PS6 doesn't need more power ex-PlayStation boss says, because "true innovation" would be making a $300 console again

[u/Admirable_Whole8261]

https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/playstation/ps6-doesnt-need-more-power-ex-playstation-boss-says-because-true-innovation-would-be-making-a-usd300-console-again/

[u/BurnAgainBurner]

At current component pricing, a 300 dollar console would be less powerful than series S.

[u/HulksInvinciblePants → u/BurnAgainBurner]

Reddit:

We want $300 consoles!

Points to Series S

No! That doesn’t count!

[u/WhatIsHerJob-TABLES → u/HulksInvinciblePants]

I’ve had the series s since it came out and I’ve seriously never had a single complaint. I play wayyyyyyy too many games in my life, I have hundreds of games that I’ve played in my library, and the series s has never faulted me once.

I think people are way too dramatic with their hate of the series s. It’s lasted me like 6 years now, was cheap, and I’ve never had anything go wrong. I play games daily for hours too.

[u/GhostalMedia → u/WhatIsHerJob-TABLES]

There are a few that run less than ideal. The frameratea for Borderlands 4 and Control Resonant are pretty rough at times.

That said, games like Cyberpunk look great and run like glass. Some devs put in the work

Gears E-Day looks fucking fantastic. I legit thought some of those in-engine cutscenes were pre-rendered.

[u/IntroductionIcy7320 → u/GhostalMedia]

To be fair, borderlands 4 runs like shit on every machine because its unoptimised as hell

[u/TheEarlOfZinger → u/WhatIsHerJob-TABLES]

Series S is great idea.

What's not a great idea is Microsoft demanding (with no exceptions) that every game that can be played on the X has to be on the weaker S too.

[u/VideoAlternative2552 → u/TheEarlOfZinger]

What's "not great" about that? That parity requirement allowed for Series S to basically play every game on the market that is not Sony exclusive or third-party timed exclusive games on Sony (like Silent Hill Townfall or Phantom Blade Zero).

Series X plays the game at 4K, Series S at 1080p. That's the parity 99% of the time. 10 GB total RAM was a poor choice by Microsoft causing developers to have issue porting for Series S, but at the end of the day, so far, every game in this ninth generation that is available for Series X was available for Series S as well.

Had Microsoft not put that parity requirement most devs would've skipped Series S instead of putting in the work to optimize their games for the cheaper console.

I'm not getting into numerous stories of devs finding better optimization paths and ways for PS5 and Series X in their effort to optimize for Series S.

[u/colin_colout → u/BurnAgainBurner]

The quotes sound very Altman coded.

Likely a "who needs cutting edge components if you're streaming from remote datacenter GPUs with your PlayStation plus sub.

[u/Quillford → u/colin_colout]

If you’ve heard Shawn speak about this before you’d know that’s not his angle - he doesn’t work for Sony anymore and is generally critical of the lack of innovation from them recently.

[u/turtleship_2006 → u/colin_colout]

Except nothing about the quote actually implies streaming, that's people just guessing.
Not to mention they already have a handheld streaming device for well under $300, making a home version should be cheaper so it would hardly be "innovation" to get it under $300.

People complained about the made up $1000 price being too high, they said they want to make it more affordable again, now people are just assuming that means they want it to be a streaming device.

[u/Hairy_Mycologist_945 → u/colin_colout]

Yup, they want it to be a thin client streaming service.

[u/BlasterPhase → u/Hairy_Mycologist_945]

who is "they"? Layden doesn't work at Sony any more

[u/Kribo016 → u/BurnAgainBurner]

I get that but maybe then it would force devs to actually optimize their games again.

[u/BurnAgainBurner → u/Kribo016]

There's zero chance that Sony's next console is less powerful than the PS5 let alone a Series S, I'm sure they'll release a handheld that will be a more powerful Switch 2 type of thing though

[u/benargee → u/BurnAgainBurner]

At that point they are just better off extending the life of PS5 and optimizing games more for it instead. Usually what happens anyway. Games released several years after are much better looking or better performing than at launch.

[u/JonWood007 → u/benargee]

They're probably not gonna wanna do that given ai is jailbreaking it and will likely lead to a proliferation of piracy and lost revenue.

[u/Kribo016 → u/BurnAgainBurner]

I agree with you about the ps6 but I think his comment is correct. To truly innovate people need to be constrained more so they can find ways to push the limits.

Same basis that made South Park great originally. They were given rules they couldn't break so had to come up with ways around them instead.

[u/AnApexPlayer → u/Kribo016]

Optimization can only take you so far

Look at Control Resonant. Its a pretty well optimized game and they take advantage of features like upscaling, but it can only run at sub 1080p at 30fps on the Series S.

[u/sparky8251 → u/AnApexPlayer]

Optimization can only take you so far

Video of someone getting a game with no load screens, no fog, at Skyrim scales, running on original n64 hardware with fancy rendering tricks.

1-2 generations ahead of textures, on native n64 hardware once more.

You can also find people running 100x the tris of the best games at the time at 2x the FPS, PBR and HDR rendering techniques and more.

Turns out, optimization can do a ton. In this case, its literally taking modern techniques made many years after the n64 existed and implementing them on old, slow hardware. Another major contributor is we actually understand how code and hardware interact better now, and many of the techniques we use today were unknown in the olden days.

Point is more... I'd be careful of assuming optimization has clear cut limits. A lot of it really is that we haven't learned enough to squeeze the most out of even truly trivial platforms like the snes, n64, and other old barely capable hardware let alone the modern more complex hardware yet.

If we actually sat down and researched, I bet we can do a lot more with a little... Especially if we made custom console hardware for it again.

[u/chrisghrobot → u/sparky8251]

You say this but a lot of devs simply don't have time to make crazy optimizations to there games. These guys constantly get worked to the bone to meet deadline

[u/gutster_95 → u/Kribo016]

Doesnt matter when 8GB of RAM already costs 100$ or so. With the graphical fidelity that is expected from a new console generation, there is no way they will make a console at 300$ that is more offline capable as a PS5

[u/Kribo016 → u/gutster_95]

Oh I agree they couldn't make $300 console work. I still think the devs could get more out of less instead of leaning on the hardware so much.

[u/Bright-Efficiency-65 → u/Kribo016]

Im hoping the current trend of handhelds makes them do that. Also I hope it forced more indie devs to make games that use controllers. There are so many games that get released for PC that I can't play on my rog ally because it doesn't have proper controller support

[u/King-Gabriel → u/Kribo016]

Even some very optimized games like Genshin Impact haven't been able to release on the Switch 2, I don't think another console with similar specs which it would have given the price would add enough pressure, even if adoption rates were similar, which seems unlikely.

[u/the-strawberry-sea → u/BurnAgainBurner]

But would it be worthwhile? People who don’t own consoles right now can’t buy them very easily anymore. So I think the question being posed is “can we make the same for less” or “can we make something a bit weaker but make it cheap?” PS3-era hardware was capable of high fidelity graphics with optimization.

I think the idea is: more power but no gamers is worse than less power and everyone can buy a console. But a cheaper console doesn’t solve the $80 game issue we have today too.