My Amiga 500+ upgraded to 1mb of ram shits all over your poverty current gen.

The wii was the very definition of a point five no?

Played all gcn games and the lightly uprezzed to edtv games exclusive to the system.

But crucially gamecube couldn't play Wii games. That stops it being a .5 Shirley?

Ah bit they were .6s

For me, it's gonna be fun watching it shake out: MS seem to have most cards out on the table, they want UWP (which, given the state of Gears Ultimate, is a disaster right now and could go the way of GFWL), are being outperformed by PS4 in both sales and games performance, and don't have a VR headset which seems to be the upcoming big bandwagon/bubble (maybe they got so burned pushing Kinect that they didn't want a repeat?). 
[as an aside, yeah, Steam was a terrible state when it launched so, benefit of the doubt, MS can keep pushing with UWP and their store to improve it - but IMHO Steam's carrot of HL2 was a better carrot than Gears Ultimate, and I have more faith in Valve to double-down and commit to keep improving a system than I do in MS, because of Zune, GFWL and all the other initiatives that they've tried and let wither for 4 or 5 years if it wasn't an instant success]

But if either Sony or MS go down either a S/X/.5 or push an early new-gen, there's a risk of pissing off their existing fanbase and whoever goes first will bear the brunt of any PR backlash - allowing the follower to gauge the market and quickly adjust their plans - which seems to be what the start of this gen was; MS tries to steal thunder with grand plans, PR backlash, Sony had sat back to watch and then responds quickly with the opposite plan.


As such, I figure a shorter gen cycle is more likely than a significant S/.5 SKU - because then the easy backwards compat is an obvious value-add for the new machine, games can be sold as "Special bonus double-pack works on both PS4 & PS5!" as a value add for that game and a softer transition for punters to the new gen until the install base for the new machine is large enough and the games power-hungry enough that the old gen compat can be quietly dropped. But this gen will still have to be long enough not to burn the early adopters and with the huge install bases already out there, you can't just drop them.
There'll still be the usual hardware refreshes - Slim version, box redesign, special pack with builtin large HDD for DVR etc. - and maybe even a PS4 with updated HDMI to support 4K bluray - but not anything significantly more powerful with the generation that'll split the userbase.

I don't think you could ever close the door on Nintendo TBH - they're playing a different game. Sony tried with Vita but that's basically dead now. N3DS has legs, and Pokemon and Monster Hunter are still juggernauts.

For the love of fuck please bring The Last Guardian out on the .0

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Edit: LOL I can't spell.

I wouldn't look at Arkham Knight as anything but an anomaly. All the other Arkham titles were fine and WB released Mad Max soon after that was absolutely fine.
A third party did a shit job for whatever reason, be it incompetence or lack of budget who knows but I wouldn't worry about that happening often.

Price is certainly going to be an issue.
A 4k gpu upgrade would realistically cost upwards of 500 quid if released tomorrow.

Consumers won't pay that for an entire console let alone an upgrade.

If it is less than a 4k upgrade I start to wonder if it is meatier enough to even bother with at all.

Sony got the VR headset price right by keeping it no more than the cost of a console (even though in reality it is more with add-ons).


Does the Ps4 have any form of upgrade port on it? All I can see on the Xbox One that could be used are the USB and/or Kinect ports.

I'm guessing this will just be a PS4 Slim type model, but with the ability to output 4K media like films, because Sony would love to sell you a new telly. Doubt it'll have anything to do with making games look better.

Hah, who would've thunk; consoles in a (bi) annual update cycle a la ipad.
Awesome. I'll take the pc upgrade model tyvm.

Reasons why consoles become upgradable:
1. FC/BC make incremental upgrades possible without breaking your games collection.
2. To keep up with new developments (4K VRRRRRRR!)
3. Milking the userbase with yearly incremental updates can prove very lucrative. (OCD Collectors collective: I finally have all console releases of the PS4 including Gold Special Editions!)

i really hope 4k dies much like 3D TV.

it might just make me seem like a grumpy old 'what we've got is good enough' type, hell i prob didn't think we needed DVD when we had VHS....but all the stuff i've read on 4K just makes it seem pointless...the combination of screen size and viewing distance required for your eyes to appreciate the increase just makes it seem utterly pointless.
then from a gaming point of view, considering the huge increase in performance required to do 4K properly, then i'd much prefer they stuck with 1080P and used any extra horsepower for better framerate/ai/lighting/stuff etc...

I like to think it's just an "Elite" console for 4K nerds and that's it. Already had people in work asking where our 4K section is, and getting pissy when I tell them we don't have a dedicated A-Z (official UK launch of 4K movies is later this month though, only small selection). So the market is there.