a female with a bow, it's dinosaurs, it's robots that act like real creatures, it's transformers and it has light RPG elements for JRPG fans. All those features appeal to the east a well as to the west. The only things missing are the big manga eyes on little miss cutey pie, the big spikey obsession with hair and the depressingly over-sentimental story line which would all stifle sales in the west.
It's going to be an awesome game and sell like hot cakes all over the world.
I guess the xbots are running out of bullets to fire against the PS4 and are now resorting to regional politics as a way to vent their bitterness.
Turkey will never get into the EU after they way Greece has behaved because it clearly shows a cultural misunderstanding where countries on the fringes of the middle east think the EU is a charity. The EU does not work like that. It is a partnership.
But those discussions should take place elsewhere. We are gamers visiting a gaming website. Let's talk games.
Comments 100
Re: Sony Offers Brief Comment on PS5
Sony know that a console gen refresh every 6 years is the best way to keep everyone engaged and excited about the game industry, which is even bigger than the film and music industry.
PS5 does not have to be a complete new direction like CELL, cutting all ties with the past. That was a big mistake. It can remain within the scaleable PC architecture via AMD and play PS4 games as normal, but offer stuff way beyond what the PS4 could achieve.
Unlike previous gens, back compat on PS5 is a must now because the PS4 game graphics will age well and need to be replayed on PS5 long after the PS4 dies.
PS4 Pro has already reached a threshold of graphical fidelity that is hard to improve without a huge boost in hardware. PC is the same. The differences between PC and console are very slight. 10 years ago, the difference was huge. Today, the PC has an extra shadow detail here and there, or a sharper tree. 10 years ago the console port was a totally different game on console, the tree was gone, whole buildings were gone, whole maps were redesigned on a smaller scale.
That was night and day. Not the tiny difference between PC and console that the PC master race are calling night and day today. They are too young to have seen what night and day really looks like. The gap has closed dramatically.
I laugh when I see these PC tech demos showing a state of the art forest scene that looks almost identical to the forest scenes in Far Cry Primal or Far Cry 5 on PS4 Pro, apart from a few tiny extra details. It's not night and day. Or the guy pulling hilariously painful grimaces with his cheeks. It's all tech and no art. Uncharted 4 is doing the tech and the art already.
So if you squint your eyes, the PS5 version with look very similar to the PS4 Pro version. All the extra power will go into the little details that are hard to do, such as 60fps, better physics, better AI and a systemic integration of all the parts to form an immersive living world.
I would not be surprised if the PS5 still used checkerboard rendering to save processing power for other uses, such as checkerboard at 6K and downsample to 4K for superior anti-aliasing, or checkerboard at 4k and use the extra power for ray traced reflections. All those smart solutions will look visually superior to native 4K.
Re: Review: Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4)
Wow this is embarrassing, but needs to be highlighted. Ignore all my comments about the stutter on the left joystick in Far Cry 3 Classic Edition on PS4 Pro. The problem has nothing to do with CPU overload or bad programming by Ubisoft.
One of my controllers developed a really strange fault that severely throttled the output of the left joystick. It was intermittent so hard to track down but it's definitely cured with that controller out of the mix. Apologies to Ubisoft.
To be clear, the game runs perfect and is very smooth with a really nice graphical upgrade. I have to give credit where credit is due. Ubisoft did an amazing job and giving it free with the season pass is massive value for money. The game has not aged at all and is still great fun to play.
Re: Review: Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4)
@NoCode23
No they haven't fixed it but the problem goes away naturally after about 6hrs in as you skill up. It now runs perfectly smooth and is a huge upgrade over the PS3 version. Two hours ago it was unplayable. I've upgraded a few health skills and the hip fire stuff.
We now get the full colour palette the PC had with rock solid detailed graphics and lush veg on the PS4 Pro. It has none of the PS3 fuzzy shimmering blur or screen tear.
The lighting looks far more transparent now with god rays and lens flare. Still no water refraction though. Each individual blade of dense grass now reflects light from a low sun or moon like we saw in Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm liking the treatment because it looks really tropical now with a humid atmosphere.
Re: Review: Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4)
@Heynow
I've just tested the controllers as well just incase one controller was faulty, but it works fine on both controllers at this stage. I use one controller while the other is charging, so both have had a go during my 6hr play through. It's not a hardware issue.
Re: Review: Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4)
@Heynow
I'm glad it does not happen to everyone then. You would know it when it happens. The game is like walking in treacle stuttering to a crawl, then freezes you on the spot. FC3 actually fixed itself 6hrs in so I'm enjoying it now. Hours Of Darkness went the full 10hrs to the end without fixing itself.
They are related because it's the same issue I have never seen before in a game. I don't think it's a hardware issue because I've just completed God Of War without any problem.
Re: Review: Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4)
The game is still bust and it's not the dead zone. I started the game after the patch to avoid the issue, but hit it full on. The good news is that when you reach about 6hrs in, the problem completely goes away and you get glorious smooth movement on the PS4 Pro. I'm still in the first region but I appear to have skilled up out of the bug problem. I haven't even visited Dr Ernhart yet.
Anyone 6hrs in will have reached the part where it clears up naturally and think its the recent patch working. Classic case of a causality error.
The L joystick was not getting CPU access time. Forward motion simply stutters to a complete stop. You can demonstrate the problem by pushing the L sitck at a diagonal halfway between straight and hard right. Zero forward motion occurs. You are nailed to the spot. 6hrs in and the diagonal movement works. It's not the dead zone.
Another related issue. Aim with the bow while walking forward with L stick, then let go of L stick to stand still as you draw the arrow. You continue to creep forward causing you to mess the shop up. This completely goes away 6 hrs in. Again the L stick not talking to the CPU properly updating the current state.
Ubi need to fix it because I nearly deleted the game in disgust because it was unplayble, but I carried on and it works fine now. First impressions are crucial.
Re: Review: Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4)
When FC3 started, I liked the graphical upgrade. Yes the distant views were a little blurred but it looked fine. But sadly the game now plays like crap. It really is unplayable. Ubisoft have bust it on PS4 Pro. The left stick to moved forward has a weird latency that gets starved of processor attention.
When you push forward, you move forward in slow stutters, getting slower and slower until it just stops. The stick is still pushing forward flat out but the forward motion just stops. It runs out of gas. The only way to reset it is to let go of the stick and push again, but the same thing happens. Useless.
In order to get the thing running with the improved graphics, Ubisoft have had to put the joystick command at the back of the queue for CPU attention. It gets starved and goes into a dormant state.
The FC5 DLC Hours Of Darkness suffers exactly the same left stick issue. Which programmer thought this was OK. And trying to fix it by just altering the dead zone is the same horse crap we got from the Prey dev, until the fixed it properly by optimising the actual game code.
No wonder Ubi gave FC3 away free with the season pass. It's worthless. Although I really enjoyed the FC5 campaign, the DLC and map editor are full of game busting bugs. The excellent map editor has lots of audio glitches that mute the sound and sometimes AI don't spawn in when triggered which makes your assault maps unplayable because they cannot be completed. A real shame because the quality and versatility is second to none.
I'm starting to think Far Cry is going the way of AC Unity with a sloppy drop in quality. The Gold Edition doesn't look very gold now due to all the content being bust, so that is making me doubt whether to buy all these gold editions. I might just buy the standard edition of AC Odyssey incase it spreads.
Re: PS5 Will Be the Last Console Before Streaming Takes Over, Says Ubisoft Boss
@Obake
Game streaming is OK as a low budget option for those that cannot afford the local native game code running on local native hardware, but if they force us all to adopt it then I'm finished with gaming. A lower quality gaming experience may be fine for you, that's your choice, but you do not speak for everyone.
Re: PS5 Will Be the Last Console Before Streaming Takes Over, Says Ubisoft Boss
That Ubisoft boss better hope he is wrong and simply talking bullsh!t because if the console games industry goes total streaming over the internet, I'm out. No more gaming. No more Ubisoft game purchases. I will not suffer a downgrade just so devs can make more profit by doing less work. Sure, it makes economic sense. Just build the game once and simply stream it out to all compatible devices like a web page.
This is not like streaming movies, music or a web page. Interactive games require 100% accuracy with low latency or the gameplay turns to frustration. It's bad enough suffering latency in the hardware, but relying on the unreliable internet will simply kill the golden goose for me. It's a red line for sure.
Yes the internet will get better but games will also get more advanced with more instructions being passed back and forth, so the status quo never changes. Even fast connections suffer random dropouts due to traffic issues. If your ISP goes down for maintenance, you're left twiddling your thumbs. At present, if it goes down now, you just play a game instead. You have to be able to rely on something. All your eggs in one basket is asking for trouble.
Then you have ISP's throttling connections or charging for data transfers duo to excessive usage. All the cost of product distribution is passed onto the consumer without any price drop to compensate. Just look at digital game purchases on PSN. The game is a third more expensive and you get no disk or packaging, and they pay no delivery charges, and you pay to have the data transferred to your console. It's a scam. Some people are just stupid and don't see the con trick.
You cannot beat native local game code running on native local hardware, with the games running 100% perfect at the quality the hardware allows. A digital download is local game code so in theory that's OK, but they need to drop the price and stop ripping us off.
Re: E3 2018: Cyberpunk 2077 Still a PS4 Game, Says Dev, After Rumours of PS5 Release
I'm getting flashbacks to GTAV. Everyone was saying it was a PS3 title and that it would not scale up to PS4, but I was claiming it will because they make it with hi res assets for PC.
This will definitely be on the PS5. I do understand their problem, if they admit it everyone will conclude they are definitely getting the PS5 so they may as well wait to play it properly and avoid buying it twice.
The strange thing is that the dev is indicating that it won't be out for 2 years and the PS5 will be out in 2 years (2020). That makes the buy twice thing a non entity, so why don't they announce it's next gen as well. The only reason why they would still hide it is if the game was going to come out early in a years time.
Re: PS4 Pro Stock Is Scarily Low in the UK Right Now
This article asks a question that actually provides the answer. Durrr… Yes those two games have created a surge, and yes, console manufacture is running flat out. Manufacturers don't send 2 consoles to each store so that they all have the same in stock. They send out batches when ready that fulfil a specific order.
Amazon is a large player, so they will be sending in a very large order that will take time to complete. If you are basing the overall trend on a simple look at how Amazon are doing, then you're going to come to the wrong conclusion. Amazon buy big to make a big profit, but they don't have a priority over other retailers.
I'm not attacking Amazon because I use them the same as everyone else and get a good service. I'm just stating an obvious fact.
Re: PS4 Pro Stock Is Scarily Low in the UK Right Now
@nathanSF
Or deliberately make not make enough like MS did with the XB1X launch so you can claim a sellout and rejoice in success …lol
Re: PS4 Is Way Ahead of Xbox One in Total Console Sales, Says New Data
No way is xbox still at 30 with PS at 80. Xbox will be at 35 now and PS is at 80, so that's 45 million ahead. The PS user base is now more than twice the size of xbox. It's falling back, not reducing the gap.
MS need to focus on games, but great games that could be considered a masterpiece take a talented studio 4 years to make, so that's not going to happen this gen. MS have been sleeping on the job in that department trying to fix the lame hardware with an XB1X update.
Right now xbox gamers have no future. They are all just reliving the 360 good old days of the past, because they have no epic new games worth playing. Plus the multiplayer servers are probably barren due to the low user base, hence the reason why MS was pushing for crossplay to join Sony's party.
The XB1S is still underpowered for gaming compared to the similarly priced base PS4. so limited sales there. Only a fool would buy a 'future proof' XB1X with the powerful next gen PS5 and XB2 just 2 years away. The PS4 Pro is still worth buying because it's offering graphics very close to an XB1X at $100 less.
One thing is for sure, the PS5 needs to be backwards compatible with PS4 Pro games, because the graphical quality of Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4, God Of War, AC Origins and Far Cry 5 have past the threshold where they will now age well and not require a remaster. No more Lara with square fists lol.
For the first time in history on any platform, I will not be dumping the previous console gen and saying "it was great but good riddance.' I will still want to replay those games after my PS4 Pro hardware eventually dies. Let's hope AMD have made the Zen based Ryzen CPU architecture, 100% backwards compatible with Jaguar.
Sony need it for their gamers. Not only to make the jump to PS5 more attractive and guarantee success, but also for PS5 gamers who have not played those games and want to give them a try. The graphical quality has reached CGI Toy Story quality so just like classic movies, they can now be sold into the next gen and become timeless classics.
Re: Watch Dogs 2 Looks Tidy on PS4 Pro But Has a Few Performance Dips
Sony needs to sort this quick by enforcing it's rule that the PS4 Pro frame rate on any game must not be lower than the base PS4 version. It's not acceptable that devs can just run the hardware into the ground in order to wow use with eye candy.
The reports also claim they are even introducing screen tear as well so they can push the graphics further. I'm out of here is we get screen tear again like the PS3.
It's really not going to end well if this trend continues. Gamers are expecting a smoother ride, not worse. The CPU and memory bandwidth are perfectly fine for a smooth frame rate as long as they don't overload it with graphics that the console cannot handle.
In the past, PC's were running games at 60fps with a similar hardware spec, so all that's changed is the games with the devs piling on way too much eye candy and ramping up the pixel count in order to sell Sony 4K HDR TV's.
I'm not ready to upgrade my TV yet, but all this isn't endearing me to buy a Sony TV at a later date if they just allow devs to create an inferior product for the 1080p gamers.
It's looking like 1080p gamers are taking the same hit as the 4K gamers but not getting the benefit of 4K or HDR to justify it. That is not right.
Re: Rumour: Uncharted 4 Story DLC to Climb into PSX 2016
Hey Naughty Dog… here's the deal. I'm a huge Uncharted fan but I'll only buy your story DLC after you give us the promised coop. We are well into Autumn now and there is not a single word from you about coop.
Re: PS4 Pro Will Be Compatible with SATA 3 Hard Drives
@finalstan
Think about it. You don't need to be a tech wizard because it's common sense. Just strip way all the geek blurb.
Speed 6 is twice as fast as speed 3, so theory if a game takes 30 seconds to load at speed 3, it's going to take 15 seconds to load at speed 6. Is that a worthwhile improvement.
Re: First Impressions: PS4 Pro Represents a Sizeable Step Forward
@Mega-Gazz
That's a very good point. Higher resolutions just allow bigger screens so you cannot see the pixels when viewed from the same distance. The individual pixels on a 1080p screen cannot be seen by the human eye from a normal 6 feet viewing distance.
What you can see though is fine detail pixel shimmer because this involves several pixels animating, but this can be cured by high quality anti aliasing. Most PS4 Pro games seem to be upscaling 2K (1440p) to 4K via a clever supersampling checkerboard technique.
If you simply downsample 1440p to 1080p, you instantly get the best anti aliasing solution achievable at no extra cost and it will result in an incredibly smooth 1080p image. It would give games that Toy Story look in 1080p and that's incredible. Bear in mind that detail gets a boost when the 1080p image is generated by a higher resolution.
Try watching a 1080p video via Youtube on a 1080p computer screen, then watch it again in 4K on your 1080p computer screen. The resolution of your computer screen does not change but there is a huge boost in detail sharpness due to higher quality screen pixels.
Don't laugh. On it's own, a pixel is a pixel and cannot be improved, but it's relation to the surrounding pixels can. Downsampling from a higher resolution creates very high quality pixels that blend seamlessly with surrounding pixels, creating a very high quality image with increased sharpness.
PS4 Pro is a no brainer. It's cheap, it's powerful, it will generate a very higher quality 1080p image and generates a very high quality 4K image by upscaling from 2K to 4K using a smart supersampling checkerboard technique that looks really close to native 4K. It's not a bog standard upscale you get from an XB1 or inside your TV.
The quality of the PS4 Pro 4K output is very close to native, making the XB Scorpio look like a very expensive brute force native route to achieve the same result. MS are worried that it makes the XB Scorpio obsolete, hence their recent attack claiming PS4 Pro cannot do native 4K gaming. But the truth is it does not need to. The quality of the upscale means they only need to generate 2k with very cheap hardware and use a cutting edge upscale technique, so gamers win with huge value for money.
Then we have HDR which actually adds even more detail than 4K. HDR is only available on 4K TV's. 4K adds resolution detail, but HDR adds colour and shade detail which is vast. Think about it, an image with every pixel the same colour looks exactly the same on a 1080p and 4K screen. The resolution benefit disappears. HDR adds a huge amount of extra gradients, so you see detail in areas that were simply the same colour on a normal RGB screen.
In RGB, shadow areas and highlight areas are made up of just one or two different colour shade gradients, but in HDR you have much more shades so details and texture not seen in RGB suddenly form to add extra detail. The range of pixel colours and gradients is called the colour space, the colour gamut or the dynamic range, hence High Dynamic Range (HDR).
The classic example of dynamic range is when you take a picture of a blue sky with your camera and the picture ends up with a white sky. Nature has the full dynamic range but when you try to capture it on a camera with a narrow dynamic range, bright colours are trimmed to white, dark colours are trimmed to black and some mid shades simply disappear. HDR makes all those extra colour shades visible.
Without doubt, PS4 Pro will look awesome on a 4K HDR screen, but most people only have a 1080p screen and will do so for the next 5 years. The devs need to make their game look great at 1080p as well if they want sales. The image quality is sorted, so that just leaves frame rate. Gamers are expecting a frame rate improvement as well.
The quality you are getting for £345 is incredible value for money. No PC can match this quality in the same price range. Even high end PC gamers cannot see HDR detail because all computer monitors are RGB, unless you own an expensive industrial monitor used by the devs, but you won't have any HDR content to view on the computer.
We will get lots of silly PC fanboys comparing PC and PS4 Pro screenshots in limited RGB because that is all they can see on their computer, but if you look at the HDR TV image generated via a PS4 Pro, there will be a vast HDR detail range that is missing from the high end PC screen. The problem is how to you demonstrate that on peoples computer via an RBG monitor. The real answer is you can't. The internet cannot transmit that quality either because everything is an RGB colour space infrastructure.
The only way to view the quality on offer is to watch it with your real eyes on the real kit, hence Sony's smart move to take the gear on a roadshow around the country to invite gamers to see it with their own eyes.
Sorry I wrote far more than I intended there, but it's all valuable information that everyone can benefit from. Share the knowledge.
Re: Sony 'Pleasantly Surprised' by Strong PS4 Pro Pre-Orders
The PS4 Pro will sell well if Sony and the devs demonstrate tangible benefits for 1080p TV owners because they are the core market. Gamers want to see 1080p smooth 60fps, lush environments, increased eye candy, and a high quality anti aliasing.
They have to do it quick because they only have a year to grab as many sales as they can. Most people can only afford one console so the first to market grabs all the sales. Once the superior MS Scorpio comes out, Sony will struggle because those that can afford it will buy the MS Scorpio.
Re: Rumour: Red Dead Redemption Is Being Remastered for PS4
Can someone explain how whispers from North America supposedly confirm the remaster's existence. Are we also to assume this article is also confirmed as true due to the original whisper confirmation. This is a pyramid of paper tissues.
Confirmation is a strong word. Confirmation is only true when someone who has the authority to confirm it, actually does so. We can have several facts aligning to indicate it might be true. But that is still not confirmation. Just a high probability as we saw with the Neo rumour until Sony told us it existed.
Personally, I think there is a high probability we will see a RDR remaster as a way to get people excited for RDR 2, because Rockstar will have ported the RDR game engine over to PS4 and XB1 when starting work on RDR 2 as a prototype test.
The rumour of RDR 2 being used as a demonstration for the Neo announcement was a bit far fetched, so maybe that rumour got distorted in transit and it's really the RDR remaster that will be shown singing and dancing on Neo.
Re: The PS4 Slim Looks Much, Much Nicer Than You Think It Does
It looks real to me with the metal sockets and it looks really nice. I love the Mac inspired minimalist rounded corner design. No wasted space, just compact and neat. Yes it does look dark but I think it's the cheap camera struggling to get any detail out of the black matt finish. In real life you will see the matt texture clearly.
It does lack colour through, but then again, this is the budget model going forward. PS4 Neo will be the elite model, with more colourful trimmings to stamp it as the prestige model. I expect PS4 Neo to be larger as well.
Re: Rise of the Tomb Raider PS4 Sounds Like the Definitive Version by Far
After being stabbed in the back for being a loyal fan, I'm now back on board with buying this game day one on PS4, because I feel the dev has given us compensation for the delay.
Zero screen tear, low input latency, a coop mode and a zombie mode that plays like The Last Of Us are the high points for me. Well done I'm sold
Re: The Last Guardian Still Looks Lovely in New PS4 Screenshots
I still can't stand that big over sentimental bird dog thing. And why is the bird dog rendered in black and white grey, while the rest of the game has a colour tint similar to Ico.
Re: Lara Croft's Tomb Raider Will Rise on PS4 This Holiday
@Gamer83
No worries then, because if it is funded by MS or Nintendo, it won't be very good because neither will fund it adequately due to low sales from the small user base.
PS4 was the cash cow but Square Enix shot themselves in the foot due to short term greed.
Re: PlayStation VR's About to Make Your PS4 Box Art Messy Again
If we are talking about VR games that won't play on a Standard PS4 without VR, then I would say that's pretty important information, not messy. Print it loud and clear.
Re: E3 2016: Titanfall 2's PS4 Vanguard Edition Costs $250
No way. This dev is going crazy at the PS4 cash cow. They sewed their seed with XB1 exclusivity on the first so it does not wash coming to PS4 now that they realise how much money they have been loosing.
I did not miss the first and I won't miss this either. The game is just a shallow COD sim in a robotic nanosuit. COD is a dinosaur that's greedily spawning every 6 months and even that is going out of space now to try and spice it up a bit with gimmicks. Perverse.
Re: E3 2016: Mafia III Looks and Sounds the Part on PS4
This looked great at the start of the trailer until we saw game footage. In this day and age, I'm always sceptical when we see an absolutely huge divide in quality between the cut scenes and the gameplay. That's going to bust the immersion. GTAV and Uncharted 4 have an almost seemless transition that keeps you fixed inside the world.
This is just another example of the devs lack of polish. No surprise because the game on PS3 was really clunky with zero polish. On PS3 the frame rate stuttered like crazy when in doors. Lots of screen tear and the grass was just a paint green floor.
Re: Watch Dogs 2's First PS4 Trailer Is Really Something Else
I'm just not convinced this game deserved a sequel. I know Ubisoft would like it to become a large successful franchise, but the first was so boring and dull I couldn't even be bothered to finish it. The hacking is just not exciting enough and the lead character was dreadfully plain. I actually disliked him for being such a nosey shady weasel.
You hack someone apartment and get some boring lame 6 second cameo. I want to discover evidence on some serial killer or something and track him down or maybe a large conspiracy to explore, but no. It just fizzled out like a burst balloon.
Re: Review: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4)
@Sanquine
I read your link and it's does not say coop is coming. It claims they might patch in 'couch coop' which is split screen LAN. Uncharted has always got the terminology a bit confused. If you clicked the coop button in Uncharted, you were taken to the split screen LAN. You always had to select multiplayer and then go to a subsection to reach the proper coop which always confused people.
So I'm still not totally convinced, but I hope you're right.
Re: Review: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4)
@Sanquine
Thanks for the update. We have some hope for coop then.
Re: Review: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4)
No coop. That's a 9/10 then because although the campaign will be awesome, you cannot give a perfect 10 when the best part of Uncharted is missing.
Instead of playing it for 3 hours every night for 3 years. It looks like I'll play the 40 hour campaign twice and different difficulties and then never play it again. Big difference in longevity and value for money.
I have an awful lot of PSN friends that are going to be gutted at this news. A lots of us actually met via Uncharted coop and there's nothing else to replace it in any of the other games.
I suspected this would happen with the dynamic duo at the helm after The Last Of Us did not having coop either. Getting coop a year later sounds like a bit of an after thought. A promise that may never be kept.
Re: Fallout 4's Survival Mode Crawls onto PS4 This Friday
Fallout 4 is an amazing game. Lots of variety: FPS, stealth exploration, gathering and a it gives you full creativity with the excellent settlement builder. These improvements are great, but not enough to make me return to the game. I loved the game and played it to death, but now I have to move on.
Yes it's in the devs interest to keep us playing the game so that the franchise remains relevant, but the only thing that will make me return to replay it with all these lovely improvements is if the devs released a free Neo optimisation patch, so I enjoy it again in higher quality like a free remaster on PS4 Neo.
Re: GameStop's Stoked About the PS4K At the Very Least
The whole game industry is hyped about this. It's a masterstroke, whether Sony intended it or has been dragged into it.
If the new PS4.5 or PS4K is twice the power giving me 1080p 60fps with all the eye candy turned to max and a very large hard drive, I'm in.
If it just turns out to be a bog standard lame PS4 slim with no extra power and a 4K media player, then there is going to be a lot of people with egg on their faces and masses of angry gamers, bitter with disappointment.
Re: BioShock: The Collection Is Now PS4's Worst Kept Secret
I'm definitely getting this remaster trilogy on PS4 when it arrives. I loved the first game but didn't buy the other two because the series had horrendous screen tear on PS3.
I played Infinite free on PSN plus and loved it, but not as much as the first game. It will be a treat to play all three in 1080p clarity without any screen tear.
Re: Review: Just Cause 3 (PS4)
What was that? "Fixes Just Cause 2's biggest problem – being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no means of transportation." Rubbish. You always had your grapple hook and parachute. U could stay in the air forever with the parachute by using the grapple to pull you up.
It was by far the best way to travel. Faster than any of the vehicles in the game and you could go anywhere at any time with it. How was that a problem. Maybe it was a problem if you did not know about it.
Re: Er, Avatars Are Coming to the PS4's PlayStation Store Next Week
Not want I wanted to hear. Not what we wanted. We wanted them for free. Sony are making enough money off the games. The eco system that we play them in should be free. Are they going to charge for changing the interface colours as well.
Avatars are our identity within that eco system so they should also be free, otherwise rich gamers get the fancy identity and poor players get the bog standard identity. Paying for avatars is not an equal inclusive for all closed gaming system hosted by Sony. MS win that one.
Re: Rumour: No Man's Sky Development Is Troubled on PS4
@Cron_13
lol yes your right. Time for me to shut up
Re: Rumour: No Man's Sky Development Is Troubled on PS4
@Matroska
I agree with everything you said, instances of an object take up far less memory than the original object, but we are not talking about large objects or textures when discussing No Man's Sky. The whole thing is math based on procedurally generated vector assets. That all has to be done on the CPU in rapid succession because no one is using GPU compute yet on the PS4.
Re: Rumour: No Man's Sky Development Is Troubled on PS4
@Cron_13
How can you say a PS4 Elite can never happen. The concept has arose because Sony are considering it and asking what consumers think. The new consoles are like PC's. They are not an open system but they are scaleable like a PC. It's expensive to jump a gen because they have to make a completely new console design with its own set of games and target vision. It's much better to have a PS4.5 or PS4 Elite mid gen to simulate the effect of PC's upgrading in order to keep pace.
You seem to be in favour of steam machines when in fact they are basically scaleable consoles in exactly the same way. You would not tolerate one steam console owner being annoyed when another steam machine comes out offering better performance, so why treat Sony any different.
Re: Rumour: No Man's Sky Development Is Troubled on PS4
@Boerewors
I agree. PS4 Elite is the way to go. Those that consider such a move as a stab in the bag are just sucking sour grapes because they will still get the same performance in future games whether the PS4 Elite exists or no not.
Sony made a wise move dumping the CELL and going for the scaleable x86 architecture because that allows them to introduce enhanced consoles mid gen that run in parallel with existing hardware in a way that is transparent to the user. That could not happen with PS3 otherwise you would have two types of game disc adding expense and confusion.
It's better to have a closed two tier console system playing a one tier game, than two tier consoles playing two tier games. Managing a close two tier console system is easy to achieve. PC is an open system with unlimited tiers of hardware permutation so devs struggle to please everyone with a fully optimised game dedicated to their configuration.
Pop a game disc into the PS4 standard and the game will detect the hardware and output 1080p 30fps PC mid/high graphics with standard AA and struggle with vector intensive games.
But pop the same game disc into a PS4 Elite and the game will output 1080p 60fps PC ultra graphics, high quality AA, less pop in, larger draw distances and render vector intensive games perfectly. Plus you would not be required to delete games from your hard drive if they gave us 4TB.
A PS4 Elite would basically negate all the positives PC gamers enjoy. You would basically get a cutting edge PS4 Elite for less than the cost of upgrading your PC gaming rig. My guess is that PC gamers with economic sense would jump ship to a PS4 Elite if Sony went down that road.
For me a PS4 Elite a no brainer, but Sony have to be careful not to upset the loyal user base who are extremely reactionary and don't like the thought of anyone having better on the same system, hence testing the waters first. I'm pretty sure it will happen and gamers will be educated to expect it as the norm from now on. But right now, Sony have to break a few traditions that are treated like moral code of practice.
Re: Rumour: No Man's Sky Development Is Troubled on PS4
@Boerewors
Everything you say is about right. The PS4 has a weak link in that its CPU is underpowered. It's just not fast enough to process floods of tiny instructions in rapid succession and the fact that the RAM is GDDR5 does not help, because that adds a bit of latency as well when passing data to the CPU. CPU cache memory is too small to hold game code instructions permanently, so they are loaded into the GDDR5 RAM when the game boots up which has slow latency getting those instructions to the CPU when needed.
PS4 works best with games that are graphics heavy with lots of high res textures, complex lighting and lots of assets that get reused, because that makes good use of its powerful GPU. Games that require a lot of small vector calculations such as No Man's Sky, where everything is flat shaded vector artwork procedurally generated in rapid succession, puts excessive strain on the weak CPU.
Latency and speed are totally different, but equally important. It's best described using the internet as an example. Data speed is the speed the data travels. Latency is the short delay before the data starts traveling. As an extreme example, it does not matter if a 10GB download takes 1 second to start (latency), if it downloads in 10 minutes (speed). But in multiplayer gaming, a one second delay in sending the data of you shooting someone is just not going to work. Small instructions in rapid succession require low latency because they all add up very quickly.
The powerful GPU inside the PS4 and large capacity fast GDDR5 RAM are underused by No Man's Sky because there are no high res textures and no assets that get loaded and reused. Everything is procedurally generated fresh in real time where ever you go. The PS4 hardware is not well suited to that type of game.
AC Unity hit a CPU bottleneck as well by overloading the CPU with massive floods of AI, and all the AI streaming animations and physics. This then affects the CPU's ability to manage a steady frame rate because the powerful GPU was then left waiting for instructions to process. Another side effect of overloading the CPU is that it then generates controller latency, so that there is a delay in responding to the players controller instructions because the CPU is too busy or CPU bound (no spare resources). AC Unity suffers bad controller latency as a result, but it did use high quality textures and reused assets, so it did make use of a broad range of the PS4 hardware.
The PS4 runs into problems when a game is not designed well to make use of all the hardware equally. If the game produces excessive CPU activity, leaves the GPU idle and does not make use of the fast GDDR5 RAM, then the performance will suffer. The XB1 is the opposite because MS raised the CPU clock speed slightly and use low latency DDR3 RAM, so it performs a little better on the vector stuff, but performs poorly on the high res texture stuff because of its weak GPU and zero GDDR5 RAM. That is why the XB1 can only manage 900p on most games. A version of No Man's Sky on the XB1 may be able to push out 1080p, but it would be very tight.
No Man's Sky is possibly the worse game you could put on PS4 because it is not a good match. That is not No Man's Sky's fault. It is because Sony had to make the PS4 to a budget and chose to save money on the CPU side which was entirely valid at the time. Normally that is not a problem, but occasionally a game comes along that just spams the CPU.
I'm hoping Sony release the PS4 Elite they are considering. They can then fix the limitations in the PS4 standard edition. Three PS4 weakness's need to be addressed in the PS4 Elite.
1 - The CPU needs to be beefed up and run at a higher clock speed to cater for vector and physics intensive games.
2 - 4GB of low latency DDR3 RAM needs to be added to feed the CPU so the high latency fast speed GDDR5 RAM can just be used to feed the powerful GPU.
3 - A 4TB hard drive (2 x 2TB) should be added to store games because gamers are now avoiding buying games they want because they don't have the room for them without deleting their favourite games. A ticking time bomb for Sony that they need to address quickly.
The PS4 Elite and PS4 standard can exist side by side playing the same game disc because the architecture is scaleable. Games can be made to automatically sense the hardware and deliver the required optimisation that each PS4 version can handle.
Existing PS4 gamers will still be able to play the future games at the quality they have at present, so their investment is protected, but anyone that can afford to upgrade to a PS4 Elite will be rewarded by better performance.
In the short term Sony need to manufacture an optional hard drive expansion unit that clips onto the left side of the PS4 adding 4TB of RAM (2 x 2TB) that includes an empty slot for the existing internal hard drive to make it a simple hot swap installation with no data copying. That will keep the PS4 standard version running until the end of its lifespan without players needing to delete games.
There is an argument that a hard drive extension unit should be heavily subsidised by Sony because they gain financially with all the game sales it prevents them from loosing. Sony need to run the numbers and see if they loose more by not providing a subsidy with gamers not buying games, or provide a hardware subsidy and sell more games.
Re: Rumour: Uncharted 4 Will Be Playable on PS4 at Paris Games Week
I'm really looking forward to this, but I hope they have excellent coop survival/arena as a major part of the package, because that was the best thing about U2 and U3 that kept us playing it 3 hours every night year after year.
The Last Of Us was the best game ever made on any platform but it did not have coop survival. Why?
Re: The Witcher 3 PS4 Patch 1.11 Finally Fixes Skellige's Most Wanted Quest
A great game, but it's all too late. I've finished the game and deleted it to make space for new games. That will continue to happen, until Sony makes a hard drive expansion module to plug into the side of our PS4.
Re: Review: Assassin's Creed Syndicate (PS4)
@Elodin
I know what you mean but take AC4 for example. They broke with tradition and added battleship sailing and it was awesome. The game cannot survive strict adherence to the original formula. We should be sailing down the Nile by now, assassinating Pharos inside Egyptian temples and climbing the pyramids. Instead we get boring London streets and thug gangs. Dull.
Re: Review: Assassin's Creed Syndicate (PS4)
Why do they insist on setting the game so close to the present day, making the character look weird and out of place. This game should be doing ancient China, ancient Egypt, ancient Japan, the Inca's, the Aztecs. The possibilities for interesting stuff is tremendous but the game designers have just boxed themselves into a small corner. Totally boring.
Re: Review: Assassin's Creed Syndicate (PS4)
AC4 on PS4 was great, but ACU on PS4 killed the series for me. Never again was I going to pre-order another AC game. A year is too early to heal the wounds, let alone fix the mess they had created and re-write the whole game engine to make better use of the PS4. That was never going to happen and this proves it.
ACU had some good points but even after all the updates, the bad points still dominated. I actually don't mind the tower climb to open areas thing. It's very versatile. The problem was controller latency that made navigation and fighting unplayably frustrating. The missions were just way to simple and repetitive. The main character and his girl were great, but everyone else was constantly forgettable and boring, same with the story.
Everything I read about this new game indicates more of the same, so AC is finished for me. Just give me Far Cry 5 and a comprehensive map editor for coop and I'll be happy.
Re: Uncharted's PS4 Compilation Has the Power to Be a System Seller, Says Sony
Ofcourse the Uncharted Trilogy is a system seller. There is nothing to match it or The Last Of Us on the xbox consoles. Tomb Raider comes close but nowhere near close enough. I'm playing the first game right now on PS4 and even though I've already played the games on PS3, I'm loving every second. It feels fresh and plays like a dream with awesome graphics.
The compressed Youtube comparison videos make the two versions look similar, but when you see the PS4 version in the flesh, the clarity of the graphics, lighting and texture work is outstanding. All gamers should be enjoying this. If you're not on PS4 you're on the wrong console because this is incredible value for money. Three of the best games ever made for £40, remastered in epic quality.
80% percent of PS4 gamers are in for one hell of a ride if they have not played them. I'm in for one hell of a ride and I've already played them. As I always say, it's a great time to be gamer if you're on PS4. Even more so now.
I cannot believe Sony is going to kill the series off with the fourth game. Crazy.
Re: Microsoft Just Bought the Tech Powering a Ton of PS4 Games
@SanderEvers
Playing dirty is never smart or justified. PS4 gamers will never move over to XB1 to chase a game, because it involves a step down in performance. That fact just makes the gamer angry and they stay put.
Regarding mac and PC, the Windows OS and the MS OS both own tech that they allow the other side to use. Both sides benefit and are equal. Office is an actual product that is making money for them. If they remove the sale they loose money and could make the mac fail, loosing them a customer as well. It's in their interest to keep the mac alive because it is a customer to sell to that offers no threat.
The latest consoles are different because MS made a design error and is left in a weak position of their own making. As a result, they are tempted not to play fair to try and even things up. That is a very different situation and can never be right.
If you are in a running race, you don't just smack your opponent in the knee caps because you did not do as much training as him.
Re: Microsoft Just Bought the Tech Powering a Ton of PS4 Games
"Nothing to worry about." It's like letting the fox guard the chickens. MS don't have the moral dignity to be trusted to play fair regarding global tech. You have to earn trust and dignity. MS constantly demonstrate they are unable to play fair. Just look at the next Tomb Raider if you want proof of how MS predator capitalism works. It's dirty. It's corrupt. It hurts gamers.
They could easily deny the Havoc tech licence to all versions of a game running on Sony consoles now that they own it. When backed into the corner and desperate, lame cowards will always press the nuclear button and detonate. You don't have to believe me. You will see it happen for yourselves. MS will eventually kill the gaming industry.
Re: Feature: What Does TGS 2015 Tell Us About PS4 in Japan?
Ofcourse Horizon: Zero Dawn will be a big hit in the east. Although it is a western style RPG open world, it has been designed to incorporate features that would appeal to the east and JRPG fans as well.
It's 'Monster Hunter', it's a female with a bow, it's dinosaurs, it's robots that act like real creatures, it's transformers and it has light RPG elements for JRPG fans. All those features appeal to the east a well as to the west. The only things missing are the big manga eyes on little miss cutey pie, the big spikey obsession with hair and the depressingly over-sentimental story line which would all stifle sales in the west.
It's going to be an awesome game and sell like hot cakes all over the world.
Re: PS4 Surpasses Yet Another Sales Milestone
I guess the xbots are running out of bullets to fire against the PS4 and are now resorting to regional politics as a way to vent their bitterness.
Turkey will never get into the EU after they way Greece has behaved because it clearly shows a cultural misunderstanding where countries on the fringes of the middle east think the EU is a charity. The EU does not work like that. It is a partnership.
But those discussions should take place elsewhere. We are gamers visiting a gaming website. Let's talk games.