Rumours suggest we may see Sony launch a PS4.5, dubbed PS4K by the internet, which has a significant GPU upgrade allowing full 4K output for games and video. It seems unlikely but let’s speculate wildly anyway.
Consoles usually have at least one major redesign during their lives, commonly taking the form of a “Slim” version. Smaller, more compact, better refinement, better cooling, quieter fans and cheaper manufacturing costs being common features. This makes sense because they get to slap the “New and Improved” label on the box and shift a few more units to keep the company ticking over.
So it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they could include a capability upgrade in a redesign although it is unusual for the home console market; it is more reminiscent of the mobile market to be honest. The GPU upgrade we see rumoured is to allow games to natively output to 4k resolution. It would appear that 4k is the next step the world will take after 1080p HD, becoming the new standard in everyone’s home.
For those of you that don’t know, 4K refers to having 4 times the number of pixels on the screen. So that’s four 1080p’s crammed onto your screen instead of one. So you would assume it is 4 times better, but is it?
With games it isn’t necessarily a good thing. As we saw with The Last of Us Remastered, upping the resolution actually highlighted the flaws in the games looks. Simply adding detail to something that wasn’t built for it isn’t actually an improvement. That leaves developers in a tricky situation; do they not bother with it at all and leave people who can make use of the 4K upgrade with a lesser experience, do they start developing for 4K and downgrade the game for regular 1080p users on a standard PS4 or do they leave all 35/40 million of them behind and push on with 4K only? No matter what the developers choose to do, they lose.
That sums it up for me, why bother? Better to wait until PS5 and being able to go all in on 4K with a brand new generation of hardware and software development. PSVR 2 will also likely follow this path and be a 4K device at launch with games designed specifically for it. By then perhaps 4K TVs will have proliferated and become the norm in homes too.
I say wait it out Sony.
What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @adamthomas1994. Alternatively email outofthexfirepodcast@gmail.com and your feedback will get read out there as well for us to discuss.
Thanks for reading.
