Interesting that Sony considers a Blu-Ray drive to no longer be a key feature of the flagship console model. They’re probably not wrong, given the long slow decline in importance of optical media. Feels like the beginning of the end when even Blu-Ray’s primary creator is walking away.
Sony & MS aided in the decline of discs by making a disc drive an expensive add on and having every game need an online connection or day one update to fix bugs.
I'm sure they had a marketing plan of making $90 bucks off a $10 buck disc drive and then go "oh wow, look, only 30% of people spent an extra $100 bucks!"
It also enables them to effectively kill the used game market when you have to buy all games new through their store (or a code). You can’t even share a game with a friend, unless you share their whole account, which is way more friction.
They were also following consumer trends, digital purchases were already getting very popular before they introduced diskless versions of the consoles.
I always wondered why both Sony and MS stuck with discs instead of ie. SDCards like Nintendo - with up to 1TB in size and faster speeds that seems to be a way better fit?
They have sales data and probably analytics on actual usage. Even if the numbers aren't diminutive, they're likely looking to cut retail out of their margins.
I like physical media. A loud subset of gamers like physical media. But when you compare against Steam, it's clear what actually sells.
> But when you compare against Steam, it's clear what actually sells.
And not just "what actually sells", but also that digital games remove a lot of costs while consumers don't necessarily expect a discount.
There are a lot of people who wait for sales and bundles, but IMO that's more likely digital games being able to capture parts of the market that physical games struggled with rather than expecting a discount. I know I would definitely think a lot more before buying games if every title in my Steam library took up the space of even a disk.
Consoles are pricing themselves out of relevance when you can buy a Steam Deck and have access to a vast library of (frequently heavily-discounted!) content for $399.
Pretty much the sole game worth buying a Sony console for (Bloodborne) is playable from end-to-end with PC emulation, even on Steam Deck: https://youtu.be/ItnC4GnHfa0
Especially for Sony, there simply aren't any worthwhile exclusive titles they're putting out. The good/big releases get published on PC now, and the obscure/fandom related stuff like Persona and Senran Kagura bled out of Sony platforms almost immediately. That leaves a small handful of games that can mostly be emulated on PC platforms. Unless your name is "Nintendo", you do not have the publishing power to make a console attractive to wealthy PC owners. Sony literally does not have titles with the same draw, anymore.
That's true, but also fixable. On Steam Deck it doesn't even occur, because you precompile all shaders during the DXVK translation process. It's really a DirectX problem, for the most part.
What's the point of owning a gaming console? You don´t really own the games anyway; as in being able to hand them over to a friend or sell them on a second market.
Why not just stream the gameplay through big mainframes like Nvidia GaForce Now and the likes?
This is still held back by garbage ISPs, which are plentiful in the US. Terrible wifi/modem combos and low data caps put a huge damper on game streaming.
You can also loan, borrow, trade.. And you end up owning the media even when (not if) a network service is down. Even when the service is completely discontinued.
Plug-and-play entertainment. I thought this was kind of well known at this point?
> You don´t really own the games anyway; as in being able to hand them over to a friend or sell them on a second market.
Isn't the same for most PC players who purchase games via Steam and Epic Store? You don't "own" those either. Most consoles at least has optional discs you could gift/sell on second hand market.
> Why not just stream the gameplay through big mainframes like Nvidia GaForce Now and the likes?
Not everyone lives in places where there is 10ms latency to the closest data center. Streaming only works OK when bandwidth is high and latency is low, which is probably less common than you think.
> Not everyone lives in places where there is 10ms latency to the closest data center. Streaming only works OK when bandwidth is high and latency is low, which is probably less common than you think.
You don't need 10ms anything below 40 is good. I get 20ms being 500km from datacenter.
Anyone bemoaning the loss of the disc drive hasn't used a recent gen console with a disc drive. If you buy a game on disc you still have to install it to the internal storage because the disc drive is incredibly slow. But you also have the downside of having to swap the disc when you want to change games. It's completely pointless unless you have super slow internet speeds.
It's not pointless, the disc drive is necessary for a resale market.
I buy game discs on eBay for $30 instead of $70+ on the PlayStation store. And in theory I could also sell them for roughly the same amount when I'm done!
It's useful in one way: used game purchases, re-selling, and trading with friends.
Digital console purchases go on sale too but not (often) for the prices you'll sometimes see on Steam, Gamestop and elsewhere. You can't resell for a few bucks and lend to a friend. There are sometimes features to "play together" but that's it. In a market of $60-90 new games that makes a big difference.
Since consoles are glorified locked-down PCs at this point, and because server-side support eventually ends (which renders units useless for anything that isn't already installed), the market appeal may diminish in the face of an increasingly flexible PC market which has (basically) limitless backwards compatibility. Hardcore gamers this past decade have repurchased some titles multiple times, with PC usually being the last one. I expect Nintendo will take less of a hit from that than Sony/MSFT, though MSFT has its gamepass and leverages overreliance on Windows.
Sony is in a spot. There was speculation that it would style itself as the boutique/high-quality option. I don't think that would be enough, in the end consoles are both more affordable and approachable for average consumers, that is where most of the appeal lies.
I don't care about that vs the super slow install time and having to swap the disc to switch games. My time is worth more than $30. That's barely 2 fast food meals anymore.
How were you expecting a new pro model to achieve that? The backwards compatibility library is being expanded but it's certainly not going to be a hardware bottleneck. The only hardware outcastnis the PS3 architecture and Sony will never touch that hardware ever again.
What I've noticed, and Sony confirmed in their video with Mark Cerny, is that everyone (75%) of people are playing on performance mode, because in Fidelity mode, none of the games are capable of holding 60fps.
The Pro supposedly provides Fidelity mode graphics (or near to) at 60fps.
It's really noticeable too, you either lose the nice visual definition with low dynamic scaling resolutions, and RT, by playing in Performance, or you get horrible frame rates and lots of input lag in Fidelity, but you get RT and nicer visuals.
If I gamed a lot (I don't much at since I have young kids, due to time constraints), and the price was a bit lower, I'd totally get one, but it's not for me, right now.
So I do understand who it's for; put that price tag stings a little.
EDIT: One big annoyance is that if you have a day-1 PS5 like I do, you likely wouldn't have bought the slim version, and if you want a disc drive, you'll have to buy that separate; There's not many people likely to have bought a slim with a drive to have it to swap onto the Pro, in my mind.
I can tell the difference if I'm looking for it on PS5/65"TV but I tend to set it to fidelity for the first session for that "wow" factor on a new game, then I switch to performance.
If I'm into a game, I'm only really going to notice in the cutscenes anyway after I've played for a bit. It looks pretty good anyway, and I'd be much more annoyed by high input lag and low frame rates/stuttering than slightly lower visual fidelity.
Literally only reason I started looking at potentially (but most likely not) getting a PS5 is because Rockstar refuses to release PC versions together with console versions...
I'd like to see now an even smaller PS5 - preferably as small as the XBOX S. I find the PS5 Slim still somewhat bulky, although it's no longer a major problem like the original.
I mean there isn’t really a truely next gen game yet, until GTA6 comes out maybe you may want this. All the games before it are more like upscaled ps4 games.
Framerate seems about double or triple (from 30fps to 60/120fps), it has a new dedicated chip for AI upscaling and seemingly also adds more ray tracing capabilities.
Personally, won't make me pay double for a PS5, but I'm sure more than a few people care about these things.
>There's also the matter of the user experience, the fact that a lot of people have a large catalog of games on the PS platform.
Playnite is no match at all for the PS5 interface, which also handles streaming apps, which Playnite does not from what I can tell. I use both and know very well. The last place a user wants to deal with buggy behavior (bug right now in Playnite where I won't be able to use controller to move to the top bar in Playnite) or a manual touch to get things going the right way (Windows multi-display behavior is insanely bad, you need a Playnite plugin to fix it so things always launch on the TV and not the monitor, but you have to assign this for each new game) is entertainment center UX.
I used to have an Xbox Series X and a gaming Pc. I completely agree with this.
PC gaming usually means more freedom but also more responsibility:
- Windows wants to update random stuff all the time
- Other person can't hear me. 5 different software apps want to install their own audio mixer apps
- Game overlay bars - Steam, Epic Games, Windows, Nvidia, all have in-game overlay bars that have to be disabled
- Drivers, drivers, drivers
- Many others.
On the flip side, I wanted to game at 120 - 240 FPS and PC made this easier. For console games, you have to wait for the game developer to support 120 FPS mode and they never do more than 120 (because most people lack high refresh TV's / monitors anyway)
That's why I'm a big fan of a linux gaming/home theater PC for the living room. A lot less overhead and upkeep. GNOME + Steam Big picture + Plex/Jellyfin/MPV + Retroarch is a pretty nice "couch experience". The system is very clean and simple, using it is a dream compared to windows, even for normies.
Obviously it's not gonna work for everybody and everything. Depending on what you want to do it might be harder to setup. If you have games from platforms other than Steam you are gonna have a worse time. Also, if you insist on streaming you are gonna be limited to 720p on most services due to DRM (though you can delegate that to a smart TV). And if your hardware isn't quite Linux friendly it will probably end up being more trouble than windows.
Particularly if you want to play with a controller (as is common for a living room/couch setup). Windows somehow has the worst controller support out of all operating systems (including mobile OSes) and if it weren't for Valve patching things up with Steam, it'd be almost unserviceable in that category.
I just don't undertand how Microsoft puts up the pithy 'Game Bar' and calls it a day. Put up a proper entertainment center UI for Windows that integrates stores, I shouldn't have to install Playnite or anything, which has its issues. Make it optional like PowerToys if you wanna be unrealistic about not 'cannibalizing Xbox sales' or some such nonsense. I should be able to game from any store or pop open Netflix without dealing with Windows 11's UI at all.
I've been struggling with both Linux and Windows gaming.
Windows gaming is unstable AF, games crash, peripherals don't work, wifi and firewall issues galore. You won't know until you install all 160 gigs.
Linux games work when they work. If its linux compatible or runs on Proton, you are fine. However, not all games are like this. Your favorite 22 year old game, probably wont run, even with proton.
Not sure about XBox but PS5 has rest mode to keep updated. Only uses ~3.5W/hour until it’s actively downloading and installing something which means turning it off is basically pointless unless you’re looking at months of inactivity.
For the general consumer, the target market of PlayStation, 90% of the way there isn't good enough. The cheaper option is 100% of the way there as far as they're concerned.
> For the general consumer, the target market of PlayStation, 90% of the way there isn't good enough.
Oh come on, really? Big Picture is on par or arguably better than the PS4 interface was, and way better than previous generation consoles, and those all sold very well to the "general consumer"...
I think you're just trying to argue for argument's sake here...
I picked 90% as an arbitrary number, so you're literally arguing against a made up number..
My point to the GP was that gaming on PC doesn't have to be "Windows, keyboards and mice" and there's a perfectly good, and polished, store/couch/controller experience available to anyone who wants it, even if consoles are still incrementally better.
I'm a hardcore PC gamer. I have a Switch, which I play Nintendo exclusives on, but other than that there's not a console in my house.
I'm telling you for a fact that almost all the people I interact with day to day RE games don't give a shit how good or accessible PC gaming is now. They're going to buy a console no matter what. That's the general consumer I'm talking about.
I'll come back to this and eat my words if this thing doesn't sell out. I think they've got more money than sense personally.
Consoles have always won on the "time investment :: game playing capability" metric. Sure, it's possible to be savvy with your time and money and build a PC that is better than a PS5 Pro for less money - but learning how to do that will take a lot of time and focus. If you already know how to do that it's a sunk cost and you probably already have a huge steam library anyway.
On the flip side, if you can't build such a machine now, you never have to invest any time in learning by just buying a console. Your money will get you a little less (because of the "console tax") but it's available right now.
I highly doubt you can build a PC that performs better in games than the PS5 Pro for $700. That is a very low price when a $300 RTX 4060 will be a slower GPU than what the PS5 Pro will have. Not to mention that consoles generally are more efficient, and have better visuals at a given compute level, than running games in a general-purpose OS.
With PS5 Pro, we are upgrading to a GPU that
has 67% more Compute Units than the current PS5
console and 28% faster memory. Overall, this
enables up to 45% faster rendering for gameplay,
making the experience much smoother.
It's not clear to me that this will outperform a 4060. Based on some quick Googling, an RTX 4060 has about 50% more teraflops than a base PS5. Seems to me that this is more likely to bring the PS5 Pro up to par with an RTX 4060.
Searching for "gaming PC" on Slickdeals and taking the first few non-laptop deals, I see:
Might be able to go a little lower with a DIY build, switching to AMD, etc. Anyway, the PCs are a little more pricy for sure, but they're also general purpose computers so... that's worth something...
Where are you sourcing the comparison between the PS5 GPU and a 4070ti? The PS5 has 16 Gb of shared ram total and a 4070ti has 16 Gb for just the GPU. I don’t think the comparison is accurate and think that leads to an inflated value proposition in your comment. I have a PS5 and the percentage of games it can currently run at a solid 60 fps is a low percentage, but a 4070ti will consistently be at 60 fps for most cross platform games.
PS5 Pro has a much better GPU than the current PS5. It’s not fair to compare current HW with unreleased hardware, but at release PS5 Pro is going to be quite competitive for a little while.
Sony says "up to 45% faster rendering" in the PS5 Pro so, I certainly think we can compare.
That sets an upper bound for the performance increase we can expect, does it not? I certainly doubt they'd be underselling the perf gains.
45% faster rendering would get it up to about the performance of an RTX 4060 from what I'm seeing.
If that's true, this is certainly a solid upgrade. I don't play a lot of AAA games but my RTX 4060 can do 1080p @ 60-144fps at mostly maxed settings. Whereas stock PS5 certainly seems to struggle to hit that. (If I understand correctly, I could use the magic upscaling crap to get similar results at 4K but haven't had the inclination to mess with it)
They also say with individual rays calculated at "double or even triple the speeds of PlayStation 5. “67 percent more compute units and 28 percent faster video RAM” and the images are with a PS5 @ 30FPS and a PS5 Pro at 60FPS.
So, it’s a different architecture not just a speed bump. That said, I agree in general it’s going to be worse than a 4070ti but every architecture has its quirks.
I think I spent $800 for a Asus with a 3060 last year. Thats 6gb vram, enough to do AI Art and local LLMs. And run every video game.
It comes with a screen, keyboard, and semi-functional OS(Win 11), but you can always install Fedora on it.
The PS5? The article didn't list the vram. It has some video games, unlike a general purpose laptop that has every computer. If you get access to LLMs or AI art, it is at Sony's will and I doubt they are paying the CUDA premium.
I think this is an education thing. Some low-information person just wants a gaming machine. They don't compare, they just go with something trustworthy where they can play fifa with their high school friends. I have a hard time thinking this is anything other than a failure in information. A more informed person would never this.
I don't think so. PS4 Pro launch price was $400 in 2016. It would be at $525 this year. But then, the PS5 Pro is dropping the blu-ray disc reader, so add in $80 more.
$780 != $525
I disagree with the idea of adjusting the price to account for a blu-ray reader, that’s just part of the change in expected functionality over time.
But, I did misread the price, I stumbled across the Australia pricing somehow. And if we ask any Australian I’m sure they will tell us that paying Australian electronics prices is a nightmare.
It is funny that the PS4 and the PS4 pro seem to have had very similar release prices. Although I vaguely remember that they might have had to drop the PS4 price pretty soon after release? It was a while ago, though…
