We’ve all been hearing the rumors about a potential product upgrade/refresh for the Playstation 4 (We talk about it at length on the Geekscape Games Podcast.). Speculation abound, we may have ourselves some more concrete information to go on.
Our friends over at Giant Bomb have said that multiple, reliable sources have come forwarded and provided documentation as to what actually IS the Playstation 4.5.
The product refresh is internally codenamed NEO (whats with all of the Matrix references over at Sony?), and will be an entire separate unit from your current PS4. This relieves MY fears that we are getting into “Sega 32x & CD” territory. No big box to slap your existing PS4 into. The “4.5” will still feature all AMD parts but all have received a boost. The 8 core CPU will now boast 2.1 GHz cores over the stock 1.6 GHz. The GPU is of a new unnamed architecture (rumored to be the new Polaris platform), and will have 36 CUs at 911 MHz over the 18 CUs at 800 MHz the current Playstation 4 has. (AUTHORS NOTE: It took me WAY to long to figure out what the hell a “CU” was. Basically it’s AMD’s way of referring to “cores”; Compute Units.) Lastly, it will have faster memory: 8 GB GDDR5 at 218 GB/s over the 178 GB/s we have now.
The Polaris architecture rumored to be the new GPU in the PS4.5
What does this mean? Harder, Faster, Stronger.
My biggest concern was that it could split the user base. I hate to use the same analogy twice (but I’m lazy), but let’s not relive the Sega 32x/CD era. Did you get your game for the Genesis or the 32x? Which game was the best version? What game is the developers best work? OR what is the game in their mind? Well apparently Sony has thought of that as well.
According to the same sources, Sony has given developers a laundry list of requirements for producing future titles.
Every game released after October of this year will have to have a PS4 and “NEO” mode. There cannot be any inherent advantages for playing the game on the NEO platform over the stock PS4. No exclusives. No bonuses. Nothing. The only inherent difference will be 1080P & 4K resolutions and increased framerates. They’re even requiring that Playstation VR to be on parity over both platforms. So existing PS4 owners can sleep safe in knowing that they will be getting the same experience content wise going forward. Bad news is that there isn’t any target for the higher spec’d system, so now real driving reason for current customers to upgrade.
No, your new Playstation won’t be able to learn Kung-Fu.
What I didn’t expect was the extra work developers will have to account for.
Cofounder of Kinda Funny, Colin Moriarty tweeted this earlier:
This is what worries me the most. That these new requirements are going to cripple/hinder development on the console and we will have another “PS3” on our hands. Difficult to develop for and expensive to produce for.
No word on price or release date has been given, but Giant Bomb’s sources say it will ship at $399. We can safely assume that if all games released AFTER October of this year will be required to have “NEO” support, then we can expect a fall release.
What do you think? Is this a waste of money and a flash in the pan from Sony OR will the PS4.5 push home console gaming to the next level? We’d love to hear your thoughts.