Welcome to the final console generation as we know it
PlayStation 4 architect Mark Cerny practically whispered into his microphone as he introduced the world to Sony’s latest console iteration, the PS4 Pro. His voice was at odds with the setting: He stood at the center of attention in a New York City auditorium packed with journalists and fans eager to hear about the latest and greatest Sony gaming technology. Amid frantic keyboard tapping and camera flashes, Cerny described the PS4 Pro’s upgrades like a museum curator detailing a magnificent piece of art he’d just acquired.
The Pro’s GPU is twice as fast as the standard PS4, it can handle PSVR out of the box, it has a 1TB hard drive, boosted clock rate, and it supports 4K and HDR gaming. Even some older games, including Shadow of Mordor and Infamous: First Light, will be patched to support 4K and HDR features in a move that Sony labels, “forward compatibility.”
Cerny called the PS4 Pro transformative, while PlayStation CEO Andrew House stressed that Sony wanted to ensure anyone playing on the new, beefed-up console would still be a part of the overall PS4 community.
“PS4 Pro is not intended to blur the lines between console generations,” Cerny said.
However, despite Sony’s best intentions, the PS4 Pro smudges this generational dividing line. Modern console generations have followed a fairly rigid pattern: standard console, “slim” console, rumors of a new console. Rinse and repeat for the next four to eight years.
Now, Sony and Microsoft have announced slimmer versions of the PS4 and Xbox One, but they’ve added another console iteration to the mix. Microsoft has Project Scorpio, a 4K, VR-ready console with juicier guts than the Xbox One. And Sony, of course, has the PS4 Pro.
Both of these consoles feel like a half-step forward. They aren’t part of a new console generation, but they are distinctly more powerful than their predecessors. It’s like Apple revealing the iPhone 6s a year after launching the iPhone 6. It’s like Alienware, Dell or HP announcing a new gaming PC: It’s fancier and faster, but it still plays all the games you already own.
These similarities to smartphone and PC upgrade cycles aren’t an accident. They’re a business plan.
“We think the future is without console generations,” head of Xbox games marketing Aaron Greenberg said in August. “We think that the ability to build a library, a community, to be able to iterate with the hardware — we’re making a pretty big bet on that with Project Scorpio. We’re basically saying, ‘This isn’t a new generation; everything you have continues forward and it works.’ We think of this as a family of devices.”
Even back in March, Xbox boss Phil Spencer compared the future of consoles to the PC market.
“We can effectively feel a little more like what we see on PC, where I can still go back and run my old Doom and Quake games that I ran so many years ago and still see the best new 4K games come out — and my whole library is always with me,” Spencer said.
Sony hasn’t been as open about its shift to a PC or smartphone approach to console generations, but it’s following Microsoft’s lead. In fact, it may be at the front of the pack: The PS4 Pro is scheduled to hit shelves a full year before Scorpio. The Pro lands on November 10th for $400, while Scorpio is due to land at the end of 2017.
This is not the end of consoles. It’s a moment of liberation. Microsoft and Sony can take advantage of faster iteration cycles to pump out more consoles, not fewer, though the changes in each new model may be incremental. (Maybe Valve was onto something with the Steam Machines after all.)
Despite Microsoft, Sony or Cerny’s intentions, console generations are definitely changing — but consoles themselves are not disappearing. The lines are just a little blurrier now.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro reveal was a confident step forward
It’s been a good year so far for Sony Interactive Entertainment. Yesterday’s PlayStation Meeting continued the momentum from E3 and showed us the next step in its plan for home console domination: the PlayStation 4 Pro. The company’s strategy was simple: show, rather than tell. The big news, if you own a fancy UHD display, is that Pro will play nicely with all those extra pixels and show off your screen’s HDR capabilities.
Unlike with the Xbox One S, Sony also spelled out the benefits of buying a Pro, even if you don’t own a 4K TV. The new, beefier machine will make existing games look and perform better on the 1080p TV that’s sitting in your living room right now, and it can also give PlayStation VR games a facelift, too. All for $399 this November 10th. Sony’s always had the edge on Microsoft with this generation, but a strong finish to 2016 feels like the gap could be widening.
Over at Microsoft HQ, the company is banking on you either buying an Xbox One S right now or waiting for its high-powered console, code-named Project Scorpio, next fall based on little more than blind faith. Faith that its scant offering of (sight unseen) HDR games will drive you to buy a One S. Faith that Microsoft still knows enough about high-spec hardware, faith that it can get developers to support the Project Scorpio and faith that your investment in its experiment won’t go to waste. That was the pitch during its E3 keynote earlier this summer, at least — all without a price, release date or Scorpio hardware to actually show off.
Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man looks particularly awesome on the PS4 Pro hardware.
In terms of HDR gaming on Xbox, Forza Horizon 3 will launch September 27th and there hasn’t been a single demonstration of what impact the increased color gamut will have. Gears of War 4 comes out in October and barring a handful of theater presentations on the industry-only E3 show floor, it’s been kept away from the public gaze. You can’t even download HDR-enabled trailers for either from the Xbox Marketplace to get an idea of what the console’s biggest game-related feature will look like. Microsoft will have the bragging rights of being first with HDR, sure, but at some point you need to reveal your longer-term hand.
And that’s precisely what the competition did. Sony delighted in showing off exactly what benefits HDR has for its gaming system. Even watching the event stream at home, the benefits were pretty obvious: games that are typically very dark (like Infamous: First Light) showed extremely bright pops of color and much more detail. In person, it’ll look dramatically better.
Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us look stellar in HDR. Higher-res is cool too, but man… those sunsets in HDR… 😎 #PS4Pro
— Neil Druckmann (@Neil_Druckmann) September 7, 2016
Demos for Days Gone, Infamous: First Light and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided all graced the stage of the PlayStation Theater. There were also announcements that this year’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered will support HDR as well, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Last of Us: Remastered will be upgraded to HDR via a patch. An internal source at Epic Games told Engadget that Paragon will also receive a patch that adds the feature, too. All this to say, there’s going to be something running in HDR for pretty much any gaming taste. And Sony’s not been shy about showing it off.
Microsoft’s other promise is that Project Scorpio’s raw horsepower is going to be enough to win you over next year, with no evidence of what it can do or how much it will cost. “We know it’s important to deliver an experience that demonstrates the power gap between [the PS4 Pro and Scorpio] at a price that makes sense to console gamers,” Microsoft’s Albert Pennello told Polygon. “The performance delta will be obvious.” Of course, that’s pretty easy to boast about when so little is known about Scorpio and specs are likely to change from one day to the next.
Again, Sony’s tactic was to let the games speak for themselves, rather than show off a motherboard and blather on about specs and buzzwords. Next year’s Horizon: Zero Dawn looked incredible, as did Rise of the Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4, Spider-Man, Watch Dogs 2 and pretty much everything else from the sizzle reels and live demos shown onstage. Sony was keen to explain the benefits of the Pro for folks without 4K TVs as well: more detailed imagery and overall better performance for the games you already own (or will own). People’s memories aren’t reliable, and things like the Scorpio’s 6.2 teraflops of power mean close to nothing next to the sight of a tough ginger lady riding a pin-sharp robotic brachiosaur.
Sony also extended its lead on virtual reality. On certain PS VR titles, the Pro’s hardware can double the pixel count resulting in better looks all around. Sony used clear examples to illustrate the Pro’s value proposition rather than pie in the sky platitudes. That hardware is basically ready, and the PS4 Pro will put headsets on, well, heads by the holidays. This clarity is the same basic strategy that’s put 40 million-plus PlayStation 4s in homes since 2013. Exactly what Microsoft’s VR plans are for Project Scorpio, however are still largely a mystery.
If Microsoft has one joker to play it’s the fact that Sony’s consoles don’t have a UHD Blu-ray player stuffed inside them.
There is, however, a common problem that affects both Microsoft and Sony: Each company is making a bet that, for the first time ever, we don’t need exclusive software to persuade us to buy a console. Sony has been adamant that the Pro is not replacing the standard PS4 (that’s the PS4 Slim’s job). Instead, the Pro exists for folks who want a little extra power from a machine or have a new display to connect it to. Microsoft’s company line isn’t much different. Aside from VR titles (which we still know nothing about), all Xbox One games will supposedly play on any version of the hardware, be it Scorpio, the One S or the Xbox platform on PC, yet despite similar approaches, Microsoft can’t seem to keep up with Sony’s onward march.
If Microsoft has one joker to play it’s the fact that Sony’s consoles don’t have a UHD Blu-ray player stuffed inside them. The Xbox One S does, and Project Scorpio seems certain to. The $399 1TB One S includes the next-gen physical media format because internally, the console is barely different from its predecessor in terms of power. Sony doesn’t have that advantage with the Pro. The UHD Blu-ray drive was likely a sacrifice Sony made to hit $399 while still dramatically bumping specs everywhere else.
That makes the question of which console to buy this fall a little tougher: Do you want to play games, and watch higher-resolution Blu-rays? Sony’s console offers gamers a distinct choice. Whether you’re going to upgrade your TV or not, the Pro has clear advantages over the PS4 of today. That’s something I couldn’t say when I reviewed the Xbox One S. Your move, Microsoft.
Will you buy the PlayStation 4 Pro?
The PlayStation 4 Neo Pro has finally been revealed, and it packs in an intriguing amount of power and features unforeseen in the console world. But given that it’s only been three years since the PS4’s original debut, is it really worth upgrading for the system’s existing owners? And with Microsoft’s Project Scorpio coming next year, which is even more powerful on paper, it might just be worth waiting a bit before pulling the trigger. Engadget’s editors have opinions:
Jessica Conditt, Senior Editor
I’m not buying a PS4 Pro because of two things — one that I have and one that I don’t have. Thing One: I have a PS4. Beyond that, I’m extremely happy with my PS4. It runs my games beautifully and streams all the terrible reality television I could ask for. The PS4 is my default living room console; I also own an Xbox One but my hands automatically reach for the DualShock 4 when I plop down on the couch. It simply isn’t time for me to upgrade yet and, honestly, this is entirely Sony’s fault. If they had made a crappier launch console, maybe I’d be interested in the PS4 Pro.
Thing Two: I don’t have a 4K television. Sony claims that the PS4 Pro will benefit people without 4K TVs as well, smoothing out some games’ jagged edges, but the difference should be minimal and it’s simply not enough to lure me in. If I had a 4K TV, I might consider the Pro, but I probably wouldn’t jump on it on day one (see Thing One).
Nathan Ingraham, Senior Editor
While the PS4 Pro demos I tried at Sony’s event were pretty spectacular, I won’t be upgrading to the company’s newest console just yet. Mostly, that’s because I don’t have a 4K TV (or the time to devote to playing games as much as I’d like anymore). That said, there’s no doubt in my mind that Sony just stuck it to Microsoft, big-time. The direct competition to the PS4 Pro is Microsoft’s Project Scorpio, which still has no price point or release date. Comparing the PS4 Pro to the One S comes out strongly in Sony’s favor, and that’ll be a big deal over the holiday system (unless you’re a gamer who wants to play 4K Blu-rays, that is).
Nick Summers, Associate Editor
I won’t be buying a PlayStation 4 Pro. At least, not right now. It’s a marginal hardware upgrade, offering few benefits for people with 1080p TVs. Slightly prettier graphics? I’ll take them, sure, but not for another $400. You see, I never felt the PlayStation 4 was particularly underpowered. Video games like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End are gorgeous — and I find myself appreciating stylized graphics, like those found in Firewatch and Abzu, more and more these days.
I would rather wait and see how Microsoft’s Project Scorpio shakes out. By then, I’ll probably have a 4K TV, so I’ll be in a better position to benefit from the upgrade. With an extra $400 in my pocket, I’m also better positioned to buy a PSVR headset this fall, or even Nintendo’s mysterious NX console next March. If you don’t have a PlayStation 4 yet, or you’re desperate to own the best console graphics — then sure, buy this new box. But if you already own a PS4, I think there are smarter ways to spend your money. An Xbox One S, for instance, will give you access to Microsoft’s exclusives and a 4K Blu-ray player. Oh, and a product that looks sublime too.
Dan Cooper, Senior Editor
To my shame, I’m still rocking an Xbox 360 from 2008 that has remained unbroken for the better part of a decade. I’d always planned to join this console generation, but neither device seemed to be compelling enough to make the splash. Public opinion skewed heavily towards the PS4 immediately after that E3, which made me sad as I wanted to see Microsoft’s cloud-based vision for the future of video games. But since the PS4 seems to have “won” this generation, it’s probably the right time to make a splash.
That’s why I’m probably going to buy a PS4 Pro when it launches, since it’ll be the best hardware I can get at the time of launch. Add in the fact that it’ll work with PlayStation VR and I know that, should that become a hit in a few years time, I can access it right away. Admittedly, my freshly-bought HDTV won’t do much with the Pro’s newly-minted 4K processing power, but again — I’m prepared for the moment when those displays become affordable.
Of course, it might be a bit of a waste since all I’ll probably play are Rocket League and FIFA, but that’s never stopped me before.
Matt Brian, Managing Editor, Engadget UK
Am I going to buy a PlayStation 4 Pro? Yes. When it launches? Definitely not. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t the best console option — at least between Microsoft and Sony — for the foreseeable future.
I already own a PlayStation 4 and I’m on the hook for a PSVR headset. Put simply, I don’t want to be spending upwards of £700 in the space of a month. Given that my 5-year old LG plasma is on its way out and needs replacing, it makes sense to grab a new 4K set and then purchase a PS4 Pro to cater for my gaming needs and the endless amount of streaming I intend do between Netflix and Amazon. The lack of UHD Blu-ray support doesn’t phase me, I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie on a disc.
With Scorpio unlikely to launch until 2017, Sony really has clear waters ahead of it. VR and 4K gaming will only grow in popularity and Sony will have the console market largely to itself until Microsoft debuts the faster and more powerful Scorpio a few months later.
Brittany Vincent, Contributor
I had already decided I wouldn’t be purchasing a PlayStation 4 Pro at launch far before I ever saw what Sony had to offer at its PlayStation event. It’s $400. Do you know how many Kylie Lip Kits I can buy with that money?
I’m a collector, and since I own nearly every console from every generation (lacking a 64DD, sadly) every instinct within me is screaming for a PS4 Pro for the sake of completeness, but I don’t think it’s actually necessary. I’m not concerned so much with HD gaming nor 4K as a general rule because I’m not in the market to purchase a new TV any time soon. But I am looking to outfit my gaming setup with PlayStation VR specifically for Rez Infinite, and that’ll likely be the excuse I need to drop the cash on a PS4 Pro at some point.
Plus, with Microsoft’s Project Scorpio on the horizon, any extra cash I can scare up will end up being a boon for my eventual entertainment center upgrade. Stacking games on top of each other and stepping over piles in the floor isn’t working out for me anymore, and I’ll need to finally make the jump to 2016 and improve that entire situation. That means a better TV and all. Then it might finally be time to make the investment.
Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor
As someone who’s drifted towards PC gaming over the past few years, I’m looking forward to having a console that can push out more pixels. But while I’m intrigued by the PlayStation 4 Pro (check out my impressions here), I won’t be buying one at launch. Mostly, that’s because I haven’t upgraded to a 4K, HDR-ready TV yet. And, quite honestly, I also haven’t used my PlayStation 4 much. When I want to play console games with friends, I power up my Xbox One. And when I want to be engrossed in AAA games with the best graphics possible, I head to my PC.
Given that it’s only been three years since the PlayStation 4 launched, the Pro doesn’t seem like a worthy upgrade just yet. But if you’ve been holding out on this console generation, it’s clearly the smart choice this holiday season, especially if you want to dabble with PlayStation VR. Sure, I’m also looking forward to Microsoft’s Project Scorpio, but it’s hard to get too excited about something that’s so far off.
My biggest disappointment with the PlayStation 4 Pro? It doesn’t have a 4K Blu-ray drive, which would make it a far more practical purchase. Curiously, that’s something the Xbox One S does include. Sony reps say that the company is focusing on 4K streaming, but that argument is surprising when you consider that Sony is one of the big 4K Blu-ray backers. I’ve argued that 4K Blu-ray was dead from the start because of streaming, and it’s hard to deny that’s the case when the format’s creator can’t even get behind it.
4K consoles will finally make 1080p gaming a reality
Microsoft and Sony have finally announced their new, more powerful console revisions. The PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio promise a significant performance bump over their current-gen counterparts, supposedly ushering in the era of 4K console gaming. Although we will see some 4K games, it’s likely that neither console has the power to pull off the higher resolution without compromise.
We’ve heard this story before. When the Xbox 360 was unveiled at E3 in 2005, it was supposed to play games at a crisp 720p or 1080i. The following year, when Sony announced the PlayStation 3, it did so by showing off Gran Turismo HD running at a native 1080i/60, with the promise of 1080p games to come.
For the most part, that didn’t happen. Instead, many Xbox 360 games upscaled just to hit 720p. The significantly more powerful PS3 also stuck mostly to 720p, with a smattering of 1,280 x 1,080 games (which were then processed to stretch out the horizontal resolution). To my memory, the only 1080p game I had on PlayStation 3 was Fifa Street 3 (I make bad life choices). Oh, and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue let me see my garage (and only my garage) in 1080p.
Then came the current console generation and the pitch of true 1080p gaming. Very quickly, that promise unraveled. Xbox One launch titles like Ryse (900p) and Dead Rising 3 (720p) fell short, with only Forza Motorsport 5 hitting 1080p at the expense of anti-aliasing and texture quality. PlayStation 4 titles fared a little better: Infamous Second Son, Killzone Shadow Fall and Knack hit 1080p. But all three games suffered from serious frame-rate issues: Killzone developer Guerrilla Games was forced to add a 30fps lock to the single player through an update and faced a (failed) lawsuit when it was discovered the “1080p 60fps” multiplayer actually ran at 960 x 1,080 and pixels doubled using “temporal reprojection.”
The biggest cross-platform title of the launch window, Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, hit 792p on Xbox One and 900p on PlayStation 4. Both versions relied on adaptive v-sync (a trick that minimizes stuttering when frames aren’t rendered in time) just to stick to 30fps.
Things have improved a little since then, as developers now understand the consoles’ respective limitations. We now see some 1080p games that mostly stick to 30fps, with exclusive titles Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One and Bloodborne on PlayStation 4 being prime examples. Even so, the vast majority of titles struggle, with shooters relying on dynamic scaling to hit 60fps and other games sticking with 30fps caps just to get by. There are outliers, of course: Lots of last-gen remasters are hitting the holy grail of 1080p and 60fps (1080p60). And some games — like Forza Motorsport 6 on the Xbox One and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on the PS4 — run almost entirely at 1080p60.
PlayStation 4 Pro
With this historical knowledge in mind, it’s unlikely that either of the new consoles will hit 4K frequently. From what we know of Scorpio, the PlayStation 4 Pro is by far the least powerful of the two. It features a refreshed AMD Jaguar CPU with a higher clock speed and a new Polaris GPU with 4.2 teraflops of potential power. That’s a big improvement over the original PS4’s 1.84 teraflops GPU, but it’s not enough to hit 4K without some serious compromises, or, as will be more common, upscaling tricks. Sound familiar?
First-party titles shown off at yesterday’s PlayStation Meeting included Horizon: Zero Dawn, Days Gone and Infamous First Light. None of them are close to hitting 4K. Instead they all rely on advanced checkerboard upscaling, which by all accounts looks fantastic when compared to 1080p.
The only confirmed native 4K (rendering at 3,840 x 2,160 with no tricks) game we’ve heard of is Elder Scrolls Online, which apparently manages to maintain a lock of 30fps. For perspective, ESO is not graphically intensive and will run just fine at 1080p on a three-year-old gaming laptop. Naughty Dog, for its part, says it’ll have The Last of Us (a game that debuted on the PlayStation 3) optimized to run at 1080p60 with “improved performance” or 4K at 30fps.
We’ve seen no evidence that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will be able to pull off 4K 60fps, despite some vague onstage claims to that effect. Activision has a history of dynamically scaling resolution to keep CoD frame rates steady, and it’s likely we’ll see that tactic in play again. And that 4K slice of Mass Effect: Andromeda? It was deliberately chosen because of its sparse environment and extremely dark setting. Even with these tricks, performance expert Digital Foundry suggests jaggies are evident on close inspection, and it’s highly likely Bioware will upscale the final game, dynamically or otherwise, from a lower resolution than 4K for the PS4 Pro.
Project Scorpio
True 4K on the PlayStation 4 Pro, then, is not impossible but extremely improbable beyond a few highly optimized titles and remasters. But what about Project Scorpio? Microsoft will throw an all-new, 8-core CPU in its console to end all consoles, along with a GPU capable of 6 teraflops and 320GB/s memory bandwidth. Microsoft claims this will enable “true 4K” gaming. Again, though, its utilization seems improbable. You only need to look at the state of 4K gaming on PCs to see why.
The Nvidia GTX 1070 — a $380 6.5 teraflop card with 256GB/s memory bandwidth — paired with a top-of-the-range Intel i7 processor can just about pull off 4K gaming. By “pull off,” I mean that while averages above 30fps are common, you’ll regularly see sub-30fps drops from demanding games. Despite its increased specs over the Xbox One, Project Scorpio is unlikely to significantly outmuscle that setup.
Drop that 4K resolution down to 1080p, however, and the GTX 1070 comes into its own, achieving plus-60fps rendering even with maxed-out graphical settings. At 1440p — a favorite resolution among PC gamers — the Scorpio is likely to shine, offering solid frame rates and a significant improvement in fidelity over 1080p when stretched over a large 4K TV.
We don’t know enough about Scorpio yet to make definitive statements. Its memory bandwidth (and the 10 to 12GB of video memory it implies) is large and will help out with 4K. Developers can optimize for Scorpio more than they can for individual PC setups, although they’ll also have to be targeting the vanilla Xbox One concurrently. But even the GTX 1080, a $600, 9-teraflop card, struggles with frame rates at 4K.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Project Scorpio launch with the option to play some games at 4K30. Microsoft could even decree that all games need to hit that target. But even if it does, it’s far more likely that performance-obsessed gamers — the obvious target market for Microsoft’s new console — will want 60fps games at the highest fidelity possible. Rendering at 1440p and similar resolutions will still offer noticeable improvements on a 4K TV set. And if you have a 1080p set, you’re going to see 60fps as well as some additional graphical accoutrements.
So what?
Until Scorpio is released, Sony can safely claim that the PS4 Pro will offer the best-looking console games ever. Games that dynamically scale, or use the checkerboard process to upscale, will look better than their current-gen counterparts. Games that run at 1080p will be able to perform at a consistently higher level than they do on the PS4. We should never again see a 1080p title dropping below 30fps, and indeed, the vast majority should run at 60fps. That’s fantastic news.
It’s good that Sony and Microsoft are updating their consoles to support 4K TVs, which have moved from niche, expensive products to practically the norm on electronic store shelves. Lots of gamers — many of them the companies’ most fervent supporters — already have 4K sets, and within the next few years it’s probable that millions will be investing in 4K.
What’s not good is selling gamers on the promise of “4K gaming.” Console gamers were sold the lie of 1080p gaming for many years, and developers’ desire to satiate fans — who only wanted 1080p gaming because they were promised it — has resulted in high-resolution, low-performance gaming becoming the norm.
Sony needs to be up front about the PS4 Pro’s (lack of) 4K capabilities
As someone with a 1080p TV and no intention to upgrade to 4K in the immediate future, I’m genuinely excited about both consoles. But I wish we could get a clear idea of what they can and can’t do. With the PS4 Pro, Sony needs to be up front about the console’s (lack of) 4K capabilities.
It’s fine if your console can’t do 4K gaming with any regularity, but don’t say that “PS4 games deliver unprecedented visual precision, such as 4K quality resolution to give remarkable clarity down to the tiniest detail” on your website. Be honest. Tell gamers that their games will look and play better on both 1080p TVs and 4K TVs. Tell them this is the best they’ll get on a console right now. They’ll still buy the thing.
Microsoft has some time to think. Project Scorpio isn’t likely to be unveiled properly until E3 next year. Unless it truly believes that games running at 4K will be the norm — and, hey, maybe it can somehow pull off 4K30 across the board — it should shy away from that marketing spiel.
Given the significant performance increase between the PS4 Pro and Scorpio, it should stick with a far simpler line: “No matter what TV you own, games will look and perform better on our console than a PS4 Pro.” Add in VR and (almost certainly) UHD Blu-ray support and that’s likely a winning formula, provided the price is right, of course.
Sony’s petite Xperia X Compact hits the UK
Right about now has to be the worst possible time for a new smartphone to launch, what with Apple announcing a pair of new iPhones and all. Nevertheless, Sony’s Xperia X Compact is now available in the UK, just over a week after it debuted at this year’s IFA tech show alongside the new flagship Xperia XZ. As is typically the case with Sony smartphones, not all carriers and resellers are sold on the device. However, the 4.6-inch handset is available for free or for a nominal upfront payment on sub-£30 per month contracts at O2, EE, giffgaff, Carphone Warehouse and Mobiles.co.uk.
Amazon, Unlocked Mobiles and Clove don’t seem to be receiving stock until later this month; but, if it’s an unlocked Xperia X Compact you’re after, look no further than Carphone Warehouse, which will sell you one right now for £360 (almost £20 cheaper than anywhere else).
Apart from Apple’s return to the 4-inch form factor with the iPhone SE, Sony remains one of the only companies making decent smaller-screened devices. They aren’t severely downgraded models taking advantage of flagship branding either, though unlike last year’s Xperia Z5 Compact, the Xperia X this new, smaller model is based on was a mid-range device to begin with.
Still, you’re looking at a hexa-core Snapdragon 650 chip, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage tucked away behind that 4.6-inch, 720p display. You also get the same 23-megapixel camera with laser autofocus that Sony has equipped the flagship Xperia XZ with. In short, it’s definitely worth considering if you’re into smaller screens.
What happened at Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro event
Sony’s PlayStation event didn’t have a ton of surprises, but still — any time you get two new flavors of the PS4, it’s worth paying attention. In the afterglow of today’s announcements, senior editors Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham break down the good and bad of what Sony announced. The PS4 Slim is almost exactly what we expected: a cheaper and smaller version of the existing PS4. But Sony surprised us a bit by having a reasonable $399 price point and November 10th release date for its more powerful PS4 Pro console. Both new PS4 consoles will be in gamers’ hands before long, so get caught up on what you need to know here.
PS4 Pro will take UHD screenshots and broadcast 1080p video
In addition to running games at higher resolution, the PlayStation 4 Pro will also take bigger and more detailed screenshots as well. Hitting the Share button on the controller will grab a 4K-sized image of whatever is on-screen at that moment according to Polygon.
Earlier today, the console’s FAQ page listed 1080p Remote Play and 1080p Share Play (and 5GHz WiFi!). That’s a definite improvement over 720p and 30 FPS on previous hardware, but there are a few caveats here. Polygon reports that Dailymotion and YouTube videos will cap out at 60 FPS. Twitch broadcasts, on the other hand, have a hard stop at 1080p and 30 FPS.
So, just because the Pro can output higher resolution video and frame rates doesn’t mean that your favorite video service of choice is ready for them just yet. At least not without additional hardware like a video capture card. If you’re expecting that to change with Microsoft’s high-end Project Scorpio when it launches late next year, you might want to dial those hopes back a touch too.
Source: Sony, Polygon
Sony brought new PS4 accessories too
Sony didn’t talk about it much during today’s PlayStation Meeting event, but the reworked DualShock 4 (CUH-ZCT2) spotted in earlier leaks is real. The touchpad is a bit see through, allowing that line on the top to display whatever color the lightbar is showing — all the better for games that take advantage of its color-changing abilities.
Also, it’s able to send data back and forth to the PS4 over USB in addition to its Bluetooth connection for those times when wireless just isn’t working — a trick the Xbox One’s controller has had since launch. It will be available individually this fall for $59/£54/€59 and no, it does not have a larger battery.
There’s also a new Platinum Wireless headset coming for $159 with “premium” construction and materials, all ready to work with the PS VR headset. A new PlayStation Camera (CUH-ZEY2) has the same features in a cylindrical design that is easier to adjust for $59, while a new vertical stand is built for the PS4 Pro and new slimmer PS4.
Source: SIE
The Aftermath: Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro event
For an hour-long media event, Sony packed a ton of new info into 60 minutes. Release date and prices for both the PlayStation 4 Slim and PS4 Pro, tons of HDR footage from upcoming games and even a few bits about how the PS4 Pro would better handle PlayStation VR games. That’s on top of perhaps the biggest announcement of the keynote: All 40,000+ PS4s will get an update that adds HDR video capability. And that’s just the beginning.
PlayStation 4 Pro games look amazing, but don’t expect real 4K
The PlayStation 4 Pro is undoubtedly the most powerful game console I’ve ever seen. Its GPU (powered by AMD’s new Polaris technology) is more than twice as fast as the original PS4, and it sports a faster clock speed as well. But while Sony is marketing it as the ideal console for 4K gaming, the truth is a bit more complicated. Rendering 4K games is something that’s still tough for high-end PC gaming rigs today. So Sony is giving developers a variety of ways to make their games look better than standard 1080p titles on the PS4, even if they can’t quite reach 4K.
According to Peter Wyse, SVP of production and development at Warner Bros. Interactive, there are two optimized rendering options available to PS4 Pro developers. “Resolution mode” made lets them lock games into a resolution beyond 1080p (I’ve found 1440p works well in PC gaming). “Quality mode,” on the other hand, dynamically scales the resolution depending on the game is performing. Wyse says you can expect resolutions that are up to 90 percent close to 4K in that mode.
Shadow of Mordor, a WB title, looked great on the PS4 Pro, even though it wasn’t running completely in 4K. There was more detail in player outfits and the environment, and on the whole it looked just as good as it does on a powerful PC. The same was true for Rise of the Tomb Raider — at one point, I could make out the plumage of a bird sitting on a cliffside. Most players likely won’t notice if PS4 Pro titles don’t reach 4K completely, so long as the results they’re seeing look better than the standard PS4.
To be clear, true 4K rendering is possible as well on the PS4 Pro, but it looks like we’ll only see it on some titles. Bethesda has the Elder Scrolls Online actually running 4K, but that’s a game that also benefits from an engine that scales across a wide variety of PC hardware, from integrated laptop graphics to powerful GPUs. And graphically it’s not nearly as detailed as most AAA games. According to Matthew Firor, the game’s director, it didn’t take much effort to get it up and running on the PS4 Pro. And since he’s mainly been developing for the PC, his team is used to creating games that scale with incremental hardware upgrades.
Here’s the thing gamers will have to get used to: 4K doesn’t matter as much as you think. The PS4 Pro’s real power will be in running games higher than 1080p and together with high-dynamic range lighting. (Sony is also making HDR available to all PS4 models via a firmware update.) The higher resolutions will make things look sharper and more detailed overall, while the HDR lighting will give bright scenes and shadows more depth. Both The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 looked strikingly different on the PS4 Pro, thanks to the graphical upgrades. (Though Naughty Dog might have downplayed just how good the games looked on the previous hardware to make the new gear seem better.)
Compared to the Xbox One S, which is basically just upscaling existing games, the PS4 Pro is effectively a “4K gaming” machine. And unfortunately for Microsoft, it won’t have a real 4K competitor until Project Scorpio debuts next year.
AIVAnet 