PlayStation Meeting 2013 (PS4 unveiling - conference replay in first post) - Page 2

I think the question is, what features would make you guys run to the store on day one for PS4? Or more specific, what's THE next revolutionary/evolutionary feature worth getting excited over?

Final Fantasy 14 (or is 15 now the next number) which will be rummored to be a release title... ....but ultimately will not be released until 4 years after that.

-Suntan

-- Backwards compatibility with all current PSN downloads.
-- Launch price below $400.
-- Streaming tech (Gaikai/OnLive) for demos/subscriptions.
-- Third-party developed and maintained storefront/trophy/friends system (like Steam).
-- Non-proprietary storage.
-- Open development platform (similar to XNA Indie Games and iOS).
-- Full cross-platform play and compatibility with Vita software.
-- And, of course, an overall performance bump.

Do think by 2014 they just might offer Pandora?

I did say revolutionary upgrades, which those certainly are. What's the next BIG leap? What's the equivalent of going to the bluray format, online play, 3d, HD and so on.....in other words gamechangers that will reshape the gaming landscape.

I don't think the things you mentioned are big leaps, outside of online play, but online play was big in the 1990's so...

Honestly, the best bet is some sort of tablet/console interconnect like the WiiU, iPad+AppleTV, PSV+PS3/PS4, etc. The computing world is moving towards portables and consoles remain affixed to TVs. But when a console is just on the TV then the company can only sell you services when you are on the TV.

Not gonna happen IMO. It'll be more like the shift from NES to SNES. No one can afford to rock the boat too much at this point. This generation was exceptional in the big changes it ushered. It coincided with major transformations in display and audio technology. It coincided with a tipping point in internet penetration. It coincided with the proliferation of smartphones and gaming phones. And it also coincided with a global economic depression/recession.

So the biggest "revolution" will be what most of us think it will be: content delivery. So, expect more subscriptions, more streaming content, more licensing agreements with content providers, etc. It'll be a series of small-scale transformations toward making our console boxes more like media access points. At best, Sony and Nintendo will follow Apple's lead toward making "universal" content that's linked to an account rather than a box (letting us access the same content on Vita and on PS3/PS4). Early in this generation, Nintendo was the odds-on favorite to "win" the gaming industry war. Now, Apple's become the dark-horse candidate that has taken the distant lead. So, instead of everyone copying Nintendo and going for motion tech, everyone's going to be copying Apple with go-anywhere media content.

But we're far from ready (as consumers or as an industry) for another major technological leap on the scale of this past generation.

Well what we consider as big leaps is totally subjective, but on the point of online play, are you referring to PC? Because as far as I'm aware( and stand to be corrected) console online play didn't become a major part of the gaming landscape till Xbox live?

I'd generally agree with that. It just doesn't sound like something I'm in a rush to jump into, what amounts more to incremental upgrades. Of course we may get something unforeseen that sweeps us off our feet, but I wouldn't bet on that for all the reasons you outlined.

will they even want to call it the ps4? Sounds like a bad number to me.

Online play was major for PS2 with sports games.

This is a very good list. Let me add[*] USB 3[*] Updated PS Eye (optional) with depth tracking and better resolution/framerate

I'd be OK with a $350 or $400 initial price tag, if the machine had the grunt to justify it.

I really shake my head when I see rumors that Sony is considering ditching the Cell for PS4. If you are starting from scratch and going for a blue-sky design, Cell is probably not the best answer. But when you have all the existing dev tools, already-built game engines and modules, Home, and all the Netflix etc. media apps already written for Cell, to not use an updated version of the chip that is completely or nearly bit-compatible would be off the charts insane.

Sony needs to "pull a Wii" for the PS4. Most people think of that phrase as meaning underpowered and cheap. But the most important part of the Wii design was that it was architecturally compatible with GC. More important than the low price, the motion gimmick, or anything else, was that all their devs already knew the architecture, and were able to write compelling software for it early in the console cycle.

But compared to Nintendo's position back then, a Cell-based PS4 does not really need to be underpowered compared to the competition. Sony invested a lot into the architecture, and if there's half a brain among their management, they reap the benefits next gen by extending it, not jumping off to the next "hot" CPU design.

Yes I know, I'm saying that xbox live was the standard for online play when it launched and really what took it to the next level as far as home consoles go.

It is indeed a "bad number." In East Asia (Japan, Korea, China), the number 4 is bad luck. Which BTW is also why cartoon and video game characters from Japan and Korea don't have 3 fingers and 1 thumb like they do in America.

So, no, it cannot be called the PS4.

I would sign up to pre-order it today if they confirmed the name: PS Half-Ocho.

Seriously, I would.

-Suntan

I'm not privy to the development behind Cell but there hasn't been a lot of action on the Cell front the past few years. In other words, it's quite possible there is some chip that offers better performance within Sony's parameters than a revised/updated Cell. I don't think the Cell architecture has proven itself since 2006, in that it's doing a ton of stuff that a more conventional architecture couldn't.

Yes it would mean that Sony would have to throw out all that work, but sometimes it needs to be done. Look at Apple moving from PPC to Intel, it was hard and caused a lot of pain but had to be done.

That said, any chip Sony uses be some IBM PPC-derivative, which the Cell sort of is.

Regardless, Sony can't afford to rock the boat too much architecture-wise. Having such a drastically new and unique architecture was one (among many) reasons that the console had such a rocky start. Not that I know a hell of a lot about these things, but it seems to me that they have two choices: stick with Cell chips or jump ship to a more standard multi-core. Anything else would scare away third-party development.

I should have made it clearer, but yea, I was saying that I think they will go with a more standard multi-core architecture next time around. It just seems like that is the direction the company is going in general (see: Vita using off-the-shelf cell phone tech).

There were rumors a few years back that they would go with Larrabee but Intel has killed that off in the interim. It'd be madness, anyway.

I think the next Playstation should be named "PS4u". Lol!

Price aside, would the ps4 benefit from an SSD?

Without question.

Gotcha. And yeah, Vita seems like a solid indication of where Sony's head is at. They're also making a concerted effort to reach out to developers and third-party publishers this time around, so all the more reason for them to go with an architecture that developers are more familiar with.

Actually, Cell is still used in many of the top supercomputers, although I don't think it's as popular anymore for new installations.

Point taken that Sony would be in better shape had IBM and/or others taken the architecture forward since the original CBE. But think about the main processors for just about all past consoles - they're all highly customized, and the platform holder always puts a lot of R&D into the system architecture for the platform, which never is leveraged outside the console itself. (In fact, Cell has been by far the most successful "console chip" as far as finding usage outside the console it was designed for.) Sony themselves can contract out and work with IBM again on the next iteration, and bring it up to a modern spec.

Let's say they take something more ubiquitous for PS4, something ARM-based for example, and work off that - now you've got to kluge all the security & anti-hacking stuff that isn't part of a standard chip. That work has already been done for the Cell. So all the platform holders will put in the R&D to design a modern chip with certain design criteria (performance, wattage, etc.). My suggestion is that Sony ought to start with Cell compatibility as one of their design constraints.

Funny thing about that is MS didn't. They only had a multicore processor, which was where PC was already at and heading to anyways.

The big thing was the console Dev's (and a good number of PC devs) didn't have the teams in place to code them. Coding for the Cell with it's SPU's can't be much different then the newest 8 core intel's now a days.

But at the time everyone from Gabe Newell to John Carmack was bitching up a storm because of the need to refit and new hire their programming developers suites and knowledge base. That's a pretty large capital investment many of the dev's probably didn't want to make with a market crash in 07/08.

Now that we have that out of the way, absent some really funky new way of doing things chip side, I don't think we'll be seeing any huge problems with multithreaded coding.

Depends on the data rate of the HDD controller.

In the PS3, there's negligible difference. The biggest plus is it runs the system a tad cooler, which really isn't a justification for the still steep price.

But it could make a huge difference, potentially.

The performance benefit would be noticeable, regardless. Combine that with the lack of moving parts and seek times, and it becomes significant. The OS would need to support TRIM though, to increase the life span of the drive.

Thanks for the informative post. I don't think they would go ARM. It would probably be a PPC-based architecture. But you do make some good points.


The thing with the Cell and the SPEs nowadays, is that in most of what I have read, the Cell almost acts like a co-GPU, doing graphical work that for other platforms is done entirely on the GPU. That's one reason why MLAA methods were initially embraced on the PS3, because the RSX struggles with MSAA and MLAA is seen as superior to QAA. The RSX is a dog aand the Cell is picking up some of the slack.

Hopefully Sony doesn't make the same mistake again, and packs in a more capable GPU.

Better controller

Yeah more ergonomic