The Case for the PS4K | Hacker News Reader

The Case for the PS4K

gamasutra.com

35 pointsfomoz40 comments

The Case for the PS4K reads a lot like the case that consoles are so desperate they're going to caniablize everything that distinguished them from PC.

Consoles once represented predictability, stability and ease of use. Do they have much left beyond the set top form factor, 10 ft UI and a bit more flexibility on how often you're required to be online?

I don't see this evolution of the console market as positive for consumers. But according to the article people will complain online about anything good or bad, so fuck them, right? Using your adult brain to ask if something is in the interest of consumers is not necessary when children online irk you.

>> Consoles once represented predictability, stability and ease of use. Do they have much left beyond the set top form factor, 10 ft UI and a bit more flexibility on how often you're required to be online?

I'd say console still have all of these properties. Also, some of these things like set-top form-factor should not be underestimated. Other important advantages are that the buying experience is much nicer (only 1 online store, or a disc), you can expect any game that runs to at least run well enough for a decent experience, every game is optimized for the control scheme that comes with the console, and initial cost of buying a console is a lower than a capable PC.

Really, the only downside is lower graphical fidelity, and lack of games that are not well suited for controller input.

I have a PS4 and a PC with Steam BPM hooked up to my TV, and while I enjoy both I still can't cease to be amazed by the abysmal experience playing some PC games, it really is hit & miss. Even though my PC far exceeds the system requirements of some games they still run like crap (screen tearing, framerate spikes/drops, crashes), they have poor to no controller support, tiny fonts that are unreadable from the couch, they like to pop up mouse-only launchers, popups, updaters, whatever.

PC gaming can be great but let's not pretend any of the advantages of consoles are suddenly lost because they will have mid-cycle HW upgrades (which I personally think are a great thing, if executed well).

Try a monitor with GSync or Freesync. They sync the refresh rate of the monitor to the framerate the GPU can actually deliver, so you don't get tearing and judder as the FPS drops below refresh rate. Dropping into the 40s or high-30 FPS range is no longer a big deal. It's a game changer, I can't wait for it to make its way into TVs.

Right now GSync is more expensive (custom electronics) and has a better experience (consistent, often wider sync ranges) but long-term FreeSync is going to win because it's a VESA standard (VESA Adaptive Sync) and cheaper. You can often get a FreeSync model for the same price as an old plain monitor, GSync is usually a $200 increase in price.

The points you raise are all true though, the PC experience is not optimized for a 10 ft UI, and the performance tuning is often not as good (although PC is usually pushing a lot more pixels - many consoles render at 720p and upscale, whereas 1080p is standard and 1440p/4K or supersampling are common on PC). The other thing that bothers me is that every PC game is tied to an account somehow, so you can't buy/sell used games.

i stopped buying digital ps4 games because of steam family sharing.

I game on my flatscreen TV so GSync is not (yet) an option ;-)

> you can expect any game that runs to at least run well enough for a decent experience

not really. Even ignoring that decent at this point should be minimum 1080p60. A great many games don't even try for that, and they still experience stutter.

Still I'm going to go home and play WiiU. Although I am upset at Nintendo for messing up the WiiU so badly. Basically a generation with no new Zelda. >:( It doesn't count when it's getting released for the NX at the same time.

I don't want to buy a new console.

>> not really. Even ignoring that decent at this point should be minimum 1080p60. A great many games don't even try for that, and they still experience stutter.

I don't agree about that. Yes 1080p60 is always better, but if a game runs at stable 720p30 I will enjoy it just as much. My experience with PS3 and PS4 games are that with rare exceptions, they all at least provide an acceptable baseline that does not ruin the experience.

The problems I experience with some PC games are of a completely different kind, it's not that I think they should be prettier or run at higher framerates, but that they have glaring technical problems that completely ruin the experience. My last example would be Darksiders 2, a relatively old game that has visuals and game mechanics that don't warrant high system requirements at all, yet even though my PC is far above the recommended specs, has framerate spikes or (with VSync off) screen tearing that gives me headaches basically makes it impossible to play. This game also has a PS4 remake that (arguably) performs below what the hardware should be ablt to pull off (it runs at 30fps instead of 60fps), but at least it's consistent.

Usually you can tweak your way around problems like this, but that's the whole point of a console: not having to do these things...

I mostly side with your thinking, yet the model the author describes does seem a lot more congruous with how we buy cell phones and tablets, and I've been impressed by how game makers have handled that fragmentation. If game makers can target 4-5 year old systems but offer bonuses (faster framerates, 4K compatibility, etc) to new systems, I can see a more phone-like release schedule working for consumers and content creators.

A cell phone is much easier to upgrade on a shorter timeframe. Partially because it's such a bigger part of the average user's life than a console, but mostly because carriers with phone subsidies build in a refresh cycle and set the pace. If anything, the phone lifespan should probably be getting longer as the computational and functional advances from phone revision to revision have slowed down so much.

I probably wouldn't mind such thinking about consoles if, and only if, the manufactures used the cert processes to really held the developers feet to the fire and prevent the version targeting older revisions from slipping in quality on non-graphical aspects. And not letting them just drop the support for an old version like a phone developer because "Oh my god, the APIs aren't identical, and you even want me to test on multiple pieces of hardware WHATEVER WILL I DO!?"

Well, Sony have two things in the pipeline, VR and PS4K so I assume that they are linked. The PS4 never felt like it was powerful enough to drive VR in an interesting way. Sure it just about works, but can you build interesting games with just the power of PS4?

There are games and experiences that people seems to think are interesting enough to play on the GearVR. The PS4 will be more powerful than the phones powering that. Obviously you have to adjust your expectations compared to the Rift but it seems like there can be value for VR platforms that are not as fast as the Rift/Vive minimum specifications.

And it's important to recall that VR works best with >=90fps which requires more horse power.

You do realize the PSVR is 120fps, the PS4 as-is will drive that if the game allows, otherwise is drops back to 90.

My comment was in reference to GearVR.

What do you mean? VR can't be a cinematic experience?

That's a bit of an exaggeration regarding the GearVR. There are interesting games, sure. Just not interesting enough to hold your attention for more than 10 minutes or justify spending so much money on VR. If PSVR offers the same level or experience, then I think this will be the last generation of VR.

> Sure it just about works

It does a lot more than 'just about works'. For example, what is regarded as one of the most visually impressive driving games on current gen consoles - DriveClub, works in VR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNvpT4hsBXI

If I wanted an incrementally upgradable console with games as a service and backwards compatibility, I'd just plug a 360 controller into a computer running Steam. In fact, that's exactly what I do.

SteamOS seems less hostile to users.

In Sony's case upgradable has meant forcibly downgradeable.

Many bought a PS3 solely because it ran Linux, this was removed by an update.

Sony's famous battle over removing 'other-OS' and its shameful tactics against Hotz exemplified a culture of mistrust of end users and disdain for 'off-label' uses.

Sadly it has a long history of this culture, q.v. the 1990s software removal of Digital-Video-in for European digital video cameras - preventing one dumping back to digital tape - removing much of the value.

Sony, itself, has expressed regrets, like the loss of the digital Walkman market with their near unusable proprietary music codecs that took hours to transcode & upload.

Sony, genius engineering hamstrung by legal.

Explicitly, by their vast media catalogue & the piracy boojums entailed.

When the superior Betamax lost the format wars to VHS because of selective media licensing in the 1980s, Sony responded by becoming a media empire.

Sony has broken its own tech ever since.

I think you're really stretching it by saying "many" bought the PS3 because it ran Linux. Many bought the PS3 because it played PS3 games, that's it. Linux on a desktop PC is only a couple percent if they are lucky, no way console people were anywhere near that.

Not most but many.

It was a subsidised platform with great specs, the cheapest linux box available and ran on a tv, never mind free console & media player. A lot of my student contempories bought it solely for Linux as it was the cheapest way to a Linux platform.

I cite the Condor cluster using 1760 PS3s, once the 33rd fastest super-computer in the world. There are many other published Playstation clusters (PS2 also). The cell processor was highly desirable and very powerful for the price.

I will always thank Sony as 'otherOS' allowed me to evangelise Linux & indeed computing to many families who never considered owning a computer. To kids passively consuming games I could show the power to create them with Linux and turn a passion for gaming into a passion for coding - I was not alone in this.

'OtherOS' use was both significant, socially important, and moreover printed on the box when bought - this seems contractual & IMHO Hotz was in the right to re-enable it.

Sony have world leading engineers and tech, that perfection should deliberately be downgraded for non-engineering reasons breaks my heart.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster

Sadly I feel I can no longer own or evangelise Sony devices until Hotz can too - it was quite unjust behaviour.

Hotz did not lose in court, the courts agreed with Hotz, but his exclusion from Sony ownership was coerced against his will, uncivilly, nonetheless.

Yes, the subsidies used to factor into that bigtime. The hardware was sold at a loss, in the expectation of making a profit on controllers/accessories, games, subscriptions, etc. That's no longer the case nowadays - the XB1 and PS4 are both being sold at a profit (or at least not a loss).

I think the trend away from specialty processors with speciality GPUs attached like the Xenon [note: different from Xeon] in the XB360 and the Cell in the PS3, to commodity Jaguar x86 APUs with onboard iGPUs is a big reason behind that. Honestly the XBone is really no different than going out and building yourself a mITX PC on the FM2+ socket, for Linux purposes. Nowadays you're better off with something like the Raspberry Pi for intro-to-computing, although I am a big fan of the ECS Liva series myself.

The Cell is actually a really amazing processor in a lot of ways. It's really more of a SMP system with a ring-topology interconnect than a traditional SMT processor. You have to specifically build your design around it, but if you do so it's really fast. It's actually only recently that general-purpose x86 has caught up enough that it's feasible to emulate it. It would have been a very desirable piece of hardware for HPC, if you had stuff tailored to that architecture.

But in that case wouldn't it be better to just stream games, provided the connection is sufficiently low-latency?

How low latency are we talking about?

At 60Hz, a frame is 16ms, which is already tight.

Yep, so for VR it's practically impossible to stream over the internet.

Stream games from where?

Over the internet? Where do you live, a datacenter?

A box 5-20 feet away? Why not plug it into the screen in front of you? I never really understood the draw of game streaming when you can't use the source device in any way (like Steam, Xbox One streaming).

> I never really understood the draw of game streaming when you can't use the source device in any way (like Steam, Xbox One streaming).

My gaming PC's 30-40ft away from the living room and master bedroom, in what used to be my office. Steam streaming is convenient because I've got plenty of underpowered hardware around, and I can access the PC's power anywhere in the home. It's convenient, and keeps the hardware away from my infant son's increasingly-roving hands.

Stream from where? I use the Steam Streaming with hardware encoding and decoding, literally from one room to another, over gigabit ethernet, and yes, I do get 1080p@60fps. The experience is still not good enough to play fps games or racing games. While I can recommend it to play Dark Souls or something like Dragon Age, you can really see artifacts creeping in from time to time,and I'm also sure the colours lose vibrancy in the encoding process, the overall image looks duller.

Internet, because the parent post to me read like they want to save the money for regularly upgrading the hardware.

I tried that for most of 2013, but ultimately didn't stick with it. Although Steam/SteamOS has proper 10-foot support, individual games tend to not work well in that mode. Many games lack controller support on PC that they have on consoles (many of Valve's own games, the Mass Effect games) or have annoying launchers (the new Elder Scrolls or Fallout games, for example). Some games also run in a borderless fullscreen mode that doesn't work correctly with Steam's Big Picture mode (Mercenary Kings is one example of this).

Consoles, on the other hand, are designed around a ten-foot OS with none of the launcher garbage and gamepad-only controls; the tighter integration sands off these rough edges. Personally, I'd love to have my (substantial) collection of PC games working on my TV, but it's not quite there yet.

I disagree with his assessment of the console lifecycle.

I bought an XBox 360 and a PS 3 at dirt cheap prices around the time the 1 and the 4 came out and these are both great values, still going strong, etc. Today I am starting to want to play Yakuza 6 and the new Hyperdimension Neptunia game but I can save that for later.

The technological story is that (i) console APUs are in a state of technological improvement but that PCs are not (i.e. Intel is obsessed with making a notebook computer that can fit under the door at a hotel and not with improving any product attributes that matter) and (ii) no way Sony can Nintendo get ahead with a more powerful console.

Does the new PS4K play games in actual 4k (not upscaled bullshit)? No. It won't have titles designed to run on 4k screens. It won't be able to have games run at 4k. Sony has already told us this.

This is simply an update for people without a PS4 or for people whose original PS4 breaks (I assume it's just a matter of time based on my and others' PS3 experience). It's a ploy to get more money for essentially the same product. Yes, you'll be able to watch 4k Netflix on it, something you can do with a ~ $100 box nowadays, but other than that the name is a misnomer and the upgrade certainly unappreciated in the gaming community. As others have said, if we wanted upgrades every year or two, we'd stick to PC gaming thank you very much.

Being unfamiliar with the leaks, this article fails to mention what the PS4K's supposed features are.

The thing that people need to realize about this 4K PS4, is that is just the up-converted output. There is NO WAY this new PS4 is rendering anything at a full 4K resolution. You need an extremely powerful desktop to handle such resolutions, even without post processing.

It's sad because Sony has made all the right moves this generation, completely crushing competitors, and now they attempt this incremental nonsense, which was the whole reason consoles were separate from PC's.

The thing you need to realize is that you haven't had a chance to play with the new PS4 or seen its documentation, so you don't know. Rendering at 4K is not difficult at all, the question of course, is how much fidelity you need to sacrifice to enable smooth gameplay in that resolution.

Yes, sure, if you want to render a 4K floating cube. However, a single $700 GTX 980 or even a $1000 Titan X , can't even handle 4K games. Unless you enjoy playing at sub 30FPS levels. PS4 surely isn't fitting either of those monsters in its form factor for $400.

This push of hardware may be for 4k videos and not necessarily 4k games. It may also be for better VR. 4k games are an absurd idea that probably no one even considers tbh.

Plus, it's not even talked about in the article. What motivated your comment?

4K is the whole reasoning behind the "PS4.5" being a thing. It's been mentioned from the very beginning. Yes I agree, it's probably for the VR aspect, but the real issue is going to come when games actually run better on the 4.5 hardware. "Early" adopters get screwed, which defeats the purpose of console hardware.

980s play in 4k just fine for most games on high/ultra

It all depends on settings. I play on a 780 Ti, which performs equivalently to a 970 (but with less memory). Many games can be played at 4K/medium and maintain reasonable framerates (45-60 fps) - FO4, Mad Max, TF2, etc. I had a R9 280 (aka Radeon HD 7950) before that, and it was surprisingly good at 4K too considering its age.

You only need multiple Titans if you insist on 4K ultra with everything turned up all the way. Consoles typically don't do that, it's always a graphical compromise to make the hardware work at some reasonable level of graphical fidelity. And typically they only target a 30fps framerate anyway.

I have to make the same compromises myself - some settings hurt much more than others as you increase the resolution, but you can find some balance that looks good. Anything that can't be played at 4K can be played at 1440p High or 1080p Ultra and upscaled. 4K is pixel-dense enough that some destructive resizing from 1440p isn't a big deal, or 1080p scales perfectly 4:1. Right now most consoles are doing medium-quality 720p and scaling up the output, so ultra-1080p is still a big step forward compared to a console.

Right now the Playstation 4 has 1152 GCN 1.0 cores, so it's between the performance of a Radeon HD 7850 (1024 GCN 1.0 cores) and the 7870 (1280 cores). Something in the 390 or 970-class would probably be reasonable, that's about 80-90% faster. Maybe 980 or 390X-class on the high end, which are 100-110% faster. And remember that on consoles you get the benefit of a single hardware set that you can optimize for, and play low-level micro-optimization tricks with (GCN is great for this).

Nobody knows where the new Polaris/Pascal chips will fall on the scale, but that performance tier will probably be considered a midrange chip at that point.

Do I think Sony will invest that much in a premium hardware configuration? I have my doubts. But it's certainly possible to make an engineered solution that will play 4K@30fps reasonably well inside a console footprint, particularly once we get the node shrink from Polaris/Pascal.

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