PS4 PS4 is not too different from PS3

[pianohombre]

I remember the PS3 seemed like a big jump from PS2 with online capabilities, bigger games, audio and video upgrades in games, and bigger disks and better ways to save games. Now I was playing multiplayer online instead of in-person, no need to keep memory cards on hand, and the games seemed like they were a lot more bang for you buck.

I waited on getting a PS4 at launch because I had dozens of ps3 games I hadn't finished. I did get a Wii U though and at ps5 launch I finally ran out and got a ps4. I know the graphics are better and that's the biggest change, but it seems very similar and now I needed a 500gb - 1tb external hard drive for game installations. Now you can share your videos online, but that's not a huge feature. I guess with VR out that seemed like the biggest jump in gaming and consoles were like a side thing. I have God of War but I was smashing through enemies on the ps2 doing that. And I also got Streets of Rage; I remember this game from the Sega Genesis.

 

[xanthefin]

I am just rumbling. Free to ignore.

PowerPC to x86 you don't do it overnight (specially Cell with SPE's).
Microsoft though did pull off with x86 to PowerPC as it was easier to move from much slower to much faster platform... with Cell kicking there it wasn't as clear place pull it off though same level on those times. Many games though didn't really get to use it fully so those would be easy get but still like open source and specially Linux kernel guys these days just dropping old compatibilies out from Kernel after some of their code "cleaners" keep breaking them is same boat "why keep them when not much using them".


Plus there was huge contrast how Sony ever did advertise hw originally.. a hw inside console on PS3 vs PS4.. on PS4 they did hid even the specs behind url in their press release and it was inside that link just mere lines of PC specs when on PS3 it was a freaking PDF to scroll trough details.

Sony inside imo had some grunt on that moment when Cell hadn't take off and people didn't understand it correctly after their efforts. For me PS3 was last special "console" hw. Later x86 consoles is been just "meh". Sony let new guy take a lead in that hw and not bother so much with it when it came to PS4 and just use it as platform merely what they have instead.

Suddenly there was bunch of VRAM and RAM to be used on consoles since then as example.

Today its much easier to think to have emulation of PS3 due how stupid far power example even phones has got these days. I am still in awe how ten years + it was struggling to run GameCube Zelda with sound with PC but now Snapdragon 888 (right.. even this is old now!) wipes floor with doing it by charging same time via USB-C and using external monitor on Dex on Samsung S21 FE with higher resolution.

 

[pianohombre]

I remember reading it was supposed to be Nintendo Playstation before they switched to cartridges last minute. Now they are one of their biggest competitors!

 

[Charles_n_town]

I do agree with much of what you said, op. I don't necessarily see the need for a new system in this case. I recently got my first smart TV. While 4k looks amazing, it's not really a night and day difference. Plus, I think a lot of games are just upscaled rather than using those ultra high res models and whatnot.

 

[pianohombre]

Yeah the jump from one generation to the next isn't very big. You have to see 2 or 3 generations to see the difference, but I think with ps5 it's maxed out. You can't get it any smoother. There will have to be other features in the ps6 like more memory that will make you want to upgrade.

 

[Izofeu]

Nowadays all consoles are very similar to each other. 20+ years ago they were like different worlds, today it's all the same architecture with maybe a different central processing unit and components, all running on the same x86 architecture. Only the Nintendo Switch is an ARM based one, yet those two architectures are the most popular ones amongst mainstream devices.

Back then games were coded with love and passion, were being thoroughly bugtested and had to be carefully optimized to work around the hardware limitations of that time. Nowadays the developers slap together a 50GB game that consumes 8GB+ of RAM, has a memory leak, barely maintains 30/60FPS while fully utilizing the rendering hardware at all times and is just a bunch of asset store graphics glued together. :')

 

[salazar07]

I think the ps3 was overpowered for its time. And developers did not know how to use all of it's potential. I read that maybe they only tended to use half with some 1st party developers being good at it like Naughty dog for Last of Us. So only in some 1st party games did Sony produce something superior to 360.

So ps4 not being that powerful so long as it could keep up with it's competitor the Xbox One.

I would say the most notiable upgrade was HD Graphics across the board 720p to 1080p.
Storage space across the board with 20 GB/60B and transition Sata 1 starting to Ps4 Sata 2 and now storage spaces were 10x-20x more than what the ps3 started with 500GB and 1TB respectively and one could upgrade further.

During this time there SSD also came about.
I do not think that any game was made to run on SSD exclusively because they needed to run on base ps4s. And during this time the jump to NMVE came about.

It would have been interesting if we would have had a console between the 4 and the 5 that had a 2.5 SSD.

I remember reading it was supposed to be Nintendo Playstation before they switched to cartridges last minute. Now they are one of their biggest competitors!

It definetly made me wonder why Nintendo was willing to consider CD media for the Super Nintendo, but not for the n64.
It just seemed better to design a system from the ground up. There just did not seem a point if games could not take advantage of the benefits.

I think CD rom would be more viable when it was cost effective to do x4 read speed.

I think the CD add on would have been good for the n64 instead of their DD system, or the 64 could have used Zip drives also those went from 100MB to 750MB comparable to a CD. We have seen how some devices like 64CD and dr64 make so much sense

They could have also done downgraded ports of JRPGs . For example a FF7 version running on the engine of FF6.

 

[Bar-g]

I think the ps3 was overpowered for its time

It wasn't, specially for it's launch price tag. It was weaker than the 360 and costed more.

Cell had a strong SIMD, but it's IPC was trash. As a CPU itself it sucked. At the time where GPU general compute wasn't a thing it's high-floating point performance was good, but the logic processing/general purpose performance was terrible, and that's the most important thing in a CPU. The 360 fixed this by including 3 homogeneous cores, giving 3x the performance of Cell.

The GPU is also superior on the 360, and the same applies to the RAM setup. The 360 was the better machine specs-wise.

Of course, the PS4 is stronger than the Xbox One.

It definetly made me wonder why Nintendo was willing to consider CD media for the Super Nintendo, but not for the n64.

The N64 was designed to be a monster, and performance was a priority at the time. Cartdridges compared to CDs is basically a quantity vs quality debate. Cartdridges are better, but more costly and less storage. CDs have less performance, but more space and cheaper.

Similar to comparing HDDs to SSDs in some sense.