PlayStation 4 Pro (Neo) & PS4 Slim Thread

[Dr. Zoidberg]

PlayStation 4K reveal date set for 7th September

Live from New York, 8pm UK time.

PlayStation 4K will finally be unveiled on 7th September at a special event in New York.

We'll be reporting live - the action will kick off at 3pm local time - so 8pm back here in the UK.

Sony's invitations for the event, which is titled "PlayStation Meeting", simply promise "details about the PlayStation business" but PS4K's reveal is long overdue.

We've known about the console, codenamed Neo, for months. The machine will support gaming in 4K as well as the playback of 4K media.



We know PS4K's technical specs, at least as of April, and how Sony plans to allow PS4 and PS4K to co-exist. All games will run on both machines, for example, although PS4K will give titles a visual boost.

We also know support for PS4K can be included within games releasing from next month - and that developers have known about the console for some time.

But Sony has held back on saying anything about the console publicly, other than a brief, glib admission of its existence to the Financial Times designed to clear the air before its non-appearance at E3.

Finally, then, we should hear about PS4K from Sony itself next month. Has the company managed to squeeze any more power into its box to combat Microsoft's announcement of an even beefier Xbox, code-named Project Scorpio? Does Sony have a AAA-title underwraps to showcase its new machine?

We don't have long to wait.

Source: Eurogamer

[Dr. Zoidberg]

PS4 Slim leaks online - first pictures

We've verified the device is real - watch it boot.

UPDATE: We can confirm that the PS4 Slim is real.

In our bid to confirm the veracity of the images that leaked online last night (more on that below), Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter visited the person who claimed to have bought the console from Gumtree.

The video, below, shows the PS4 Slim booting up.



We also have our own image of the PS4 Slim. We'll have more on the console soon.



ORIGINAL STORY: The PlayStation 4 Slim has leaked online.

The new console was first spotted on auction website Gumtree, before being picked up by NeoGAF.

Twitter user shortmaneighty2, who spotted the Gumtree listing, and NeoGAF user Venom Fox have posted multiple images of the console, showing it boxed, unboxed and compared to the original PS4 console.







Sony will hold an event on 7th September in New York, where it is set to announce the more powerful PS4, codenamed Neo, and this PS4 Slim.

Eurogamer understands the PS4 Slim will be released shortly after this event, later in September. We don't know how much it will cost, however, but the expectation is it will be cheaper than the original PS4.

Source: Eurogamer

[melancholy]

I can't imagine how completely pissed Sony is right now over this leak.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

The Sony conference starts in 7 1/2 hours.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Sony announces PlayStation 4 Pro for November 2016, priced $399/£349

Sony has announced the Playstation 4 Pro machine at the PlayStation Meeting 2016. It will be released 10th November 2016, for £349/$399. This is the PlayStation Neo machine rumoured for so long.



Sony's chief console maker Mark Cerny said PS4 Pro has "more than doubled" the GPU power of the standard PS4, and that it uses AMD's Polaris architecture. The clock-rate of the CPU has been boosted but he didn't say what to.

The PS4 Pro will have a 1TB hard-drive.



Sony's message with the PS4 Pro was clear, and repeated: it is a this-generation machine for people pursuing 4K gaming, virtual reality and HDR gaming - the hardcore technology enthusiast. By naming it PS4 Pro, Sony is declaring the generation it belongs to.

PS4 Pro will play existing PS4 games and Sony is working on ways to transfer your data across. Cerny talked about "forward compatibility" and showed how existing games can and are being patched to look better on PS4 Pro. He said over a half-a-dozen first-party games have "forward compatibility" patches in the works.

Sony also finally unveiled the PS4 Slim with a 15th September 2016 release date and price of £259.

UPDATE: Sony has confirmed the specs of the PS4 Pro.



The specs match the leaked specs we reported on earlier this year, and confirm the 4.2TF GPU.

Of particular interest is the surprising lack of a 4K Blu-ray player in the PS4 Pro, which means the focus of the device, clearly, is on games. While the PS4 Pro does not support 4K Blu-ray discs, it does provide auto-upscaling for standard Blu-ray discs.

Sony said at launch you can download patches for games, such as Uncharted 4, which are "enhanced" when playing on the PS4 Pro.

Future releases that have PS4 Pro enhancements built-in include Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Days Gone.

But what if you don't have a 4K telly? Sony insisted the PS4 Pro will still benefit you. All games will run in 1080p resolution, Sony said, and some will run in a higher or more stable frame-rate.

Meanwhile, Sony released a few images of the PS4 Pro. They're below.







Source: Eurogamer

[melancholy]

Hear that? That's the sound of Microsoft literally shitting themselves at that price. They kept telling us how the Scorpio was going to have the price tag of a 'premium product', and considering the XBOne already launched at $500, I can see the sales just slipping away trying to complete with another $400 rival.

[pixel]

If my computer wasn't from 4 feet away from my TV, I'd be all about that PS4 Pro. $400 isn't a bad price for that hardware, but god only knows how much a 4K TV is these days

[Dr. Zoidberg]

4K TVs have dropped a fair bit in price. Ones with HDR are still expensive though.

[Matisfaction]

Kinda weird how there's a backwards compatibility mode like the Xbone has but it's PS4 to PS4 instead.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

The Witcher 3 won't be getting a Pro patch because CD Projekt Red are too busy with their new game.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

The game looks fun.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Hawq]

PS4 Pro Running Some Games Worse than Original PS4

Now that the PS4 Pro is out, it is demonstrably effective at making original PS4 games look great with its 4K upscaling and HDR processing. However, while its image output is impressive, it seems that Sony’s new console is suffering when it comes to actual performance. Recent tests by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry has found that a number of PS4 titles suffer from screen tearing and dropped frames when played on a PS4 Pro, issues that the games in question do not have when played on the original PS4 console.

“PlayStation 4 Pro testing continues at Digital Foundry and while impressions remain positive for what this system is capable of – especially when paired with a 4K display – there’s an aspect of platform performance affecting some games that we find concerning,” Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter writes. “Several titles are running at lower performance levels than the base PlayStation 4 versions, presumably owing to higher resolution support. As we understand it, this constitutes a fail according to Sony’s technical requirements for developers, so it’s fair to say that we were not expecting to see this issue manifest in completed launch software.”

The high profile of some of the affected games – Watch Dogs 2, Skyrim, and The Last of Us: Remastered – is egregious, to say the least. It’s especially surprising to find a Naughty Dog title in the mix, considering its strong track record for visual fidelity.



“It’s certainly not a universal issue that applies to all software (many of the upgrades we’ve seen so far have been tremendous) and the extent of the issue varies not just from title to title but also from scene to scene in affected releases,” Leadbetter explains. “However, the bottom line is this: for games like Skyrim, The Last of Us and Mantis Burn Racing, gameplay will actually be smoother overall on base PlayStation 4 hardware. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a little more complicated: we find that some scenes play at a noticeably lower frame-rate, while others hand in more consistent performance overall.”



“For 1080p support, the Pro down-samples the 4K mode for all of these titles, offering enhanced image quality via super-sampling,” he adds. “However, the areas where performance is degraded remain impacted when running on a full HD display – meaning that there’s nothing that Pro owners can do to get a smoother experience overall on these titles. In fact, the base PlayStation 4 will run these releases at a higher performance level overall at the expense of some image quality.”



Digital Foundry is still trying to get to the bottom of why this issue is occurring and is continuing to test the hardware. After presenting its findings, a Sony spokesperson responded, “We are aware of the issue and currently investigating.”
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