"High-Power" PS4 Model Something Sony Might Consider, Exec Says Hypothetically

This sort of thing do more damage than good....please sony stfu.... Enough with you first abandoning the vita, not answering the users suggestions such as name changes, external hdd support, and now this!? To all those biased sony fanboys out there who hate xbox one or any other console, just imagine how insane and greedy sony would become if there where no competition....

As much as I'd love to see Sony improve on their performances, this seems like a bad idea to me. What if the developers were to make games optimized for the "new" ps4 and it runs horribly on the regular ps4 of which millions of people already have. It'd be similar to the New Nintendo 3ds, which had better features but ultimately offers nothing new and has only two games out so far. Just stick to the regular ps4 and focus on how you can make the next system better.

Should have just designed a way to do this, N64 expansion pak style

We'l see a more powerful PS4 when we see Halo 5 on PC.

yada , yada , yada !!!!!!!

What do I keep saying? This generation came early. Look, Microsoft says the Xbox One with a larger hard drive is faster, Sony says a more powerful PS4 may come eventually.

I'd be okay with that.... I'd just trade in my original PS4 and get the more powerful one, depending on price / trade in value that is.

This idea is actually something I was predicting... though years ago, I was predicting it was going to happen from launch.

I'm not sure it's a good idea for Sony though... a lot of people would feel cheated having just bought a PS4... it might destroy some customer loyalty. I guess it really comes down to marketing and how you would present this option.

Yeah I would get a high powered PS4. The solution is that developers could just tone the settings down for the regular PS4 users. They already do this for the Xbox One, the work is already half way done!

It wouldn't just split the audience, it would split developers. A game that takes advantage of the higher powered PS4 may not work at all on the current model. With the cost of developing AAA games already so high, do we also want dev teams working on multiplatform games that need 2 separate PS4 versions?

DON'T DO IT SONY BAD IDEA

Really.. Eddie.. How do you even get paid by writing this crap??

not a chance it will happen, at least not this gen. it would create a massive backlash amongst the playstation community and even amongst the publishers. hypothetically, should a new, more powerful sku release, why would a publisher wish to develop a game to take advantage of the new specs if the userbase will be insignificant? why would a publisher want to neglect the other 25 million users who do not have the new hardware revision? and no, i don't think they would be willing to develop two different versions of the same game to take advantage of each console version haha. if we are talking about a faster hard drive to speed up installation and loading times, yes that is a possibility. that is as far as it will go, though.

At the moment consoles have an advantage over PCs in that they are a 'buy it once, good for 6 years' item. Start releasing different specs of console though and then you no longer have the reason a lot of people get a console over a gaming rig and the cheapness of games on the PC will suddenly make it cheaper in the long term even for a less regular gamer.

IMO - It would be on par with Microsoft nixing the mandatory kinect... it would basically just give the finger to early adopters. Unless they could find a way to do it any not alienate the installed base I think it is a horrible idea.

Another possible approach is to break with tradition somewhat. Die shrinks of the primary chip set are usually applied to reduce cost on the parts themselves and the associated power and cooling, resulting in a smaller model that costs less to make. That would still be done but at the same time a higher end version of the APU would be designed, also using the new process node. This would add new functionality (such as 4K support) but leave enough overhead as to allow the newer APU to have a significant clock rate bump. One of the things separating current consoles from PCs is their substantially lower clock rates, a trade made for similar reasons as found in laptops, other than battery life concerns. Getting closer to the 3+ GHz range typical on desktop PCs (and in the previous console generation) would be good boost if the reduced process size allowed it to run coolly enough.

So the Level II console could keep the same form factor as the current model, and continued production of Level I models would be in a smaller package.

I don't think this will happen. It doesn't really make any sense from a business stand point. Angering fans, splitting up the community, marketing and producing two separate consoles. It would be a pretty expensive endeavor, and they'll probably just decide to put that money and effort towards the PS5 four years down the road. - But I don't know, I wasn't a business major.

I have enough patience and many great PS3 games to wait for this "High-Power" PS4 Model...Time is on my side now by reducing the price of new games and delivering to me new PS4 models almost every year. Time is ticking, I'm still playing PS3. No need to hurry. New tactics this time...

It's unnecessary as the next gen consoles will probably arrive in 3-4 years.

Seems pretty pointless to me. No one who already has a PS4 would want to spend all that money just so a game ran at 60fps rather than 30fps. Especially as the PS5 would be coming out what, like 2 years later, at the most. Just bring the PS5 forward by a year or two. 6 years for a consol generation is plenty, lets have the PS5 in November 2019.

Not yet, maybe in 2 years or more that would be a good option to expand the life of PS4 for a few extra years, it would need to play all the old games and run newer games at 4K to be any good though!

Shut up and take my money!!!

This article is BS. There is no way this will happen. Unless they call it PS5. Can you imagine playing the same game on multiplayer vs someone with "newer PS4" the performance gap/advantage would be huge.
(if the performance/hardware is significantly different otherwise whats the point of selling "more powerful PS4)

yup instead of buying a shitty comp for 4x the Money Id rather go for a upgraded ps4, mine still works like a charm though.

Release a model that's backwards compatible for more cash and I'll buy it. But fracturing the player base by letting developers make games just for the PS4+ or with any sort of feature disparity in the actual games between models seems like a really, really bad idea.

That would be a sucky move but apart from splitting the consumer base, a bigger question for Sony would be the question if its economical even producing a more high-powered PS4. It has to be a model they can sell for $400 at the most, a higher price point would be too much of a risk.

The thing to do is have a level system that allows consumers to easily look at a game listing and see if it works on their console. Say around late 2017, Sony rolls out the PS4 Level II. This plays everything that ran on the PS4 (now Level I retroactively) and also supports games that only work on Level II systems. Some will work on both, depending on how well the developer feels the same code base can scale without losing optimization.

An obvious addition for a newer PS4 or Xbox One would be support for 4K video. This could be done right now as upgrading the GPU portion of the APU for the resolution, HDMI 2.0, and codec support wouldn't be anything that isn't already shipping in AMD product or due within a few months. This wouldn't allow for native gaming in 4K but scaling could still offer an upgrade. It's questionable whether such an upgrade would merit being called Level II. More like PS4.5. This is why I wouldn't expect to see upgrade to the gaming functionality until at least the date mentioned above, allowing time for the necessary rendering horsepower to enter the console price level.

Another upgrade that would improve the platform without losing compatibility on either AMD-based console is USB 3.1. This would improve load times tremendously, especially as SSD prices and capacities come within reason for mainstream console use. A 1 TB external SSD designed to make full use of 3.1 bandwidth would be a LOT faster than the internal drives current;y equipped.

The trick here is to make it understandable to mainstream consumers. If there is any significant level of confusion about what works on which machine, they might as well treat it as a new platform that happens to run the previous platform's software, as with the PS2, Wii, and Wii U. If it gets too complicated the value of the console is compromised.

Sega...32X...

So only a couple years after launch another, more powerful model is already being considered. Honestly, nobody expects, or has ever expected PC-like performance from a gaming console.

Why spend the total price of a fairly nice PC on two consoles when you could just spend all the cost up front on a PC and be set for an entire generation or two of consoles?

I'd be nice, but I was planning on picking up a PS4 sometime in early 2016. i might just wait a while longer now to see if this pans out.