Playstation 4k / XBox one+ next gen consoles

[celicaturbolly]

Anyone heard news of new systems? Sad if it's true based on when they were launched we were promised 10 year cycle on consoles etc, it's been 3iirc.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Yes read about it today. Thing is they're saying these might be the last 'big release' and it'll just be updates from now on... it is a bit annoying because I decided against a 4K TV last year thinking I'd just wait until PS5 to get one that's 4K. Not sure if I'd upgrade or not at this point.

 

[Brand86]

I seriously doubt the games graphics will be native 4k - I think they are just talking about 4k for streaming services.
I think upgrading console hardware makes total sense and even old school Mega Drive and SNES consoles did this so it's not a new thing. Most consumer technology is now upgraded on an annual basis, so a new upgrade every 2 or 3 years is fine by me. The 'base' console would still play all games but just look and play better on the upgraded ones.
However, with cloud computing (one of the big things MS were originally pushing for) a lot of the extra processing can happen in the ether and negates the need for more powerful hardware components sitting in the box in your lounge. Personally I think this is where things will go eventually, once super fast broadband is universal

 

[Adamm.]

Is it not still years away?

 

[celicaturbolly]

True but if were are hearing things about them they must be in the development stages ( at a guess ) Even if we are 2-3 years out from launch

 

[dk]

I seriously doubt the games graphics will be native 4k - I think they are just talking about 4k for streaming services.
I think upgrading console hardware makes total sense and even old school Mega Drive and SNES consoles did this so it's not a new thing. Most consumer technology is now upgraded on an annual basis, so a new upgrade every 2 or 3 years is fine by me. The 'base' console would still play all games but just look and play better on the upgraded ones.
However, with cloud computing (one of the big things MS were originally pushing for) a lot of the extra processing can happen in the ether and negates the need for more powerful hardware components sitting in the box in your lounge. Personally I think this is where things will go eventually, once super fast broadband is universal

as far as i know these are just to get the new 4K bluray players in the consoles, to keep up with that technology, the XBOX ONE can't even play the majority of games at 1080p yet, let alone 4x that quality!

And I'm sure they could have 4k streaming with an update, hell, my TV streams 4K from youtube, amazon and netflix already!

 

[SharkyUK]

It's all potentially getting a bit silly really.

 

[N0ddie]

Surely the price of a PS4 or Xbox One that can play games at 4K and 60FPS will be thoroughly expensive? Over a grand anyway.
That for a console is a bit much.

 

[Brand86]

as far as i know these are just to get the new 4K bluray players in the consoles, to keep up with that technology, the XBOX ONE can't even play the majority of games at 1080p yet, let alone 4x that quality!

And I'm sure they could have 4k streaming with an update, hell, my TV streams 4K from youtube, amazon and netflix already!

Yes you're right DK - but there is potential for more RAM, bectter graphics processor as well as less exciting things such as better ventilation and more storage.

If they do move to more regular updates, I wonder if there will be changes to how we pay for consoles - e.g. a monthly contract rather than a £400 hit every couple of years?

 

[dk]

These current generation were supposed to last 10 years.

That's kind of impossible though with the pace at which technology is changing.

I watched the oculus rift live talk with mark zuckerberg last night and just to support things like VR needs masses of power to render that image in real time as there has to be no lag or latency.

The new console is being launched the same time as the VR I believe and I read it's going to have a new gpu, I'm guessing you will need the new console to support VR

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

Surely the price of a PS4 or Xbox One that can play games at 4K and 60FPS will be thoroughly expensive? Over a grand anyway.
That for a console is a bit much.

My PC won't play 4K at 60fps on new games (without turning down fidelity) and that was quite a bit more than a grand. Technology isn't there just yet.

 

[Brand86]

Not to mention how much extra it would cost developers. Plus, with a split user base, it would only be a minority benefiting from it so no one would bother doing it as wouldn't be worth the investment

 

[sn00p]

It's all potentially getting a bit silly really.

This.

Fragmenting a console platform is a really f**king dumb idea.

 

[CrippsCorner]

They are saying it won't fragment as such, it'll just add moar polygons or whatever with the game you're playing... it'll still work on both consoles. It'll still annoy me though, knowing I don't have the best version

 

[sn00p]

They are saying it won't fragment as such, it'll just add moar polygons or whatever with the game you're playing... it'll still work on both consoles. It'll still annoy me though, knowing I don't have the best version

Which is exactly what you don't want to happen.

Games will be targeted at the higher spec (because it looks nicer and more flashy) and then half arsed to run at acceptable rates on the lower spec machine.

As dave gorman says "not in game footage"

 

[SharkyUK]

Fragmenting a console platform is a really f**king dumb idea.

I couldn't agree more, mate. I think it's a bad move personally. I like the fact that a given console is a 'fixed' platform and something that you can explore and exploit over time with increasingly clever and novel development as familiarity with the system grows.

Maybe we're not 'down enough with the kids' and our views are out-dated.

They are saying it won't fragment as such, it'll just add moar polygons or whatever with the game you're playing... it'll still work on both consoles. It'll still annoy me though, knowing I don't have the best version 😧

It will be interesting to see how any changes to the current console model are accommodated. I can't help but feel that fragmentation of some sort is inevitable and that it's going to be yet another thorn in the side of developers. More problems, more complexity, more patches, more public rebuke...? And your point is a particularly strong one... I'd be pi$$ed if my shiny new XboxStation1 was usurped by XboxStation1.1 within a relatively short time frame.

 

[sn00p]

I couldn't agree more, mate. I think it's a bad move personally. I like the fact that a given console is a 'fixed' platform and something that you can explore and exploit over time with increasingly clever and novel development as familiarity with the system grows.

Maybe we're not 'down enough with the kids' and our views are out-dated.

Yep. If they start going down this road then they're starting to behave like a PC. Keep it fixed, make the devs work for it and push the hardware, figure out tricks, but for god sake don't fragment the platform!

You only have to look at the the fact that they initially shipped Xbox ones with the kinect sensor but then dropped that and now it's an optional sensor, I think that has (from what I've read, it might not be true) had a huge effect on games that actually support the kinect.

Did you ever use psyq on the PS1? I did, and in the documentation for it there was PS1 bios errata that they couldn't fix because fixing the bug would break compatibility with games that had "worked around it".

 

[SharkyUK]

You only have to look at the the fact that they initially shipped Xbox ones with the kinect sensor but then dropped that and now it's an optional sensor, I think that has (from what I've read, it might not be true) had a huge effect on games that actually support the kinect.

Did you ever use psyq on the PS1? I did, and in the documentation for it there was PS1 bios errata that they couldn't fix because fixing the bug would break compatibility with games that had "worked around it".

You heard right; by making a u-turn on the whole 'Kinect is an integral part of the system' thing, Microsoft instantly pi$$ed off quite a few devs / publishers. I know of a handful of titles that were immediately canned as well (through having friends and former colleagues who were affected). I personally thought it was a shame as the Kinect is actually quite cool and I was looking forward to seeing what could be done with it (other than yet more dancing and rhythm games...)

As for psyq, I didn't have much experience with it as I was developing on the N64 platform back in the day. Ultimately N64 died (and PS1 continued to bloom) but I was moved back onto the PC platform, hence never had much opportunity to get down and dirty with psyq. Amusing as the bios errata / documentation situation is, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest! Hahahaha! You know as well as anyone the hoops and 'workarounds' that often have to be found to get around limitations in the system. It pains me to think of some of the corners we hacked ourselves into in trying to coax every last bit of storage and performance out of some of the earlier systems; decisions that would sometimes come back to haunt us and often meant we had to build in other layers of hacks to workaround the existing hacks. Although that's pretty standard, isn't it? I still see it a lot today...

 

[sn00p]

Hahahaha! You know as well as anyone the hoops and 'workarounds' that often have to be found to get around limitations in the system. It pains me to think of some of the corners we hacked ourselves into in trying to coax every last bit of storage and performance out of some of the earlier systems; decisions that would sometimes come back to haunt us and often meant we had to build in other layers of hacks to workaround the existing hacks. Although that's pretty standard, isn't it? I still see it a lot today... :smile:

We had one last year where inbetween prototyping and production a 2GB eMMC was replaced with a 4GB eMMC but nobody told me, when the first batch of production boards turned up the eMMC didn't work at all. We use a commercial FAT filing system which supports journaling and stuff, but it's closed source, we literally just provide the low level interface to the chip.

I ended up having to patch our low level code so that when the CSD was read, it "munged" it into something which the FAT filing system was happy with, but that wasn't enough to make it work. The filing system (and 2GB eMMC module) used byte addressing and the 4GB uses block addressing, so I also had to translate these on the fly in the lowest level so that read/write operations worked correctly!

My colleague was sweating for a bit as he'd made quite a few of these in the production run and they wouldn't work unless I could make it!

Long story short, before replacing a component with something else, check with me that it works as expected first! lol

 

[_Tom]

When is the playstation 4.5 due to released?

 

[dk]

Due out with PlayStation VR I think around October/November

Ms has announced they aren't doing a new console though, it's selling well and they would want to do a significant upgrade If they were.

Which I find surprising as you'd have thought they'd take this chance to even the playing field, maybe they don't think they can do it with this product...

 

[CrippsCorner]

Nothing's due out because nothing's been confirmed yet... #amirite

 

[DeeKay86]

A friend and I actually had a discussion about PS4.5 in one of our episodes, feel free to listen if you like: