Rumor: "Very Affordable" PS4 Based on AMD's A10 APU

[Eclipse Dragon]

I have a hard time believing anything created by Sony is "very affordable".
It might be like the Vita, where the system price seems reasonable, but you need to pay extra for essentials.

Orbis basic system for $399.99.
Includes 256 GB hard drive and 1 month free Playstation Plus subscription.
Backwards compatibility available only in $499.99 models. Controller sold separately.
Price for controller: $99.99
Price for games at launch: $80.00

If it was Bbackwards compatible all the way back to PS1.. I'd happily drop $500 on one.

Also, sadly, if the graphics whores keep getting their way, we will probably see $80 games in the coming console generation.

The sad part is, I was only talking about PS3 backwards compatibility.
I don't see them having a true backwards compatible system like we saw in launch PS3s (where you could play both PS1 and PS2 discs). After it was scrapped, I don't see them adding it back into a new system, regardless of the demand. There's just too much push for all digital distribution.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

If they can make that, and make it affordable then Sony may just be able to compete in the next gen. They out-priced themselves from the market with the PS3 and the Vita both (even with taking a loss on each PS3 sold) and is one main reason for lack of uptake and subsequently, developer support. A console that costs more than £200, or £250 on the absolute outside is simply too expensive, even if it does have added value. A handheld over £150, like the Vita is simply extortionate.

Sony will be very unlikely to release a "PS4". The word for four in Japanese, Shi, is the same pronunciation as the word for "death" and as such is considered bad luck, equivalent to thirteen in the west.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

- these new consoles will be obsolete at launch, and within a year or two we'll be back to where we are today, with PC's capable of truly outstanding performance being held back by the limits of another platform.

Dude you've really depressed me. I was finally looking forward to the possibility that gaming can move on from the rut it's been in for the last four years and your prognosis suggests we'll only get 2 years of boundary pushing before stagnation kicks in again. *sigh* I hate consoles for what they did to gaming.

 

[SpAc3man]

Everything sounds good except the RAM. Isn't 16GB a bit of an overkill?

Not if it allows the majority of a game to be cached for instant loading. Good idea if you ask me. Windows Vista onward use large amounts of RAM effectively by caching things that are expected to be loaded soon. RAM will also be shared with the GPU portion of the APU.

OT: The AMD A10 would make a very capable console part. It is a good inexpensive mid range CPU with a decent mid range integrated GPU. With the highly optimised OS and software consoles use it will be very powerful.

Going by the hard drive size it is obvious that it is in fact an SSD. This thing is going power on and load almost instantly.

My only disappointment is there is no mention of DisplayPort which is better than HDMI in terms of tech specs and the fact it is royalty free. Although seeing as Sony is one of the founders of HDMI I am not surprised.

 

[Vivi22]

these new consoles will be obsolete at launch, and within a year or two we'll be back to where we are today, with PC's capable of truly outstanding performance being held back by the limits of another platform.

This would be different from every other console generation how? Because the 360 and PS3 were nothing that spectacular based on specs alone at launch. The disparity between previous consoles and PC's tended to be even worse.

 

[The White Hunter]

Where is the xbox 720 in development?

Will be interesting to see if there is a race to be first now. Or if sony can somehow pull that rabbit out of a hat with an "affordable" system, first to the market, like the ps2 that managed to win that gen by being first and having an enormous quality library of games.

Second to market, it came after the Dreamcast, but that game library really gave the PS2 the edge.

 

[The White Hunter]

Well I can see the theory of it being affordable. Even 400 bucks at launch wouldn't be too unreasonable. Even the Delux Wii U with only 32 GB of Memory is going for 350 bucks.If they decide on like 450 or 500... maybe not quite as appealing... but 400 bucks, not too far out of the realm of possibility.

As for backwards compatability, I'd suspect they might still use Bluray technology, since hell they've hardly ever had a game that tapped the 50 GB on it, so maybe it's still possible to get?

If not, I propose to Sony, since they would read this post... that those who buy a brand new PS4, get a voucher for either a specific amount of money, or a specific amount of games, that they can perchase on the PSN (limited time offer). They would be loosing money technically, but maybe it would encourage some people on the fence about getting the new system, since it would allow them to pick out a few choice games on the network while new games are in development.

They nearly did, KIllzone 3 takes up somewhere around the 46 GB mark on the disc, I think most of the game is uncompressed though, the soundtrack is definately so as it sounds marvelous.

But yeah, blu-ray will be staying I'd imagine, god help anyone who clings to DVD next gen for gaming.

 

[scott91575]

And welcome to America, where the minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour, and even "real" jobs don't pay as much as equivalent jobs in Australia.

Yet the average American wage is about 15-20% higher than the Aussie average wage, and that's calculated in 'international dollars' which are based on the purchasing power of the US dollar.

Have you got a source on that? Because I've always understood Australians made more in general. They have to, because the cost of living over there is through the roof compared to what it is in the US. Video games are hardly the only thing that you guys get charged more for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

It is wiki, but links are provided. The page simply puts the OECD numbers in an easy to read chart.

Here is another one. I believe this too is based on the OECD numbers and expressed in PPP (money is expressed in 1 US dollar spent in the US). This a more simplistic number, and simply average monthly salary with cost of living included.

http://1-million-dollar-blog.com/average-monthly-salary-for-72-countries-in-the-world/

The OECD has a site, but it's not easy to understand or compare numbers.

edit: Note, these numbers are adjusted for living expenses (PPP number does that). I think that is what the other poster was probably using. If you go simply by actual dollars, Australia is considerably higher. Yet the cost of living more than eats up that difference. So it really depends on how you look at things. From a video game perspective, 33% higher costs in Australia should be expected and not really any different than US prices considering the wage differences.

 

[Vault101]

Orbis?........

I wonder if ity will be backwards compatible....is that a silly question?

 

[Treblaine]

I wonder how they plan to make it "very affordable". There's a reason the PS3 was so expensive at launch...

By having really low standards, not even coming close to matching what typical users are capable with PC hardware today.

Also having everything-on-one-chip hugely reduces production costs as well as potential efficiency.

But this is a double win for PC as the A10 architecture is (unlike the Cell Broadband processor) very similar to PC hardware, games made for this new Playstation would be easily ported to and scaled up on PC.

I hope this A10 based system is true, it'll be affordable system for me to get a new generation of console games yet my current PC won't be rendered obsolete.

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

I have a hard time believing anything created by Sony is "very affordable".
It might be like the Vita, where the system price seems reasonable, but you need to pay extra for essentials.

Orbis basic system for $399.99.
Includes 256 GB hard drive and 1 month free Playstation Plus subscription.
Backwards compatibility available only in $499.99 models. Controller sold separately.
Price for controller: $99.99
Price for games at launch: $80.00

That actually seems rather reasonable.

 

[Treblaine]

And welcome to America, where the minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour, and even "real" jobs don't pay as much as equivalent jobs in Australia.

Yet the average American wage is about 15-20% higher than the Aussie average wage, and that's calculated in 'international dollars' which are based on the purchasing power of the US dollar.

Average isn't necessarily median.

For example how is that "average" skewed by how there are so many multi-billionaires and even trillionaires living and earning in the United States while the "typical earner" may not earn much more or even less than other countries. This wealth doesn't trickle down, the super rich buy giant yachts, private planes. They don't buy games consoles, they buy private jets.

I don't have a source (yet) but I did hear in a BBC documentary about economics that in the United States middle earnings have frozen for the past 30 years while the highest earners have shot up "INSANELY high". Like an order of magnitude higher. Like is a banker earned $1 million in the 1980's, he'd take in $10 million today. This is happening almost everywhere in the world though some countries to a greater extent.

This can be insidious, as "average earnings" going up may appear like an egalitarian improvements, when most are being left behind as a tiny minority take in all the extra wealth being generated.

What you really need is to compare middle earners, with cost of living of middle earners (distance to commute, cost of commute, heating/air-conditioning expenses) and then the balance of both taxation and government support. So how much government tightens household budget and also how much it might (if at all) ease it.

But that's complicated as hell, really you could just, well, ASK australians and americans and Brits and so on what they feel they can afford. Can they afford X-amount per game? Can they afford a console with initial price of X-dollars-US/OZ. Because that's what it ultimately boils down to.

 

[Treblaine]

I have a hard time believing anything created by Sony is "very affordable".
It might be like the Vita, where the system price seems reasonable, but you need to pay extra for essentials.
...

Price for games at launch: $80.00

WHOOA WHOA WOW!!

Hold the phone, EIGHTY SMACKEROONS!

PC games are right now selling for the low low price of FREE (to play), I can barely afford console games at the equivalent of $60 (£40). My PS3 controller is collecting dust not because I can't find games worth playing but because I cannot justify the cost of each game. $80 would end up being £55 in the UK, that's a total turn off. I could buy almost every game I could ever want in a typical steam sale for that amount.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I have a hard time believing anything created by Sony is "very affordable".
It might be like the Vita, where the system price seems reasonable, but you need to pay extra for essentials.
...

Price for games at launch: $80.00

WHOOA WHOA WOW!!

Hold the phone, EIGHTY SMACKEROONS!

PC games are right now selling for the low low price of FREE (to play), I can barely afford console games at the equivalent of $60 (£40). My PS3 controller is collecting dust not because I can't find games worth playing but because I cannot justify the cost of each game. $80 would end up being £55 in the UK, that's a total turn off. I could buy almost every game I could ever want in a typical steam sale for that amount.

As I remember, PS games were around $30 at launch (admitting my memory is fuzzy on this one),
PS2 games were between $40-$50 at launch.
PS3 games are pretty set at $60 at launch with the "special" editions being $70+

It makes sense that the cost of the games will go up. $80 might be an exaggeration,
it will probably be more like $70 with the price dropping dramatically within a year, but make no mistake, the price will go up, and developers will say that the price of games is too high, but won't actually do anything about it, because of course their games are the only ones that justify the insane price tag.

 

[deadish]

Yeah but it's a mid-range GPU, and even then it's the lower powered D series version more akin to the M series versions made for laptops than the 'standard' versions made for discrete GPU cards.

Might be fixable by just upping the number of GPU cores at the expense of CPU cores.

Either way, I believe cost will be the overriding concern not power. Sony has seen what happened with the PS3 and PSV. Not to mention that the global economy is currently in the toilet.

I dunno... you might be underestimating the effects things such as switching CPU architecture and the inherent problems of APUs (they're bastards for heat management) will have on the traditional resource efficiency of consoles, not to mention fundamental shift in design theory from 'gaming machine' to 'home entertainment and social media centre (oh yeah, they still play games, I guess, if that's your thing)' that we've seen happening.

I think you are worrying too much - we don't even know if the rumours are true.

 

[Alatar The Red]

Not sure if it has already been posted but just so you guys know, if these specs are real then the final console wont have 16GB of RAM.

These leaks are based on dev kits of the consoles and dev kits almost always come with double the memory for debugging purposes.

 

[Treblaine]

Everything sounds good except the RAM. Isn't 16GB a bit of an overkill?

Not if it allows the majority of a game to be cached for instant loading. Good idea if you ask me. Windows Vista onward use large amounts of RAM effectively by caching things that are expected to be loaded soon. RAM will also be shared with the GPU portion of the APU.

OT: The AMD A10 would make a very capable console part. It is a good inexpensive mid range CPU with a decent mid range integrated GPU. With the highly optimised OS and software consoles use it will be very powerful.

Going by the hard drive size it is obvious that it is in fact an SSD. This thing is going power on and load almost instantly.

My only disappointment is there is no mention of DisplayPort which is better than HDMI in terms of tech specs and the fact it is royalty free. Although seeing as Sony is one of the founders of HDMI I am not surprised.

Maybe it's a matter of coding, but after assembling so many gaming PCs and benchmarking them I've yet to find a game that gets a consistent advantage from 16GB of System RAM, even the highest speed. Even though it makes us more money we argue against customers requesting 16GB of RAM for a gaming rig as we know we'd be taking advantage of them.

16GB only really comes into it's own for processes that don't need to be fast but deal with a lot, like photoshop, video editing and making 3D models and animations. So basically game development.

8GB is just about ideal for even the most demanding games.

I think a likely scenario is the console plan to launch with 8GB, but the dev-kit models have double the RAM (16GB) just to make it easier to tweak, create and combine elements with the goal on the dev-kit to get the system memory usage down to only 8GB which will be the launch version.

Though it may be even half that, 4GB of RAM would be very affordable yet very capable on a console with refined specs and no Operating-System overhead. Xbox 360 has done so well on only 512MB of RAM shared between CPU and GPU. 4GB would be 8 times that, that is three Moore's Law doubling, what you'd expect over 6 years. 2013 is 6 years since PS3 launched in Europe.

 

[Treblaine]

I have a hard time believing anything created by Sony is "very affordable".
It might be like the Vita, where the system price seems reasonable, but you need to pay extra for essentials.
...

Price for games at launch: $80.00

WHOOA WHOA WOW!!

Hold the phone, EIGHTY SMACKEROONS!

PC games are right now selling for the low low price of FREE (to play), I can barely afford console games at the equivalent of $60 (£40). My PS3 controller is collecting dust not because I can't find games worth playing but because I cannot justify the cost of each game. $80 would end up being £55 in the UK, that's a total turn off. I could buy almost every game I could ever want in a typical steam sale for that amount.

As I remember, PS games were around $30 at launch (admitting my memory is fuzzy on this one),
PS2 games were between $40-$50 at launch.
PS3 games are pretty set at $60 at launch with the "special" editions being $70+

It makes sense that the cost of the games will go up. $80 might be an exaggeration,
it will probably be more like $70 with the price dropping dramatically within a year, but make no mistake, the price will go up, and developers will say that the price of games is too high, but won't actually do anything about it, because of course their games are the only ones that justify the insane price tag.

Look, games don't HAVE to endlessly go up in price because we are not in fact all earning more money with lower essential expenditures (rent, mortgages, car-payments, fuel for heating+transport, food, etc)

Our pockets are not bottomless.

An INEVITABLE RESULT of higher game price is people buy less games. The risk of each game becomes SO HIGH that developers NEVER want to take any risks, they just copy the last game with incremental improvements and people only invest in sure-bets that they know their friends will play so they aren't at risk of spending their entire disposable income of a month on a game that none of their friends play.

LOOK AT PC GAMING!

game price goes down = sales go up = revenue goes up.

Each copy is CHEAP to make, it's just an optical disc that can be mass produced for less than $1 per boxed copy.

If this generation is made on the foundation ofr games being any price higher than $80 then it is on the road to disaster.

If we make it clear NOW that we will not accept $80 then we will ALL be better off.

The question is, will the rich-boys screw it for everyone buying at $80 and throwing away their money they hold no value of and leaving everyone else high as dry. Will console gaming become an elite hobby that average earners will pay through the nose just to experience a small part of?

 

[Treblaine]

if their smart they will offer a 'premium' edition that supports full backwards comparability..... for a price

It might defeat the purpose if the premium is too high a price.

For example, if the Premium version costs more than a "core" PS4 PLUS the price you'd get from selling your PS3... then it makes more sense jsut to keep your PS3 and get core PS4.

Backwards compatibility made sense with PS1 to PS2. I sold my PS1 then used the money I made from that to help pay for PS2 yet I could still play all my PS1 games. Gamecube didn't have backwards compatibility but it sold for $99 when PS2 sold for $299.