PS5 Pro And Other Midgenerational Upgrades

[Owain Taggart]

Is there really such a thing as a "prosumer" market though? It all feels like an illusion. In the past, all consoles were on equal footing. Now Sony seems to have scrambled to find a reason for people to upgrade, meanwhile most of the games taking advantage of it will be remasters. I think all this tech will mean more with the PS6. Right now it all feels meaningless.

 

[jenji120]

Is there really such a thing as a "prosumer" market though? It all feels like an illusion. In the past, all consoles were on equal footing. Now Sony seems to have scrambled to find a reason for people to upgrade, meanwhile most of the games taking advantage of it will be remasters. I think all this tech will mean more with the PS6. Right now it all feels meaningless.

The remaster era sucks no matter what you do. But I think console gamers are a tad spoiled on upgrade cycles and it's been holding back ALL gaming for years because Devs, develop to the lowest common denominator and trust me that drives PC gamers nuts. And with people desperately clinging to generations prior and both Sony and MS steadfastly refusing to let devs go all in on this generation for fear they'd lose out on the revenue streams that prior consoles were still giving them (game sales is where their money comes from) while covid was causing shortages you get what we have now.

MS is considering a service based future. Look at fire sticks + game pass ultimate, no xbox needed. Sony is still a hardware company and has in the past used their gaming consoles to push formats and linked hardware and home/personal entertainment systems of all kinds which they'll likely continue doing. The projections for Pro sales are the same as for Pro sales in prior gens (it's a niche product but a relatively large one). If the prior Pro versions are any indication, it's going to be close to a ps6 in beta version.

There's no doubt though that the current lack of games is holding back console sales in general. If Sony had announced Ghost of Yotei coming out at the same time as the Pro, I'd have already bought the Pro but the later date only reminded me that there's a dearth of games right now - period. However, I have the feeling that GTA will be a driver for the Pro because it won't be released on PC for god knows how long after and if Rockstar is true to form it will benefit bigly from better hardware. Right now, I'm playing Dragon's Dogma on PS5 and the PS5 is showing its weaknesses which makes me regret getting it on PS5 instead of PC.

 

[Jax]

The fact the PS5 Pro didn't sell out pre-orders when on the Sony site wasn't a surprise.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Is there really such a thing as a "prosumer" market though? It all feels like an illusion. In the past, all consoles were on equal footing. Now Sony seems to have scrambled to find a reason for people to upgrade, meanwhile most of the games taking advantage of it will be remasters. I think all this tech will mean more with the PS6. Right now it all feels meaningless.

It is going to be fun to watch from the sidelines when Sony tries and sells a digital PS6 for £900 along with £100 PS6 games of PS4 remasters and £80 min 12 months psplus access to online, as at that point Sony will come to understand that the majority of console gamers are casual gamers, and as such expect NOT to pay PC GPU prices. lol

But i guess some people just need to stick their hand in the fire to see if it actually burns. ha

 

[Jax]

I can't believe there was a remastered Until Dawn on the PS5 but I was not surprise when it flopped and sold less than the recent Concord fiasco (always a terrible name for a game). It's a PS4 game that already works on the PS5 and has already been released on the PC with upgrades from the original version. Sony should be looking at PS1-PS3 games for full blown remakes or remastered editions since the PS4 & PS5 will likely work on the PS6.

Saying that with the 15th anniversary of Uncharted 2 - I won't lie I would love a touched up UC1-3 bundle again BUT this time include all the co-op online stuff and make a new versus multiplayer with a mash up of UC2 & UC3. The PS4 remastered trilogy having no multiplayer was beyond stupid! especially when the remaster of Last of Us Part 1 on the PS4 had online.

 

[Owain Taggart]

However, I have the feeling that GTA will be a driver for the Pro because it won't be released on PC for god knows how long after and if Rockstar is true to form it will benefit bigly from better hardware.

That I have no doubt. I think that will be a serious driver, not just for the Pro but the PS5 overall. But I do find it interesting that Rockstar released GTAV two generations ago right at the tail-end of that generation, and had to create a remaster for the last gen which became the default for a long time before again being remastered for the PS5, and if GTA6 releases around the same timeframe, then I fully expect Rockstar to have an upgrade in the waiting for the PS6. I almost feel like it would be smarter to just wait and release GTA6 on the PS6 as a launch game, even though many might grumble at having to wait longer.

It is going to be fun to watch from the sidelines when Sony tries and sells a digital PS6 for £900 along with £100 PS6 games of PS4 remasters and £80 min 12 months psplus access to online, as at that point Sony will come to understand that the majority of console gamers are casual gamers, and as such expect NOT to pay PC GPU prices. lol

But i guess some people just need to stick their hand in the fire to see if it actually burns. ha

Yeah, it will be a bitter pill for them to swallow, I think. And ever since the overall price hike on games, games upon release are now $90-$100 CND by default. I think the first game I bought in that range was BG3, and I felt the pinch for sure. Just for fun, I took note of the bundles at Costco. They're the slim models, with an option to go with the digital or disk version, both of them coming with two DS5's. The Disk version was listed for $730 CND. So much a better value than the $900+ CND PS5 Pro which includes barely nothing. Living with high prices makes one try to be more frugal.

Saying that with the 15th anniversary of Uncharted 2 - I won't lie I would love a touched up UC1-3 bundle again BUT this time include all the co-op online stuff and make a new versus multiplayer with a mash up of UC2 & UC3. The PS4 remastered trilogy having no multiplayer was beyond stupid! especially when the remaster of Last of Us Part 1 on the PS4 had online.

I think in the remasters, there only so much they could do with the first game. Would love if they remade it, or at least gave the game higher-res Uncharted4-style models with redesigned environments. Even when remastered, it still didn't age well. As for the multiplayer, maybe they thought The Last of Us' multiplayer was more popular and couldn't afford to support both.

 

[ATimson]

It's a more efficient version of DLSS which is something that's must have in PC gaming and should be must have in console gaming.

I'm glad I got out of PC gaming before DLSS became a thing. If it becomes non-optional on the next generation of consoles, I'm probably out. I'm not interested in a machine that hallucinates a wrong image.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'm glad I got out of PC gaming before DLSS became a thing. If it becomes non-optional on the next generation of consoles, I'm probably out. I'm not interested in a machine that hallucinates a wrong image.

I think it's merely a way to upscale an image more intelligently by first using a lower resolution frame and then upscaling it with AI filling in the extra pixels to get a sharper more detailed image without sacrificing performance. In this case, it's taking a lower resolution frame and upscaling it to either 4K or 8K. I don't think they'd be able to claim 8K 60FPS otherwise.

 

[ATimson]

I'll happily take, in descending order of preference: a slower framerate (especially with VRR to compensate for fluctuations), lower resolution (1080p is enough, really!), or blurrier old-school upscale, if it avoids generative AI.

Sadly, "the image doesn't look like crap" isn't sexy enough for their marketing department.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, it's the obsession with perfection and the constant remasters that is annoying this generation. I generally feel like consoles don't need to be perfect. Developers just need to figure out how to get the most out of them like they used to. I remember when graphics would improve over a console generation as developers figured out how to squeeze more out of them, and back then there were no mid-gen updates, merely cosmetic refreshes with minor things fixed with the hardware. I had both the old style Atari 2600 and the refresh version which the company sent us after we sent our original wood-panelled version in for possible repairs.

 

[jenji120]

I'm glad I got out of PC gaming before DLSS became a thing. If it becomes non-optional on the next generation of consoles, I'm probably out. I'm not interested in a machine that hallucinates a wrong image.

You don't have to run DLSS at all on anything ever. I rarely do unless game is so bad looking that I'm going to mod it into modernity but if you have a high end RTX card and want to turn on every shadow and reflection while modding in more shadows and reflections and adding other effects to your system's load DLSS is awesome. If you're worried about the occasional blur in a racing game then not so much but even without DLSS if you're relying on TV/monitor chips to upscale you're going to encounter drawbacks that can be worse than the drawbacks to DLSS.

And 1080p is fine if your hardware can only support 1080p. It's definitely not fine with a better system.

 

[jenji120]

Yeah, it's the obsession with perfection and the constant remasters that is annoying this generation. I generally feel like consoles don't need to be perfect. Developers just need to figure out how to get the most out of them like they used to. I remember when graphics would improve over a console generation as developers figured out how to squeeze more out of them, and back then there were no mid-gen updates, merely cosmetic refreshes with minor things fixed with the hardware. I had both the old style Atari 2600 and the refresh version which the company sent us after we sent our original wood-panelled version in for possible repairs.

I still think the problem is in a lack of games more than the systems but the systems also hold back some of the games. If Cyberpunk had launched only on PC and delayed console launch it would've hurt CDPR because of all the marketing and commitments they'd made with console manufacturers but it wouldn't have turned into a near death experience for them. Even games like Dragon's Dogma which is hardly a visual stunner is struggling on PS5 at times and the main reason is that all those npcs and pawns have radiant AI packages (same as Skyrim) and consoles can't quite handle them. The real reason vanilla Skyrim never looked eye catching compared to other games of its generation was again all those NPCs on a path, doing daily activities absolutely choking system resources to death meant that sacrifices had to be made to make the game playable on console and low end systems.

It's easy to put out a platformer or fighting game but for games that have any life at all to them you need hardware. People complain about big open world games that are empty but the reason they're empty is due to hardware limitations. It's easy to generate a vast uncomplicated space even ones that look amazing as long as they have nothing going on in them but even a small space with subpar graphics that is filled with in-game 'life' is far more taxing.

And tbh, those hardware limits contribute heavily to the new cycle of games taking eons to come out. The design of consoles is heavily skewed towards GPUs while cost cutting on the CPU. The problem now is that no one wants to play games where the world feels dead and only the hero and immediate enemy are alive. A solution to this is letting AI hardware take some of the load.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I still think the problem is in a lack of games more than the systems but the systems also hold back some of the games.

I feel like it's cyclical. It's hard to sell systems if there aren't enough games , meanwhile because there's a lack of games, there are less systems sold, thus less incentive to develop new games. Rinse and repeat. And theoretically, it shouldn't be so much of a problem since consoles are closer now to PCs than ever, so they should be holding things back less than they have in the past. I do think the defining difference this generation as compared to others are the amount of remasters, and for many, I feel that's a hard sell. When that's the majority of games available for the PS5 Pro, it just doesn't look good from a showcase standpoint. The lack of any real value really kicks in at this point.

And then you have the fact that this generation had a slow start due to the supply shortage, which surely didn't help things. In fact, I think that directly led developers to release games that weren't intended for last-gen, and I think as you point out, the whole Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco is a good example of this. They had to release it on something to make money even if it meant a broken game, as the new generation wasn't yet available for most people.

Which then, I think led us into what we're seeing today with the many remasters, which would have been easier to work on at a time when the expectations were for fewer consoles, thus less of a push towards brand new games and IPs.

It's been an interesting generation, in that many things have happened that haven't in previous generations. It's supposedly the halfway point of the console's life, yet it feels like it barely has even gotten started, and I've seen a video from DF where they wonder if perhaps this console generation should be extended for this reason, but of course one of them points out that from a hardware standpoint, that's more difficult. I personally think there's still lots of room to push it and squeeze more out of it.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^Did you watch the recent DF video on the R&C pro update, because as predicted out the starting gate pro games seem to be £700 eye tests, and if you watch it in 4k it makes it even harder to see any real difference that would justify that £700 price tag.

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[Owain Taggart]

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Typically, an update of this nature is only going to be noticeable on bigger TVs, but if the differences are so minor, one's got to wonder if it's really going to pay off with TVs like those. Naturally though, I think the main differences would be in performance and framerate rather than the sharpness of graphics themselves. Bu congratulations to those who bought the world's most-expensive spot-the-difference game...

Mind you, I'm still gaming on a 1080 TV.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^I have a 4k tv but i don't game on it because i have found that my 27in 1440p monitor offers a way better picture and zero controller lag and is vastly superiour to my 55in 4k tv in every way, but that controller lag even when the tv is on the gaming option is just a nightmare, made worse because i am now accustomed to zero lag on the monitor. Ha

 

[Owain Taggart]

I wasn't expecting that... But maybe the performance isn't quite there yet to make it much of a difference? What I mean is, with better framerate such as what they're trying to accomplish with the Pro, the situation might be a little different then with that particular TV.

 

[jenji120]

Whelp, I'll let y'all know whether or not the Pro lives up to expectations. I just broke down and preordered. Playing RDR2 again on my RTX 4060 after playing it on the 5 sealed my fate. I know the Pro prob won't live up to my PC but if it gets even close to the difference it will be worth it for me, especially if I sell gamestop my ps5.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Probably still one of the best looking games out there even without the PS5 Pro patch, so I'll be curious to hear your report.

FWIW about Gamestop, or what they've been called as EBGames here in Canada until just a few years ago, I've never really liked stepping foot in there, as there would always be a feeling of contempt on the part of the staff unless I had one of their member rewards cards which they constantly tried to push. And then look at you like an intruder unless you bought one of their overpriced used copies of games. I bought a used copy of the original Spiderman there for $60 CND, just as an example. It had already been on the market for more 3 years at this point. As a result, I've always used that place as a last-resort.

 

[jenji120]

Probably still one of the best looking games out there even without the PS5 Pro patch, so I'll be curious to hear your report.

FWIW about Gamestop, or what they've been called as EBGames here in Canada until just a few years ago, I've never really liked stepping foot in there, as there would always be a feeling of contempt on the part of the staff unless I had one of their member rewards cards which they constantly tried to push. And then look at you like an intruder unless you bought one of their overpriced used copies of games. I bought a used copy of the original Spiderman there for $60 CND, just as an example. It had already been on the market for more 3 years at this point. As a result, I've always used that place as a last-resort.

I haven't been in one for years but there's one in town so it'd be the easiest way to sell it. OTOH, I might keep the old one and put it in another room. I haven't really decided yet. I learned the hard way that sometimes you're better off keeping your older tech as a backup because you might not have the cash in an emergency.

And that price is crazy for a used game. I miss the used bookstore we used to live beside. Since it was a college town games and everything else would come through super cheap and usually not that old.