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PS4

We're only three months into 2022, and it's already turning out to be a very strange year for console gaming. Ii of the big platform makers seem to be flirting with the idea of releasing upgrades to their existing devices. Microsoft came out publicly in favor of upgrading the Xbox I, and a new report today says that Sony is planning on doing something very similar.

In a report on Kotaku, numerous unidentified developers accept confirmed that an upgraded console is currently under development within Sony. Colloquially called the "PS4.five," this device will take an upgraded GPU aimed at supporting both college frame rates for the PlayStation VR and 4K gaming on UHDTVs.

PSVR Patrick Klepek, the reporter who broke this story, has a long track record of delivering large stories that plough out to be truthful (like the Xbox 180 and the Infinity Ward fiasco). Not only does Klepek accept multiple sources for this revelation, but Kotaku's Jason Schreier and Stephen Totilo were able to independently verify this information equally well. In that location's no doubtfulness in my listen that this machine is being worked on internally — I'yard just unsure whether or not information technology will e'er see the low-cal of mean solar day.

1 of the sources for the original story felt that the PS4.5 was an exploratory device, and that makes a lot of sense to me. Sony should absolutely exist researching the possibilities of an upgraded PS4, and getting feedback from trusted developers. That doesn't necessarily translate directly into a retail product, so I advise coming to this with a fair amount of skepticism. Until we have more information, nosotros shouldn't expect any new hardware in the immediate future. For all we know, nosotros might never meet this come to fruition.

The idea of major hardware revisions for consoles might look compelling on paper, but the reality of the situation is much more problematic. Every bit I pointed out earlier this calendar month when the news hit about the potential Xbox One upgrades, the compatibility problems are nontrivial.

Perfect backwards compatibility is not necessarily guaranteed on newer hardware, and releasing games exclusively for the improved panel will fragment the market. Later all, most developers want to be able to sell their games to the entire install base of operations — not only a small fraction of early adopters. It's a tightrope that needs to be walked twelvemonth subsequently twelvemonth, and I don't envy the applied science teams tasked with pushing the hardware frontwards without breaking anything along the mode.

As information technology stands, I'm tentatively optimistic about a hereafter in which consoles become ameliorate internals every year of ii, just I desire to meet the real-globe implementations before I can fully get on board. I've been bitten by the death of older iOS apps time and time again, so I discover information technology difficult to be blindly enthusiastic here. Unless the Xbox and PlayStation teams take found a clever solution for perfect compatibility three, iv, five iterations down the road, expect to see many original releases sacrificed for better hardware.