3 ms·

I'm sure this will sell just fine, but in the history of consoles there has never been less incentive to upgrade. It just doesn't feel like the upgrade delivers

I'm sure this will sell just fine, but in the history of consoles there has never been less incentive to upgrade. It just doesn't feel like the upgrade delivers anything tangible for the average person. Many games I want to play these days barely take full advantage of the base PS5, let alone needing more hardware. A lot of cheaper titles aren't even bothering to take advantage of the PS5 over the PS4. There are some really stand-out PS5 titles like Ratchet and Clank that look amazing, but they are relatively few and far between and they don't really leave you wishing for "more power". Sure, this will let you play some games at 8k instead of 4k. Or this will let you get more FPS in 4k. If that is enough to upgrade, great. But I bet 99% of people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference in most real world situations unless they were staring at the two systems side by side with magnifying glasses. There's just no big obvious difference in most games.

diggan 2y ago
> But I bet 99% of people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference in most real world situations unless they were staring at the two systems side by side with magnifying glasses I don't think this matters at all. The market of people who uses consoles + care about graphic fidelity / fps count are basically like the audiophile community today, eating up what the companies are pushing on them.
- makerofthings 2y ago
  I know a lot of console fanatics like that and they all like to keep games on disc, shunning digital. The new ps doesn't seem to have an optical drive so I'm really not sure who they're aiming this at.
  - Sander3Utile 2y ago
    It does have an optical drive but it is sold separately
paxys 2y ago
I doubt they anyways expect the majority of existing PS5 owners to rush to upgrade. Mid cycle console releases are done for the enthusiast crowd and the holdovers from the last generation.
pawelduda 2y ago
You are grossly overestimating what PS5 can do in regards of 4k, let alone 8k (which nowadays is used by very small percentage of enthusiasts). 4k native is not something most of the modern releases target on PS5, perhaps in some specific moments when the resolution is dynamic and not much is happening on the screen. Or if you're playing at a locked 30 FPS, which is a major tradeoff.
- ageitgey 2y ago
  Not disagreeing with you that many heavy PS5 games rely on dynamic resolution to hit a good frame rate. And for some people, that's enough reason to upgrade. They want they best available no matter what. But my point is that a holding a solid 4k vs dropping down from 4k to 2k upscaled when the action ramps up is barely visible to most people sitting 6 feet from a TV. It's diminishing returns. And what does 8k bring if you don't have a 200in tv? Can you even see the difference? Digital cameras went through a similar cycle. Since about 2008, high-end digital cameras have been good enough that the pictures from them still look great when produced by a good photographer. There has been a lot of sensor improvement since then around dynamic range, etc, but it is not super obvious in a sales demo. Digital camera sales have totally fallen off a cliff and now what sells now is software improvements on cell phones that make it easier to take good pictures with no thought, not drastic hardware improvements. I think that consoles are starting to hit a point where they are powerful enough for the kinds of games that we currently have the resources to build. Making the graphics even "better" requires an enormous development investment that only pays off for the few most popular blockbuster games. It's hard for a console maker to find compelling demonstrations of why they need more power right now. Like with cameras, miniaturization and new form factors is really interesting. Nintendo is killing it with the Switch despite the dinosaur hardware. It's a lot easier for them to demo improvements for a Switch 2 because the Switch isn't at the point of "good enough" yet for many types of games. Of course computers will get more powerful and console development isn't done forever or anything like that. But it feels like the hardware is currently a bit ahead of the software maybe for the first time in history which makes the value of a upgrade tenuous for many consumers.
  - pawelduda 2y ago

diggan 2y ago

> But I bet 99% of people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference in most real world situations unless they were staring at the two systems side by side with magnifying glasses I don't think this matters at all. The market of people who uses consoles + care about graphic fidelity / fps count are basically like the audiophile community today, eating up what the companies are pushing on them.

makerofthings 2y ago
I know a lot of console fanatics like that and they all like to keep games on disc, shunning digital. The new ps doesn't seem to have an optical drive so I'm really not sure who they're aiming this at.
- Sander3Utile 2y ago
  It does have an optical drive but it is sold separately

paxys 2y ago

I doubt they anyways expect the majority of existing PS5 owners to rush to upgrade. Mid cycle console releases are done for the enthusiast crowd and the holdovers from the last generation.

pawelduda 2y ago

You are grossly overestimating what PS5 can do in regards of 4k, let alone 8k (which nowadays is used by very small percentage of enthusiasts). 4k native is not something most of the modern releases target on PS5, perhaps in some specific moments when the resolution is dynamic and not much is happening on the screen. Or if you're playing at a locked 30 FPS, which is a major tradeoff.

ageitgey 2y ago
Not disagreeing with you that many heavy PS5 games rely on dynamic resolution to hit a good frame rate. And for some people, that's enough reason to upgrade. They want they best available no matter what. But my point is that a holding a solid 4k vs dropping down from 4k to 2k upscaled when the action ramps up is barely visible to most people sitting 6 feet from a TV. It's diminishing returns. And what does 8k bring if you don't have a 200in tv? Can you even see the difference? Digital cameras went through a similar cycle. Since about 2008, high-end digital cameras have been good enough that the pictures from them still look great when produced by a good photographer. There has been a lot of sensor improvement since then around dynamic range, etc, but it is not super obvious in a sales demo. Digital camera sales have totally fallen off a cliff and now what sells now is software improvements on cell phones that make it easier to take good pictures with no thought, not drastic hardware improvements. I think that consoles are starting to hit a point where they are powerful enough for the kinds of games that we currently have the resources to build. Making the graphics even "better" requires an enormous development investment that only pays off for the few most popular blockbuster games. It's hard for a console maker to find compelling demonstrations of why they need more power right now. Like with cameras, miniaturization and new form factors is really interesting. Nintendo is killing it with the Switch despite the dinosaur hardware. It's a lot easier for them to demo improvements for a Switch 2 because the Switch isn't at the point of "good enough" yet for many types of games. Of course computers will get more powerful and console development isn't done forever or anything like that. But it feels like the hardware is currently a bit ahead of the software maybe for the first time in history which makes the value of a upgrade tenuous for many consumers.
- pawelduda 2y ago