$700, and the side by sides look barely different, from my perspective. The chat seemed to have the same opinion.
I don’t see the point in this. I’m already planning to get a PC (and a Radeon 7900 XTX will always outperform a PS5), so it’s just more money for no benefit.
Sony’s problems are twofold:
- They are charging an absurd amount of money for a game console
- They are selling a game console that has practically no first party games for it.
If they had plenty of the latter, they could weather this. But there are still games releasing for the PS4, and they have had 1, maybe 2 PS5 releases that would qualify as first party this year (that don’t bubble down to PC).
I love the price. At $700 it’s just what I needed to convince my friend who was holding out for the pro to move on to PC. $700 buys a pretty decent AMD card nowadays. Shit for $800 we’re talking decent refurbished gaming PCs.
If consoles want to remain relevant in the age of the gaming PC, they have to try harder than being locked-down gaming PCs.
Free and simple multiplayer, subsidised hardware, and physical game ownership were staples of most consoles for years but now the urge to turn every device into an “everything machine” has kneecapped the very purpose of these devices.
At best, these are slightly less hassle and slightly more social than a gaming PC. At worst, they’re as anti-social and user-hostile without the cost benefit that once made them genuinely preferable.
Sony will try to drag this thing out at least one more generation. If that goes like this one–and it has room to actually go worse–then Sony will have to make some hard decisions.
At the beginning of this generation, I planned to buy a used PS5 when the Pro version was coming. I did not know that the PS5 would have almost no games for me (especially because they released the big ones for me on PC), the base PS5 would cost even more, and most people will not upgrade to the Pro because of its absurd pricing (note because it’s not worth it, but because the market for it is likely very niche).
I guess I will just skip Sony’s platform for this generation.
Wouldn’t it be funny if like no one bought it
Like that’s obviously not gonna happen but like wouldn’t it be funny
Would be funnier if only scalper bought it abs couldn’t unload them.
I thought the same thing about Concord, and then no one did buy it, and that too was funny.
Things like this actually makes me sad because you know who to blame for the games failure yet you also know who will take the blame and who will leave with a golden parachute.
I try to focus on the part where the thing they were building was inherently bad for video games, so this makes it less likely for it to happen again.
Not worth it. The PS5 games catalogue is piss poor compared to when the PS4 Pro released.
Frankly that’s just thinking with only PS5 exclusives in mind.
A lot of people, probably the vast majority, don’t get an Xbox or PlayStation for the exclusives. They just get one because they don’t own or want a gaming PC and look for the easier more accessible solution.
So to them the catalogue is just fine because they don’t get the console just for the exclusives.
If what you said was true, Xbox would be in a much better position though, COD and EAFC are there too after all.
I’m not saying that exclusives didn’t play a part entirely, but even when the PS5 was hard to get by it was still cheaper than the Xbox that were in stock (where I live).
Despite the low amount of exclusive games it would still be an easy pick to get a PS5 instead, if people decided to upgrade at some point. And since a lot of cross-platform/console games were still coming out on the old consoles for a while there was little reason to get an Xbox instead of a PS if they wanted a new console right then right there.
I dunno I haven’t really been excited for any of the games released over the last couple years. It seems like nothing but legacy games like COD/Battlefield/Destiny and a few gems like Elden Ring. Most of these big studios seem to be laying off employees or shutting down instead of releasing new games. Part of this is just me being burnt out on gaming, but with so many studios struggling, it seems like it’s more than just me feeling like this.
Thing is that isn’t true for everyone, I am done with games like CoD and FIFA, but a huge majority of players is not. Hence why these games keep selling just fine.
Kinda hard to make a solid catalogue when you follow the live service trend and your projects flop one after another.
That’s a lot of money for a generation that just isn’t worth it.
So far I’ve traded in all my Playstations for the latest versions. But this price-hike and no disc-drive are a dealbreaker. Guess I’m going for a new gaming PC and a Steam Deck now. Too bad Sony, you messed up.
Are there enough exclusives to justify buying one? 🤔
A base PS5 maybe if you like the franchises and want a hassle-free “just gaming” experience on a console. Many of them exist on PC nowadays though. And 800€ for a console is just robbery
concord
Too soon
If you have to ask
This generation is already pretty weak, and it was hard to justify the original PS5 which, after a whopping four years, still has too few exclusive titles to justify the increased price point. Now they are asking for $700 (and they increased the controller’s price, too), but there’s still too few next gen titles, and it doesn’t even come with basic features like a disc tray and a vertical mount. Not even a better form factor, it’s the same old ugly case, but somehow bigger.
The only premium thing about this thing is the price tag. $700 dollars but €800, because apparently they are dominating the European market so much that they don’t even have to try to sell it at an honest price point. With all those money you can just buy a PC. I honestly don’t think that many people who are interested in the console market (which, historically, has always been a “low budget” entry into modern gaming) would be willing to spend so much money on one.
I guess we circled back to the PS3 era, when Sony got drunk with overconfidence. Only, this time they’ll get away with it because their main competitor is somehow even more incompetent than them. I wonder if the handheld PC market will pose a threat to their dominance in the future - at the moment, it’s a very small niche.
It’s just so sad. I remember back when the PS4 Pro came out and you could trade in your old PS4 for a little on top to get a Pro at GameStop. It was a night and day difference going from a base PS4 to a Pro - and merely for the price of the console, 3 random games off a list of curated games, two controllers, iirc, and 100€. It was straight gas for me.
Paying 300€ on top - realistically even more because you’re not gonna sell a used PS5 for 500€ nowadays - plus the money for a disc drive and a vertical stand would set you back like 900-100€. Completely out of their minds
$700 is too much money. Especially if you already have a PS5.
$200 extra for reflections between cars in GT7 or slightly better shadow resolution is not worth it IMO.
My PS5 already collects dust as it is, since there are next to no games that actually make use of its hardware that I cannot already buy on PC to run at higher settings.
I agree! I wanted one for another room in my house but at this price point no way I am doing that!!!
With the last gen and the current gen being basically PC’s what not just go the PC route at this point. I am kind of at that point right now
If you are the only one playing the PlayStation, you can do remote play via the computer, phone ,or even from a PS4.
That’s actually why I went with the Xbox this cycle. I got a series x for the large TV and a $200 (on sale) series S for the smaller one (although we usually just use a computer monitor and play side by side on the couch).
You might look into the mini PC form factor and throw Bazzite on it for a Steam console-esque experience.
I have a few of these running HoloISO running around the house to stream graphic intense games from my main rig and to run smaller games locally. Runs fine with a 680m iGPU and I never have to leave the room I’m in (garage included) to play games if I want.
It cost more than a console, but far less than the 5 consoles I’d have to put out for that kind of convenience.
Fuck you, I’m trading up. Have fun living in the past!
Sony is definitely living in the past, showing multiple years old upgraded PS4 games to promote the PS5 Pro
You’re not clever.
PCs will always outperform consoles in both performance and capability, so have fun being a loser clinging to a failing industry.
Have fun insulting random people, love to see how that turns out for you 😂
Sweet irony.
This is dense. The base PS5 for a good portion of is life provided an unbeatable price to performance value. For a long time you’d be taking about $600 for just the GPU.
They’ve sold 60M units. This crap has been parroted by fanboys on both sides since the 80s.
We use our PS5 daily to both play games and watch media. It’s invaluable in our household. Using a PC for all that just seems to unnecessarily annoying, convoluted, and uncomfy. Sure, you could use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to use it off the sofa but the sheer simplicity of just using a controller to do anything is just awesome. Not even touching upon not needing to do maintenance to the PC, buying newer components once older ones get inevitably obsolete etc etc.
For me personally, the PS5 has been a hit since day one. And yea, its price was a little steep upfront, but it’s been very much worth the money over the past four years. I don’t get people who unapologetically bash consoles from a sense of superiority. I thought we were past this lol
People get real mad when I tell them it’s cheaper because I can rent and resell games. Just yelling no way it’s cheaper because you’re spending $60/ yr for online. It’s become an identity for them.
The best part of the PS5 is that you can buy and sell discs at much more reasonable prices.
But my feeling is that they will soon start shipping consoles without a disk drive. Maybe PS 6 will be the last one.
Big concern of mine. Was a huge concern when steam ruined it on PC 20 years ago. Game fly if you are in the states is worth it’s weight in gold. I played at least $2000 worth of games last year for about $300.
You can install Plex/Jellyfin on the PC and get a much better experience, watch on the phone, tablet, serve multiple clients, etc.
So your argument is unsubstantial.
Ok
🙄👌👍
What game would even justify that price tag lol and no disk tray.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MApTG1wapJA&si=6CIbRLjbfUwV29IT
Great video showing the difference of the two
I do feel for Sony’s PR teams. Trying to explain the concept of visual improvements in 4K over Youtube’s increasingly vaseline-smeared compression is an impossible task.
Is there an eli5 on how “ai upscaling” is less (or even equally) technologically demanding than just putting in better hardware?
The game is rendered at a lower resolution, this saves a lot of resources. This isn’t a linear thing, lowering the resolution reduces the performance needed by a lot more than you would think. Not just in processing power but also bandwidth and memory requirements. Then dedicated AI cores or even special AI scaler chips get used to upscale the image back to the requested resolution. This is a fixed cost and can be done with little power since the components are designed to do this task.
My TV for example has an AI scaler chip which is pretty nice (especially after tuning) for showing old content on a large high res screen. For games applying AI up scaling to old textures also does wonders.
Now even though this gets the AI label slapped on, this is nothing like the LMMs such as chat GPT. These are expert systems trained and designed to do exactly one thing. This is the good kind of AI that’s actually useful instead of the BS AI like LLMs. Now these systems have their limitations, but for games the trade off between details and framerate can be worth it. Especially if our bad eyes and mediocre screens wouldn’t really show the difference anyways.
This is the good kind of AI that’s actually useful instead of the BS AI like LLMs
lol, trying to hedge against downvotes from the anti-AI crowd?
The game is rendered at a lower resolution, this saves a lot of resources.
Then dedicated AI cores or even special AI scaler chips get used to upscale the image back to the requested resolution.
I get that much. Or at least, I get that’s the intention.
This is a fixed cost and can be done with little power since the components are designed to do this task.
This us the part I struggle to believe/understand. I’m roughly aware of how resource intensive upscaling is on locally hosted models. The necessary tech/resources to do that to 4k+ in real time (120+ fps) seems at least equivalent, if not more expensive, to just rendering it that way in the first place. Are these “scaler chips” really that much more advanced/efficient?
Further questions aside, I appreciate the explanation. Thanks!
Rendering a 3D scene is much more intensive and complicated than a simple scaler. The scaler isn’t advanced at all, it’s actually very simple. And it can’t be compared with running a large model locally. These are expert systems, not large models. They are very good at one thing and can do only that thing.
Like I said the cost is fixed, so if the scaler can handle 1080p at 120fps to upscale to 2K, then it can always handle that. It doesn’t matter how complex or simple the image is, it will always use the same amount of power. It reads the image, does the calculation and outputs the resulting image.
Rendering a 3D scene is much much more complex and power intensive. The amount of power highly depends on the complexity of the scene and there is a lot more involved. It needs the gpu, cpu, memory and even sometimes storage, plus all the bandwidth and latency in between.
Upscaling isn’t like that, it’s a lot more simple. So if the hardware is there, like the AI cores on a gpu or the dedicated upscaler chip, it will always work. And since that hardware will normally not be heavily used, the rest of the components are still available for the game. A dedicated scaler is the most efficient, but the cores on the gpu aren’t bad either. That’s why something like DLSS doesn’t just work on any hardware, it needs specialized components. And different generations and parts have different limitations.
Say your system can render a game at 1080p at a good solid 120fps. But you have a 2K monitor, so you want the game to run at 2K. This requires a lot more from the system, so the computer struggles to run the game at 60 fps and has annoying dips in demanding parts. With upscaling you run the game at 1080p at 120fps and the upscaler takes that image stream and converts it into 2K at a smooth 120fps. Now the scaler may not get all the details right, like running native 2K and it may make some small mistakes. But our eyes are pretty bad and if we’re playing games our brains aren’t looking for those details, but are instead focused on gameplay. So the output is probably pretty good and unless you were to compare it with 2K native side by side, probably you won’t even notice the difference. So it’s a way of having that excellent performance, without shelling out a 1000 bucks for better hardware.
There are limitations of course. Not all games conform to what the scaler is good at. It usually does well with realistic scenes, but can struggle with more abstract stuff. It can get annoying halos and weird artifacts. There are also limitations to what bandwidth it can push, so for example not all gpus can do 4K at a high framerate. If the game uses the AI cores as well for other stuff, that can become an issue. If the difference in resolution is too much, that becomes very noticeable and unplayable. Often there’s also the option to use previous frames to generate intermediate frames, to boost the framerate with little cost. In my experience this doesn’t work well and just makes the game feel like it’s ghosting and smearing.
But when used properly, it can give a nice boost basically for free. I have even seen it used where the game could be run at a lower quality at the native resolution and high framerate, but looked better at a lower resolution with a higher quality setting and then upscaled. The extra effects outweighed the small loss of fidelity.
That is interesting. Thanks for the extra info!
It started as good tech to make GPUs last longer, but now is a crutch that even top notch hardware like a 4090 needs to actually achieve playable performance with ray tracing at high resolutions. And that hardware is already way overpriced, imagine the price of something that could do it natively.
