PS4: will the next-gen start when Microsoft says it does?

@G1GA:

I saw what you did there

@50
“If this is true, Microsoft can squeeze an extra MHz to match or top PS4 raw power. The same goes for the GPU. And they now have 2 months to do it.”

Squeeze an extra MHz? It’s really not that simple.

MS would have been well aware of the PS4 specs (bar maybe the upping of the memory to 8Gb) – same as Sony would have been well aware of the NextBox specs. They will set their machines based on cost and target price they want to sell at. They can’t react quickly to much at this late stage. Upping memory is one of the few changes which would be possible.

Squeezing more MHz out of an existing design is potentially heading towards higher failure rates, lower yields, higher power consumption etc.

@17 You are right it will be very interesting to see how Gaikai develops if they blow it out of the water Microsoft could be left trying to pick up the pieces for years to come just to get on equal footing.

@52 Microsoft is backed into a corner if there specs are what the dev kits say they are. They could potentially have another red ring of death on there hands if they have to push the specs up to much on there dev kits.

@54
They may just be perfectly happy with what they’ve produced too though. They may have something up their sleeve which will give them a different edge, we’ll have to wait and see. Going to be interesting anyway.

@55 It will be interesting I have always been a Sony guy first and then adopted other consoles later. Unless Microsoft truly blows me out of the water it will probably stay that way. Microsoft can only really screw up if specs are really underwhelming and they focus too much on Kinect. The developers will come and with there massive cash pile they will still get the timed exclusive DLC.

“Squeeze an extra MHz”

Console is not a PC where you can overclock it.

and Direct X11 is not an advantage at all. Sony can make a similar tech for each their game that is on par with it without any issue.

x86 is x86.

War has started, it’s not PS3 vs 360 vs PC. It’s PC vs PC vs PC.

#52

Changing the memory was not the nontrivial task you make it sound due to the available module sizes. I think the EG article touched on it.

Upping clock speeds is far, far easier. Not very likely though. As you say, they would be pushing reliability tolerances.

@57 Are you telling me that if they are using the same chip they can’t match the clock speed?

Direct X11 is an advantage since it’s common between PC development and console development. This should drive development costs down and could further enable a developer to spend more time optimizing code.

“Direct X11 is an advantage since it’s common between PC development and console development. ”

LOL. Are you seriously a moron? Direct X 11 is just an API. For your info, PS3 does not had direct X9 at all compared to Xbox 360, in fact exclusives and even some multiplatform titles looked better on the PS3 when development was on par.

Direct X11 is just a tool and nothing more. It does not give any advantage to a console at all because development goes through a dev kit that has certain requirements.

Nothing new. This was done in the past.

“Are you telling me that if they are using the same chip they can’t match the clock speed?”

So you already know what Microsoft or Sony is using as their main CPU? LOL?

Btw, according to leaks, Xbox 720 CPU is weaker then on the PS4. Go figure.

@49 Pretty much everyone got that wrong, not just VG247′s source.
If reports are to be believed, this was a change that Sony adopted not too long before the full reveal. Or maybe they purposely leaked lower specs to catch MS on the hop?

@60 Multiplat titles have been known to look better on PS3, but they have tended to suffer more with frame rate drops and screen tearing, not to mention some AA problems.
Sony had to send people round to some devs to help them get the most out of the system architecture as it was too complicated to get decent performance out of it, pretty much why First party games looked so much better than 3rd party developed titles.

I miss the days, where E3 actually was an Expo about entertainment including surprises.

@58
Sure there are technical issues with memory if it’s not been a consideration already – you’d think with these things they’d look at a number of options and considerations to allow for this sort of change. For memory the more serious issues are cost and availability I’d think.

Upping clock speeds is something done a lot in the PC community, the act of upping is nice and simple, the consequences (especially for a mass market device) too unknown. I can’t see MS risking another RROD situation.

I think that either the MS specs are higher than we have been led to believe or that they are happy they have something else which brings things back to parity.

@60 Since we are getting into calling people names and such.

How about you learn to read you mental midget. Where in my post did I say that I knew what chipset MS picked out? I said:

“Are you telling me that if they are using the same chip they can’t match the clock speed?”

IF…IF… IF. Maybe after reading that 3 times your brain can properly process that.

Regarding the APIs Direct X is an advantage in that there is nothing new to learn. Whatever APIs Sony comes out with will be brand new. Not saying it makes a huge difference but it is certainly not a disadvantage.

@60
You are right about one thing, DX11 is a tool. But guess what, tools do matter. Good tools help you to make good products faster. Is DX11 the best thing ever? I suppose it isn’t. Are developers comfortable with DX11, have good knowledge of how it works to launch great looking games? I guess they do.
More often than xbox owners would like to admit first party game for PS3 look better than the few first party for x360. That’s true.
But do a quick search and you’ll find developers complaining about the pain it was to develop in PS3.
Why? Because the tools weren’t that good.

@62 and @64
Of course consoles and PC’s are different. Although right now they start to look very similar.
The reason I said, and still stand by, Microsoft could squeeze and extra MHz is simple.
Look at AMD current CPU lineup. For the same TDP, say 65W, and number of cores they have the A4-3300 at 2,5 GHz up to the A10-5700 at 3,4 GHz.
Its a huge leap.
Sure the PS4/next Xbox aren’t off the shelf CPU’s and things could be more complicated than this.
But unless Microsoft is already pushing the limits of what it can get with the TDP it needs to avoid RROD, they could still have room for better performance.

That’s the thing with this generation of consoles. They are quite like PC’s, some rules may apply.

UPDATE : Just to clarify, I’m assuming MS and Sony are using the same CPU. If not, the music plays a different tune.

The A4 you mention has 2 cores and the A10 4 cores. This Jaguar based chip in the PS4 has 8 cores. The power needed for the 4 core Jaguar chips are meant to be about 15W too. Am I missing something? Entirely possible

All MS needs is what it will have: timed exclusive CoD content. While that attracts me like a woman with a sore on her lip, there are many gamers for whom that is better than, we’ll, a woman.

….damn that autocorrect and no edit button for mobile.

*well*

To the first part: Yes, the 360 came out a whole year before the PS3 but if it were the other way around and PS3 came out first… Microsoft would have had a full extra year to beef up the 360 and trump the PS3 as far as hardware goes.

To the second part, M$ still has time to change its architecture in the 720. They could have made the Durango to have specs that were good enough to develop games for the 720 and continue to buff the 720 hardware. Then after the 720′s release send out new Durango dev kits with the upgraded hardware. Just remember M$ still has not announced the final spec for the system.

In the end though I bet both Sony and M$ will start off on equal footing with an identical release date and almost exact same architecture for their systems. I think the only difference between the two consoles will be peripherals, first party games and services.

As of right now, I’m leaning towards the PS4 at launch but I will eventually have both.

Hm, this article doesn’t quite fit with my happy fantasy view of the world where my favourite console manufacturer can do no wrong whereas their competitors do everything wrong, so I am a bit annoyed frankly. I think it’s biased.

Is there any other Xbox owner besides myself, that is happy that MS might be squirming a little?

MS has focused on three main IP, Halo, Gears of War, and Fable, and let third party publishers be the reason to own an xbox, rather than first party titles or exclusives. If Sony makes the more powerful box, the next xbox might not be the main box of choice to develop on. This would place MS in an interesting and not so wonderful position, as third party would more likely be porting down to their console.

Ms has focused so much on gadgets and services, and I wonder if they honestly think that releasing a moderately more powerful box with Kinect2 in every game will keep people to their consoles. I hope Superdae is right when he said that the spec for the durango was old and that MS has a more powerful box, because if they dont, then MS must be sweating a bit. As it is im not sure how much difference if any 8gb DDR3 vs 8gb GDDR5 will have when it comes to games. Higher latency vs higher bandwith.

Sony placed MS on the defensive, and MS will need to show why they are better when its announced. Sony held back enough that if MS has any surprises, Sony could possibly still counter. Sony pulled some good moves here.

I think Pat’s article wasn’t biased, he is right. Everyone is talking about PS4, and now MS will have to do something to really impress us. I MS came out today with the matching features of the PS4, we would all be disappointed. We now expect more from MS and they have to deliver, and I honestly dont know if they really will be able to.

It’s interesting to think of Phil Harrison launching the PS3 and now launching the next xbox, maybe thats not a good omen lol.

I just hope that MS pulled a Sega and had multiple variants of spec like they did with the Dreamcast. Unfortunately, sega went with the lower performing spec (PowerVR vs 3DFX), lets hope MS has a rabbit in one of their hats to surprise us all.

Just as an aside (and speaking of Phil) – I feel the PS4 reveal would have been a whole lot more endearing with Harrison leading the charge. Good hardware + Phil = win.

C’mon guys, are we REALLY talkin’ bout RAW power ? Haven’t we learned NOTHING from the previous generations ? SNES over Genesis. Saturn over PS1. Xbox over PS2. PS3 over 360. And so what ? The “less” powerful platforms always “won”. Games is truly what matters. I’m an Xbox owner (and recently a Vita, too), and of course I’m intrigued, and excited, about PS4. But anyone here really think that one platform will have such a leap from the another one ? I really don’t think so… The math here is simple: Do you want some new and interesting IPs (doesn’t matter it takes 4, 5 years to be completed)? Cannot be w/o God of War, LBP ? Go PS4. Wanna play Halo, GoW, and a decent online multiplayer ? Go Xbox. I think is simple as it sounds. Besides that, of course we’ll have some DLCs exclusives here or there, but the games will looks like pretty much the same thing. Now what I think MSoft will HAVE to show is some new IPs for this generation… and I’m pretty sure they’ll. And, I don’t know, but MS is too quiet for a long time now… something big is coming. C’mon, April 26…

Firstly “majority of UK consumers won’t know” is maybe as puerile as “the next-generation doesn’t start until we say it does” but it’s nowhere near as arrogant, secondly the next-generation starts when the first next-gen console launches (which is the wiiu depending on who you ask, unless you’re asking a ps fanboy) not when Sony says it starts, seems you still haven’t learnt from Sony’s mistakes, I mean you even quoted them in your article as I just did for posterity…

This article reminds me of another atrociously biased article from this website, http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/01/forward-thinking-sonys-risks-with-unique-ideas-pays-off/comment-page-1/#comments I was worried Cullen had returned (you can imagine my relief), this kind of opinion piece has no place on a website like this, you are just shamefully looking for hits.

Wow Pat, you’ve upset a lot of people with this article.

^ thats not a lot. We are still under 500.

@76: That’s probably what he was aiming for, we all know he can do much better. I really don’t like gonzo articles like this one.

This is all for naught if they release at the same time…just because Microsoft didn’t announce it first doesn’t mean anything since they can both hit the market Holiday 2013…plus we’ve all known they were coming for years now, so it’s not like Sony’s announcement surprised the market, it was a matter of when not if they would reveal it in the first half of 2013…

Plus Sony wasn’t even ready to show the actual console…just shows you how much of a rush job they had to put together in order to basically just say “FIRST!” in terms of announcing their hardware…