I'm curious if MS will try to match Sony and change their ddr3 ram to ddr5. If they don't have any significant changes, most if not all multi-platform games should be better on PS4. From a post I saw on Neogaf, the extra 4gb of ram will roughly cost Sony about a extra $50 or so per system. Where as MS might bundle a Kinect 2.0 (+$100-$150) with every system.
I'm glad Sony is moving forward with their new system, but I still have 2-3 years of gaming left on the PS3 -- I think a lot of folks are feeling the same thing. Probably won't consider buying a PS4 or a new X-Box for at least 4 years.
The reason the last generations of systems is still solid is because the TV technology and installed base is lagging. Until 4K TVs are prevelant you won't get much more out of your console on a big screen. DD
It is kind of hard to do that. Sony can go from 4GB to 8GB of GDDR5 since they're basically taking the same design, but putting in more RAM. If MS went with 8GB of GDDR5 instead of 8GB of DDR3, it would really change the design of their system. For example, this would make the eSRAM pointless. It is also possible (I think) that they might have been wanting the reduced latency of DDR3 (not sure if going GDDR5 would drastically affect some operations). They certainly could do so (especially if they got wind of this a while back, and/or were considering it already), but it wouldn't be as simple of a change as it sounds.
From what I read, it might be too late for them to implement this change if they want to launch this year. Since these consoles are basically using off the shelf pc parts customized to their specs, I sort of thought it would be like a pc where u can just plug and play ram.
You can't really swap out different types of RAM that easily. Especially since MS seemed to put in a lot of customization to help out with the fact that they were going with DDR3. I suppose it would be easier for Sony to go from GDDR5 to DDR3 (maybe more of it), though not sure it would be smart. There are rumors that Durango's CPU might be improved over regular Jaguar cores (potentially twice the FLOPs performance I think). I'm not sure how much stock to put into that, but it is a possibility. In that case, Durango would have better CPU performance than PS4 (though MS might narrow this gap a bit depending on how much of the CPU they reserve for the OS).
If adding that RAM causes Sony to price it at $500 or above then it was a bad move. This thing needs to be at an attractive $400 price point IMO, because that's where Microsoft is going to be at. Microsoft also has some problems as well though. I think Windows 8 and Windows Phone have been received poorly by the public, and if Microsoft decides to integrate the Xbox brand into this ecosystem I can see it backfiring.
Good article http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/02/22/what-will-microsoft-learn-from-the-wii-u-and-ps4/ What Will Microsoft Learn From The Wii U And PS4?
I more or less agree. I wouldn't single out the RAM. You can have a $400/$450 console with 8GB of GDDR5 RAM. But can you have that, plus a ~2 TFLOPs GPU, a 8 core Jaguar CPU, dedicated hardware for video streaming, bundled cameras (possibly), free online play (possibly), etc., at a $400/$450 price? Tough one. It wouldn't be the end of the world if they priced it at $500, depending on a few factors. Presumably they'd launch at the same time as the new Xbox, maybe sooner. And presumably multiplatform games will look a bit better on PlayStation this time around. If PS3 can end up doing OK (even better than 360) after "FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE US DOLLARS!" and being a year behind, Sony could probably repeat that with PS4 (probably with better profitability this time around). But I'd think they'd want to do better than that. I'd expect costs to drop pretty quickly for these consoles (Sony, in particular, might be able to swing some good deals with the RAM), so maybe they can be a little more aggressive with launch pricing. I'm convinced that 99% of these writers don't ever watch video game conferences. When has the price EVER been given while revealing a new console? WHY would a company reveal EVERYTHING at an event 6-8 months before launch, knowing they'll need to reveal more details at 2-4 events prior to launch (GDC, E3, GamesCom, TGS, etc.)? Why reveal ANYTHING that is possibly bad news when you want to (at least initially) create a lot of positive buzz for your product? I'll kind of give them the console design. Sony probably should have shown something (cut out Square Enix "surprise" and show an early render). Though I also kind of agree with Sony. For the most part, the event did its job. It got our attention, and we're talking about PS4. We have a baseline of expectations for next-gen (and MS better be able to match them...and if they really want a lot of attention, they'll need to exceed them). Sony will obviously show the design soon, and to be honest, in 9-12 months or so, we'll probably all forget that about this.
I think they should adjust pricing if your going to get online services ala phones. If you subscribe to 2 years of Xbox live or psn they should have the price drop 50 or 100. I know they do something like that at Microsoft for new xboxs. But I think if they move toward online charging that could really help get them more online subscriptions and tie ppl down for more money. It works for cell phone companies so its worth a shot
Yeah, I'm curious to see how (if at all) they experiment with this. There have been rumors that MS wants to turn Durango into a "TV box," and I guess they could partner with some cable providers for that (sign up for Comcast for 2yrs, get Durango for $199!). I don't know if Sony is planning something similar for PS4...I'd guess not. If Sony does it, I hope they keep free online play, but push the subscription for PS+ (and game streaming if they have that on day 1...but I have my doubts). Price it at $299-$399, but require 2yr subscription to PS+ v2.0 at say $12/month. Not only would this guarantee almost an additional $300 to Sony over 2yrs for every console sold on this plan, but this sharing/free game stuff could push other PS4 owners (with the service) to buy games they see their friends playing/sharing. I don't like "forced" subscriptions, and this could get out-of-hand, but that might not be too bad. If the 2yr monthly rates are similar to what you'd pay if you bought just the service itself, I'd probably prefer this plan. Though @ $12/month, that seems kind of high. PS+ is currently $50/yr or $4/month ($6/month at 3 month intervals). PS4's version could really only add sharing features (unless Sony has other surprises), and game streaming...and like I said, I'd expect streaming to be limited at launch. Not to mention the selection of free/discounted PS4 games wouldn't be all that great either. $6-$8/month might make more sense.
LOL I was saying in comparison to how things are trying to be tied into windows 8. Zune tried to get tied into XBOX and FAILED. Zune Music later become something else altogether. Totally renamed and everything.
Yeah, should be out by Christmas (though plan on shortages...unless $599 returns). 2K14 should be on it. Shouldn't take much work for 2K to do it...especially since they already support a PC version of the game (albeit one that is pretty crappy and doesn't take advantage of any recent PC hardware). Maybe we can get decent crowds this time. New rumors (probably should go in the other thread, but it is easier to post here): Sounds like Killzone PS4 might have only used 1.5GB of RAM. At one point, it was sounding like Sony might only use 2GB of GDDR5 (making the move to 8GB even more surprising), so I guess that might make sense. It also sounds like MS will have their reveal event on April 26th (according to a Rob Crossley of CVG...well, his source anyway). GDC is next month, so we might have some general "next-gen" stuff there (more so on the tech side of things of course).
Kind of a nitpick, but I would say these chips are cheap. Relative to what is normal with new consoles, R&D should be considerably less (think Sony even noted this), and most of the components are probably cheaper too (putting them on the same die and having low heat/power consumption helps a lot just by itself). Not to discount the fact that a LOT of money went into this, but relative to Cell+RSX, Xenon+Xenos, EE+GS, etc., the chips here are relatively "cheap" I think. Given that both consoles will use the same core components/design (and AMD was using these designs already to some degree, and will likely reuse a lot of this in future products), certain costs are even cheaper. We can complain about these specs not being uber powerful, but from a performance/cost standpoint, these are really nice designs IMO. Having said that, the RAM will definitely be pricey. Though reading that Sony probably got a really good deal on that (also might not have to make as drastic of a change to their motherboard as I was expecting). On another (very technical and largely unimportant) note, there is some strong speculation that the PS4's GPU might incorporate some features from AMD's next generation of GPUs (I'd assume the same for Durango). This isn't really a surprise since the current generation has been available for a while, and the next-generation GPUs (with these new features) should be available soon. That, and PS4's spec sheet even says "next-generation Radeon," but I never really pay attention to those too closely (Sony also noted tweaks to improve GPGPU performance, but I was thinking it was something else, which was later refuted). These features should allow for more efficiency and better utilization of available resources. So the GPU doesn't magically become more powerful or anything, but AMD/Sony might be making some tweaks so that it can perform more efficiently. Specifically, it sounds like there might be tweaks to better handle multiple tasks being performed on the GPU, specifically if both rendering and compute tasks are being performed. I'm not sure if you guys follow this, but these newer GPUs are supposed to be able to handle a lot of the tasks CPUs traditionally handled. Previously, due to inefficiencies, I think AMD recommended you separate out the tasks (do "CPU stuff" on the APU, "graphics" stuff on dedicated GPU) since it was inefficient to switch between these compute and graphics tasks, but these tweaks should allow for better utilization of the APU, allowing for both tasks to be handled efficiently when performed concurrently. This probably sounds somewhat CPU-like...and you'd be right. Not sure if you guys care about that, but it would be really nice. Would make the (expected) performance be a little better than a straight-up Radeon 7850 (or similar GPU for Durango). This is especially important because I'd expect both consoles to really leverage their GPUs for certain tasks, especially since the CPUs are somewhat under-powered. For certain tasks, I'd expect PS3's CPU and 360's CPU to smoke these CPUs, but PS4 can do them better on the GPU, and for other CPU tasks, these Jaguar cores should out-perform the CPUs in PS3/360. If you like reading about that stuff, you might like reading about this tech analysis of Killzone PS4: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-killzone-shadow-fall-demo-tech-analysis
To follow up on what I said earlier, VGLeaks put this out today about PS4's GPU: http://www.vgleaks.com/orbis-gpu-compute-queues-and-pipelines/ It more or less confirms what I was saying I believe. I can't quite figure out everything in the diagram, but the main takeaway from it seems to be that the GPU should be pretty flexible and efficient (an improvement over a standard Radeon 7850). IGN also has a new piece up with comments from various developers (includes a short interview audio clip with Ken Levine...the "BioShock" guy if you don't know who he is): http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/25/developers-react-to-playstation-4
