@FamilyGuy

You're really not seeing the point, obviously and ideally, that's would everyone would want and expect, including I. But this would mean they would only develop for the PS4, otherwise we would and should have very scalable engines, there is more to it than just halving or doubling the framerate or bumping it to 60fps. You can't just halve or double graphics. Yes, with PC you can toggle some settings and sliders.. you call that scalability, but that **** is all over the place, it's not power for power, flop for flop, hertz for hertz, just sheer brute force.

What you're advocating is developers ignoring the cabilities of the PS4.5 and developing only for the PS4, that's the only way to ensure some parity and scalabilitiy. Sony has to be the one to tell the developers that they have this super powerful device, and "oh, but you can only do 60fps(doubling (or even less) the PS4 version), and 1080p, unless you want to do extra work and create another version of the game and try to hit 4k with only double the GPU power, or try to increase the graphics at the same framerate. " It's extra work and money, no ifs or buts.

I have kind of mixed feelings about all this.

On one hand I'm pretty excited for Neo and the ways it can potentially improve my PS4 games.

On the other hand, I don't really like that they are doing it mid gen like this. I think they should have offered the Neo right alongside the regular PS4 at launch. I would have bought the Neo instead, but now I spent $400 on the PS4 and will probably need to spend another $400 to get the Neo. Of course I could sell my PS4 to get some money to put towards the Neo, but that's a bit of a hassle and I will still have spent more on PS4 this gen than I ever have on a single console platform.

The other thing that worries me is that the introduction of the Neo (and upgraded XB1 if that rumor is true) will likely cause the generation to be prolonged. People that just spent $400 on a Neo aren't going to want to turn around and buy a PS5 in two years. Sony knows this and will likely delay the PS5. And since the Neo supposedly isn't allowed to have fundamental graphical advantages over the PS4, except in the areas of resolution and perhaps things like anti-aliasing, it means core graphical progress will be stuck at whatever the PS4 and XB1 can do for however many more years they decide to milk it.

These are the negative aspects of it that I don't like. But I'm still going to get one if the leaks turn out to be true, since the main negative side effect will happen whether I get one or not.

Eidolon1h ago(Edited 31m ago)
@FamilyGuy

You're really not seeing the point, obviously and ideally, that's would everyone would want and expect, including I. But this would mean they would only develop for the PS4, otherwise we would and should have very scalable engines, there is more to it than just halving or doubling the framerate or bumping it to 60fps. You can't just halve or double graphics. Yes, with PC you can toggle some settings and sliders.. you call that scalability, but that **** is all over the place, it's not power for power, flop for flop, hertz for hertz, just sheer brute force.

What you're advocating is developers ignoring the cabilities of the PS4.5 and developing only for the PS4, that's the only way to ensure some parity and scalabilitiy. Sony has to be the one to tell the developers that they have this super powerful device, and "oh, but you can only do 60fps(doubling (or even less) the PS4 version), and 1080p, unless you want to do extra work and create another version of the game and try to hit 4k with only double the GPU power, or try to increase the graphics at the same framerate. " It's extra work and money, no ifs or buts.

@Eidolon all the major engines are very scalable. The vast majority of PS4 games already release on PC, where they scale a huge range of hardware.

PS4 and Neo won't be that difficult to develop for simultaneously on most engines. It should pretty much double the QA requirement though.

@Starchild I don't think it is graphical progress you need to worry about. It's more "everything else progress" that might be hampered by the prolonged use of the Jaguar CPU.

@Eidolon, you seem to be upset that developers might not specifically target the advantages of a the new GPU or frequency available.

This might be true, and yet saying this will be an additional platform is simply wrong. Nobody would argue, you need another team to release your game for IPad now that Apple released IPad2. Of course you need to add work, if you want to support higher resolution or add some shaders which improve effects on the new GPU.

But other things scale with the HW, not the SW alone. Assets are usually created with higher LOD levels anyway. Which goes into production is a matter of settings. This might as well be available in current games already because games target different performance targets now. Same for resolution. If games are designed for open an framerate this isn't a problem either. It will either be unlocked (and run faster automatically) or it will have a second setting to lock it to 60fps instead of 30fps. If a game is specifically designed for 30 it will stay at 30 (but might increase resolution).

All that does not require this to be treated as a secondary platform. The additional dev effort will be between 0-5% at first. Problematic will be QA, because none the less, this must be tested on two platforms. But if for example game play testing needs to be multiplied, I doubt. Functional testing, yes to ensure one doesn't crash over the other. I'd rather think QA can be split and deltas can be done on another machine. But, yes, this will cost more.

Of course, pushing the new machine and releasing on the old maximizing each will cost you extra, but saying it has no benefit at all and developers must go that route is simply not true.

@Ju

It's an additional platform, but in practice, at least given the current rumors, the work load involved isn't going to be akin to the differences between writing for PC and Xbox and PS4. There are many things which will likely just go from one to the other with very little to no work. I'd imagine most, if not all, of the CPU code will not require any additional change, because the only difference will be that the new CPU is just faster, so there is nothing new to take advantage of. I can't think of too many things where this will make much of a difference in game design in terms of adding stuff in. There are some, but not things that are going to make a substantial difference, unless the game is CPU bound, which is extremely rare nowadays for big games, and for the small ones, the current CPU is generally more than enough as is.

On the GPU side, for things that just take advantage of more of what makes 3D work, they probably won't require much change, unless each ROP or CU is programmed individually, which isn't terribly common, however it does exist at times. In this case, I can't imagine that the programming would have to change, but it will take work to add stuff in if that kind of control is taken, and the new things require that it be taken as well.

If the devs allow the engine to control the ROP/CU's of the game, then adding to it will be rather straight forward, but does not really take advantage of the new stuff, other than things which may allow for quicker execution through multi-threading. Again, depends on a number of factors.

Honestly, I doubt many of the assets themselves are going to change. Given the specs, it would appear that it's still going to be a 1080 machine, and there's no reason to improve upon them if the base hardware also uses 1080.

The things that would be more work would be taking advantage of more complex shader models(you don't really just add them in as you say), more complex lighting effects, increased particle physics which require more complex assets to make look good and would likely use separate assets, and other things of that nature. Naturally the testing and optimization would be the bulk of the work involved, and that kind of thing isn't cheap.

The percentages involved will depend on the level with which devs decide to implement the new stuff, and if they actually wish to take advantage of the newer hardware beyond the basic upgrade to ROP's or texture units, as if I had to imagine, I'd say there is going to be newer hardware protocols which could do some nice stuff not unlike you can see within different GCN implementations of different generations of PC cards, which isn't just a core/CU upgrade.

In all this, as with most questions in programming, the ultimate end will be, "it depends". Because so much is depending on what would seem an infinite number of possible solutions for how to do something. It's hard for anyone to say it will be one way or the other, because not all games are done the same way.

@star

It's going to vary wildly between developers to be honest. Some will make more effort to take advantage of the hardware, some will probably do very little for the old, some will try to maintain parity, some will put as much effort into each. It's no different than cross-gen ports, outside of being simpler on a hardware level, and as we all know, the quality of the ports between systems and generations can be drastically different between different pubs and devs....so basically, avoid anything from Activision if you don't upgrade.:)

Framerate increase? Not if its already running at 60FPS, which only a few games do on PS4, sure, but if it does already run at 60FPS, then the extra CPU power won't increase it (though it may minimize frame drops).

Resolution increase? You mean to 1440p? There is no way it'll go higher than that. I don't get it, is Sony going to market 1440p to console gamers using TVs? Because they wont be marketing 4K games (TV and internet streaming sure) for 4K TVs until Playstation 5.

@Chocoburger Look up downscaling or supersampling(The Nvidia implementation), higher resolutions DOWNscaled (not upscaled) to 1080p look sharper and minimizes the need for AA.

@Eidolon

Let's not make assumptions about me please and I sincerely doubt you have a better handling of Sony's Hardware, Software and business plans than they do. Maybe it's the wrong move, who knows? Neither one of us knows how this will shake out in the long run and I'm curious to see it. So in the meantime, why don't you sit down and let the adults talk.

Exactly if they can make a PC version they can easily add in a Neo version no extra development costs or a huge investment in development time.

Still not seeing what the big deal is...Rocket League is also available on PC, so these statements come with someone that considers PC a 'platform'....but I find it a bit misleading calling the 'neo' 'another' platform...

Two PC's...one with an AMD ~7850 gpu...one with a ~7970 gpu (the PS4 is more in line with the mobile versions of these gpu's, but w/e, not the point)...lets say, for arguments sake, the 7970 equipped device has a slight OC to the exact same cpu...otherwise; exact same memory...exact same OS...

Are these 2 different 'platforms'?...nope... the scalability to fit a single game within functional limits of each hardware spec is built in from the beginning...

The neo is no different than what i just mentioned, at least assuming the hardware speculation is accurate...When speaking of multiplatform games, this will NEVER be a problem...the PC versions require the scalability of assets for this exact reason, and translating that to the PS4 is straight forward (AMD has claimed their console APIs almost do this for them, anyway)...

As far as exclusives? Also not an issue...because console exclusives, for the most part, will come from Sony...so if they're not worried about, none of us should be either...3rd party console exclusives that do not come to PC?...you mean...all zero of them save Destiny? The only foreseeable one to do this would be the next GTA, but given the success of the PC version of GTA5, I'd imagine that is the last time PC doesn't get it day and date to begin with.

The thing is we have no idea what question was actually asked of him because that is the way gamingbolt works. In his answer you can see it might not even be the "leaked specs" of the Neo,
“Well, hypothetically in the situation you have raised, it’s no better than having any other additional platform to develop for,” Psyonix’s VP Jeremy Dunham said."

The situation he brought up could be the leaked specs or some other spec, we have no idea

@Eidolon what are you talking about? "There creativity would have to adhere to ps4" wth is your point. Thats what they are already doing. The neo doesn't change that. Games are already developed then scaled down until performance is acceptable. They don't need to remake a game for every single hardware configuration. Yes the neo would just have a higher frame rate/ res. Thats the point of it. Have you ever heard of pc? Neo existing doesn't hurt the ps4.
"Super powerful device". Have you even checked the specs? Its a marginal bump in power. Its the same cpu with a higher clock speed and almost the same gpu with more cus.

@rainslacker "It's no different than cross-gen ports, outside of being simpler on a hardware level" thats not really true because every cross gen game so far has been across vastly different system architecture. The porting is what causes those varied results. The much more logical and direct comparison is 2 pc gamers with the same cpu but one has a 970 and the other has a 980. One will have a higher frame rate or would be able to increase the resolution. The game engines are prepared for this. Its not a big deal.

There's a distinct difference between PC and console programming though. On PC, games are written for the software layer, namely DX or OpenGL, which interacts with the OS layer, which interprets and interfaces with the code for the driver layer, which interfaces the code for the hardware itself. That's why a "single" scalable build is possible. In fact, this is the exact reason DX became a thing way back when, so the devs would no longer have to write their own interface for the driver layer.

In consoles, there is a kind of driver layer, which can be circumvented to go extremely low level, however, it's the same across the board, so the dev can write directly to the driver layer in many instances. This is what makes consoles capable of achieving more, because there are less levels of abstraction.

In a PC, the settings, which seem integrated into the design of the game, actually run on the software layer, with the API determining how to interpret that for the other layers needed to run it all. DX12 does away with the OS layer, and even parts of the software layer(sort of) to allow for direct access to the driver layer, however complete low level access isn't possible due to the need for the driver in a PC, and to circumvent that would just mean devs would now have to program for each possible chip they want to support. DX12's, and I assume Vulkan low level works because there is a standard set of protocols, developed in conjunction with chip makers to basically pass along any low level code directly to the hardware with minimal interpretation.

Adding this kind of ability to consoles would hinder what the devs can do with the hardware, thus adding more overhead to the system.

It's not that we can't have this on consoles, nor that I personally wouldn't want this on consoles, it's more that it takes away from what I've already purchased to go towards a development strategy which implements this premise into it's design paradigm. What I don't want is what the machine is capable of being hindered because some people deem it necessary to disrupt the status quo with something that isn't actually needed, particularly if that new hardware will also never achieve it's full potential due to the legacy support mandate, which I have concerns for in itself, but will save that for a different topic.

People buy consoles as a standard of gaming, the point is play all the games without thinking if it will run well on my system. Also, this standard is supposed to have a lifespan of 5-10 years, and all those years the thing that should get better are the games and the programming. Not the console itself. The console must be able to run all games on the same way, so... you just cant compare PC and Consoles. They're completely different things.

@rainslacker

Direct x and Vulcan. Vulcan is the new age open gl

thats precisely why console gamers chose to game on a console... the goal posts are fixed.

now sony are moving the goal posts

why do people think they have to do anything to get their games to run on either the original ps4 or the new neo? it will be plug and play just like now. the only difference is the power will now favor the neo version. so what? we are already witnessing limits on the ps4 with games like driveclub only outputting 30 frames per second and uncharted scaling down in resolution. the neo will hopefully make those games play better thanks to better technology.

@moldy bread
You know nothing John snow

If inferior hardware was a huge concern and if more frequent upgrades weren't an annoyance to many gamers, the console business wouldn't be nearly as big as it is today.

@FamilyGuy
I like your positivity, you believe a lot of this BS, huh? You're spewing it out at me like you know. I just don't believe or advocate this move, I don't want to be upgrading my consoles every 2-3 years, otherwise I'd have and maintain a gaming PC. They haven't even drove the full potential of the PS4, and now they're releasing a 4.5... And everyone is okay with this? -.- , yeah eff it, let's do a 4.75 in 2018, it will be triple the power of PS4. We will have PS5 in 2021, then eff all that, now it's a new architecture to work with.

it's like having a more powerful PC than people having less powerful PC. all games will play except PS4K will make use of the extra power. unless you love 60 FPS / 1080, it's going to be a big thing in your life. and the good thing is - YOU DON'T HAVE TO NECESSARILY UPGRADE.

Dude, you are alienated. Really.

@Eidolon, for some reason you think that this move will split the PS4 user base and I am not certain why you have this assumption. All leaked documentation stated that the devs cannot split the user base. What ever game can be played on the PS4 will also be played on the NEO, same game. Let me reverse that, What ever game can be played on the NEO will be able to play on the PS4. The game will be the same except that one system, the NEO, will output the graphics at a higher scale. I expect the games will be on the same disk or download. The devs are restricted to what they can do to the NEO. They cannot specifically work on one console version and not the other; its one and all. Its tempting that devs may want to take advantage of that extra power, but they can't unless they are scaling.

So won't xbone 1.5 also split the userbase as well? Tbh no as games will run on both versions. Its not a new platform ffs.

It really doesn't make sense. This started with Sony supposedly asking devs if they wanted a 4K machine, yet the specs don't indicate that the system is capable that. Why ask?

Why ask if they intend to do it when the conference in question should have been about that, with copious lead time for devs to know about it.

If the 4K thing was a separate entity with them exploring the PS5, and they still intended the Neo , then that means they didn't talk about the Neo at all. However, to date, we haven't seen any shock from them....and this kind of thing would be shocking to them, because it's unexpected, and unreasonable what Sony expects based on rumors. By now, we would have seen a tremendous dissent from the dev community. I've barely heard them talk about it at all in forums for devs, many saying they haven't heard anything yet, which defies all logic that it's real or for the near future.

Then there is the shock value of this. While I can see Sony not making it known to the general public, they just don't do this for the development community. Look at DX12. MS was talking about what it could do, and what it would mean two years prior to ever sending out the first dev suite and they had about 12-18 months before where they were releasing information in preparation for it.

But this time we're supposed to believe that Sony just suddenly surprised developers with a brand new console paradigm, and are forcing compliance by October? No. It just doesn't happen like that. Developers, and publishers, would revolt. If Sony was intending to do this, publishers would be made aware of it as soon as R&D started, and developers would of known at least two years ahead of time. To date, I haven't seen any named dev even mention it, and those that talk on the possibility don't have good things to say. Yet we're supposed to believe an upgraded console is coming...as soon as this year..despite Sony obviously having a focus on PSVR as their "new platform", with a ton of money invested, and in no way would a new console take sales away from a $400 peripheral to that platform.....right....right?

Then the compliance by October. Well, why would Sony ask devs what they thought if they were just going to do it, and why would they let them know about it 6 months before they would be required to implement it?

Then the supposed hardware specs. People say it's doubled, but it's not. The texture units and ROP's have been doubled, but it's not a linear scale, and the actual power difference is around 30-50%. While that will make for some prettier games, it's not going to be substantial to warrant taking such a risky move, and with legacy support, will make it mostly under utilized.

Then the fact I can't imagine why Sony would want to do this. There just hasn't been an huge demand for them to do such a thing beyond the typical lamenting of lack of power. At no point would that warrant thinking there is a big enough demand for this, and I can't imagine they'd come to the conclusion that the demand for it would outweigh the number of pissed off people that it would bring.

Then the fact that developers weren't lamenting the power of the PS4. In fact, Sony gave them what they asked for. So who exactly was asking for Sony to explore this?

So many things just don't make sense.

What I believe is that the initial overheard source that was reported at the very start of this misunderstood what was happening. The websites in question saw the kind of reaction it had, and decided to roll with it because of the lack of much other news circulating at the moment.