Greatness awaits? Maybe not.

So reports are in that the rumored PS4K/PS4.5 is a thing that is probably happening. Its pretty much confirmed by now with some seriously strong reports coming out. I don't think it takes a genius to figure I'm not exactly happy about it. However its not just that I'm not happy over it. I mean I figured at some point a PS4 slim would happen, and that would be alright. The "screw early adopters" argument is one with some merit, but it doesn't travel far. You practically screw yourself over by being an early adopter of... well, pretty much any common appliance I can think of off the top of my head. Still its hard not to be sour from within that position, and this is a unique case where early adopters are screwed over not by missing a better bundle or a slightly more efficient model, but by a model that stands to potentially play games better and may cannibalize their console's side of the market. Now that being said, this is all predictions and counter-arguments to gossip. We still haven't heard anything from Sony about this PlayStation 4 "Neo", but it looks to be pretty much confirmed. Still they could potentially settle a lot of unrest at E3... but, It'll take a lot to swing my mind from some pretty bad predictions I have about this situation.

So for starters let me stress something: No this is not an answer to your prayers on having a console system that is up to par to make up for the supposed "lack-luster" and late release. For starters this isn't a massive gap, and there probably never will be one in a conventional sense (VR might do something for you though). If you read through the report carefully you'll not only notice similar architecture, but also the blatantly stated regulations that include there is to be no extra features, every game must work on both systems, and you could even put the system to use by a mere patch. This isn't exactly aiming to dethrone the smug PC master-race. It might let you play movie in 4K for the few that even have a television for that, and it can bump up games as if it were a remastered edition of... well a game that should have been running like that to begin with, but I'll get to that rant later. Basically this isn't a big overhaul worthy of double dipping from what it looks like.

Not as much of an upgrade with the Neo, so no.

However the real problem comes in with the fact that this is mandatory double system development, and developers aren't happy about it (as both Dice and a supposed "report" indicates). It'll be more time consuming and costly, which naturally sounds right and makes perfect sense. There have been two counter-arguments: 1) Oh yeah, so devs are whiny for getting what they asked for. They blamed the hardware, and now they're getting what they wont (False, they aren't allowed to go very far with the hardware and are making for the old as previously discussed). 2) How is this any different than them doing PC? I don't get why this would be such a big fuss? Because they barely do it well on PC to begin with, or even outsource them. On top of that, this effects console-only teams. Even a porting master still has an addition mode they must sink time, testing, and thus money into. As I answered in red, the arguments don't hold up. The saddest bit about even bothering to argue at all, is that this is honestly bad for us in the end. If developers really could just tap into a stronger system, they'd obviously be happy with that breathing room and you wouldn't hear a lot of crap from them. Fact is though they really will be forced to spend more time with this. And how does time management look in this industry right now?

Lovely.

When developers had trouble in the past, it meant that either the game would be cancelled, or they simply had problems and finally dealt with it. In the worst case scenario you got Spyro Enter the Dragonfly, but that was a very rare case on consoles of an older era. Now games are both more complicated, and consumers are easier to exploit, so difficulties, poor management, and irresponsible decisions get the penalty passed onto us. They say they can just patch it later, make us pay extra for content that was made alongside the game, and we're also seeing some pretty backwards steps in user accessibility to (especially in regards to the online only trend of now). If sony forces another harsh block in their path, EA isn't going to just delay the next football game, its going to simply release in more of a hurry than it already is. If it costs them more, maybe they can make microtransactions they already through in there a little more tempting by making it harder to achieve them by organic gameplay means. Oh and now, a game like Doom that said "we're doing 1080p/60fps" might be changing their tune to "Screw it, only the new version gets it because that was easier, and we're not working as hard to get that on the original PS4". Of course that's even assuming a team would dare use the Neo for 60fps.  In the current trend, its all about sacrificing everything else and I doubt they'll use the extra hardware for 60FPS when they can make shadow 20% more real instead. Halo 5 lost its split-screen multiplayer for the first time in franchise history over poor compromise decisions (admittedly it involved 60fps, but it cost an entire function and way of playing the game). Killzone Shadow Fall decided their campaign should be in 30fps because they'd rather push on graphics harder despite the fact that it'll just look outdated in 5 years anyway. This was the attitude throughout PS3's lifecycle as well, meanwhile there are PS2 and older games that held a better framerate. The irony is this is all coming from someone who could care less about 30 vs 60fps, I only know whether or not the framerate is solid. However the fact remains that this isn't a hardware problem, its a priority, polish, and accessibility problem. Telling devs "Here's this new hardware you MUST code and test for before your tight release schedule" is just going to make things worse, not better.

So if you're wondering "How can this cannibalize on the old game's market if they aren't allowed to develop far from it" your answer lies in the above rambling. Its also the Neo's market you have to worry about to though since bugs will persist through to that version, but it'll more likely fall apart on the older side for obvious reasons. We live in a weird time in which devs want to comspromise on everything for the sake of making their games look slightly better, and they'll cut corners and lie about any other efficiencies to save time and money in achieving that. The new PS4s might become the new 30fps standard, whereas old PS4s get sloppy port jobs like what happened with Black ops 3 or Advanced Warfare on the PS3. They wont care to fix the pop-ins, the glitches, the muddy textures that barely load in, the square jagged bits bleeding onto textures, because that wasn't the version worth their efforts. You might not go missing any features, but nothing stops them from making the old version look as repulsive, artificially obsolete, and lazily done as possible. Then have I even mentioned indies? Indies might start to fade and revert back to the PS3 type releases rather than the improvements we're seeing now. They might be used to the PC platform, but their optimization record is mixed, and they don't always see much of a reason to come to consoles as it is. So when you put up this barrier, well you just broke that whole "we made this much easier and welcome to indies!". Meanwhile some are behind to the point where they're launching badly optimized games from a test kit reference (looking at Firewatch here), since that's cheaper than buying a normal PS4... so why would they take the time to optimize across two separate PS4 models? Oh, and then there's VR.

Will they still thrive on PlayStation after this?

The PlayStation VR was looking to be around a $600 investment for everything efficient aside from the console from what I can loosely recall (so don't hold that against me so much if I'm off by $100 or so). That's an expensive opening investment for a fairly competitive, mysterious, and unsure market. This is also by a company that doesn't have a pleasant history behind their peripherals. The move, the eyetoy, that weird book thing, and 3D television were all things that never went far at all. That wasn't to say they were bad, the Move was kind of awesome, and I'm sure 3D was fun for the right games. However things just weren't there, and now sony has even advanced that record to abandoning an entire console alongside its accessories like PlayStation TV. However their VR looks promising. Its something that's interesting a lot of people, and Sony has a lot of upcoming games, tests, and studios doing work on it. It sounds like it could have actually gone somewhere, which is why I completely blew off this rumor of the PS4.5 back when it surfaced. Sure they were experimenting with future console bits, but why would anyone be stupid enough to release an adjusted console when they need to sell their fans on VR? Why would they now tell people the best exlerience from Sony now costs around $1000 while simultaneously hurting their consumer trust? Might as well get a damn good gaming PC for that price. Well they seem to be up for pulling this move, but I'm still wondering how they were this stupid to do something like this!? Well, unless they have a super convenient bundle that puts them at a big loss, we might be seeing one side cannibalize the other.

So basically this topic seems really bad and kind of depressing to me if I were to be honest. I want to turn away and just keep my mouth shut and pretend it doesn't exist until an official announcement, yet I find myself compelled to talk over and over again about just what this could mean. Despite some nice regulations that sound good on paper, this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen if modern trends are anything to go by. I haven't even brought up the "what ifs" on how this might just set the trend alongside Nintendo's 3DS issues, and may even linger to next generations and just make console gaming as a whole a bit... well, more useless really. Maybe Sony can still surprise me with some good news in the end, but as far as I'm concerned this really puts a damper on an otherwise fantastic year for gaming. I feel like this stands as a potential danger to VR, indie gaming, and the quality of gaming in general. Well at least even if this does wreck some stuff up, we got plenty of good games to come out like normal on the PS4, including the awesome and new Ratchet & Clank.



Leaving this on a happier note.