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Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro reveal was a confident step forward
It's been a good year so far for Sony Interactive Entertainment. Yesterday's PlayStation Meeting continued the momentum from E3 and showed us the next step in its plan for home console domination: the PlayStation 4 Pro. The company's strategy was simple: show, rather than tell. The big news, if you own a fancy UHD display, is that Pro will play nicely with all those extra pixels and show off your screen's HDR capabilities. Unlike with the Xbox One S, Sony also spelled out the benefits of buying a Pro, even if you don't own a 4K TV. The new, beefier machine will make existing games look and perform better on the 1080p TV that's sitting in your living room right now, and it can also give PlayStation VR games a facelift, too. All for $399 this November 10th. Sony's always had the edge on Microsoft with this generation, but a strong finish to 2016 feels like the gap could be widening.
Welcome to the final console generation as we know it
PlayStation 4 architect Mark Cerny practically whispered into his microphone as he introduced the world to Sony's newest console iteration, the PS4 Pro. His voice was at odds with the setting: He stood at the center of attention in a New York City auditorium packed with journalists and fans eager to hear about the latest and greatest Sony gaming technology. Amid frantic keyboard tapping and camera flashes, Cerny described the PS4 Pro's upgrades like a museum curator detailing a magnificent piece of art he'd just acquired. The Pro's GPU is twice as fast as the standard PS4, it can handle PSVR out of the box, it has a 1TB hard drive, boosted clock rate and it supports 4K and HDR gaming. Even some older games, including Shadow of Mordor and Infamous: First Light, will be patched to support 4K and HDR features in a move that Sony labels "forward compatibility." Cerny called the PS4 Pro transformative, while PlayStation CEO Andrew House stressed that Sony wanted to ensure anyone playing on the new, beefed-up console would still be a part of the overall PS4 community. "PS4 Pro is not intended to blur the lines between console generations," Cerny said. However, despite Sony's best intentions, the PS4 Pro smudges this generational dividing line. Modern console generations have followed a fairly rigid pattern: standard console, "slim" console, rumors of a new console. Rinse and repeat for the next four to eight years.
Will you buy the PlayStation 4 Pro?
The PlayStation 4 Neo Pro has finally been revealed, and it packs an intriguing amount of power and features unforeseen in the console world. But given that it's only been three years since the PS4's original debut, is it worth upgrading for the system's existing owners? With Microsoft's Project Scorpio, which is even more powerful on paper, coming next year, it might be worth waiting a bit before pulling the trigger. Engadget's editors have opinions.
What happened at Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro event
Sony's PlayStation event didn't have a ton of surprises, but still -- any time you get two new flavors of the PS4, it's worth paying attention. In the afterglow of today's announcements, senior editors Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham break down the good and bad of what Sony announced. The PS4 Slim is almost exactly what we expected: a cheaper and smaller version of the existing PS4. But Sony surprised us a bit by having a reasonable $399 price point and November 10th release date for its more powerful PS4 Pro console. Both new PS4 consoles will be in gamers' hands before long, so get caught up on what you need to know here.
4K consoles will finally make 1080p gaming a reality
Microsoft and Sony have finally announced their new, more powerful console revisions. The PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio promise a significant performance bump over their current-gen counterparts, supposedly ushering in the era of 4K console gaming. Although we will see some 4K games, it's likely that neither console has the power to pull off the higher resolution without compromise. We've heard this story before. When the Xbox 360 was unveiled at E3 in 2005, it was supposed to play games at a crisp 720p or 1080i. The following year, when Sony announced the PlayStation 3, it did so by showing off Gran Turismo HD running at a native 1080i/60, with the promise of 1080p games to come. For the most part, that didn't happen. Instead, many Xbox 360 games upscaled just to hit 720p. The significantly more powerful PS3 also stuck mostly to 720p, with a smattering of 1,280 x 1,080 games (which were then processed to stretch out the horizontal resolution). To my memory, the only 1080p game I had on PlayStation 3 was Fifa Street 3 (I make bad life choices). Oh, and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue let me see my garage (and only my garage) in 1080p. Then came the current console generation and the pitch of true 1080p gaming. Very quickly, that promise unraveled. Xbox One launch titles like Ryse (900p) and Dead Rising 3 (720p) fell short, with only Forza Motorsport 5 hitting 1080p at the expense of anti-aliasing and texture quality. PlayStation 4 titles fared a little better: Infamous Second Son, Killzone Shadow Fall and Knack hit 1080p. But all three games suffered from serious frame-rate issues: Killzone developer Guerrilla Games was forced to add a 30fps lock to the single player through an update and faced a (failed) lawsuit when it was discovered the "1080p 60fps" multiplayer actually ran at 960 x 1,080 and pixels doubled using "temporal reprojection." The biggest cross-platform title of the launch window, Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, hit 792p on Xbox One and 900p on PlayStation 4. Both versions relied on adaptive v-sync (a trick that minimizes stuttering when frames aren't rendered in time) just to stick to 30fps. Things have improved a little since then, as developers now understand the consoles' respective limitations. We now see some 1080p games that mostly stick to 30fps, with exclusive titles Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One and Bloodborne on PlayStation 4 being prime examples. Even so, the vast majority of titles struggle, with shooters relying on dynamic scaling to hit 60fps and other games sticking with 30fps caps just to get by. There are outliers, of course: Lots of last-gen remasters are hitting the holy grail of 1080p and 60fps (1080p60). And some games -- like Forza Motorsport 6 on the Xbox One and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on the PS4 -- run almost entirely at 1080p60.
PS4 Pro will take UHD screenshots and broadcast 1080p video
In addition to running games at higher resolution, the PlayStation 4 Pro will also take bigger and more detailed screenshots as well. Hitting the Share button on the controller will grab a 4K-sized image of whatever is on-screen at that moment according to Polygon.
Sony brought new PS4 accessories too
Sony didn't talk about it much during today's PlayStation Meeting event, but the reworked DualShock 4 (CUH-ZCT2) spotted in earlier leaks is real. The touchpad is a bit see through, allowing that line on the top to display whatever color the lightbar is showing -- all the better for games that take advantage of its color-changing abilities.
Nintendo loses a little piece of its identity with 'Super Mario Run'
Today, Nintendo announced Super Mario is going mobile -- Super Mario Run will launch on iOS and Android before the end of the year. We knew the company was making more content for smartphones, but for long-time Nintendo fans, this announcement still feels like a shock. For years, Satoru Iwata rallied hard against bringing Nintendo characters to the small screen. "If we did this," he said in 2011, "Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo." The company's leader was adamant: Putting Mario on mobile would make good short-term profits but would ultimately devalue the property. Now that it's here, we have to wonder -- is Nintendo still Nintendo?
PlayStation 4 Pro games look amazing, but don't expect real 4K
The PlayStation 4 Pro is undoubtedly the most powerful game console I've ever seen. Its GPU (powered by AMD's new Polaris technology) is more than twice as fast as the original PS4, and it sports a faster clock speed as well. But while Sony is marketing it as the ideal console for 4K gaming, the truth is more complicated. Rendering 4K games is something that's still tough for high-end PC gaming rigs today. So Sony is giving developers a variety of ways to make their games look better than standard 1080p titles on the PS4, even if they can't quite reach 4K.
The After Math: Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro event
For an hourlong media event, Sony packed a ton of new info into 60 minutes. Release date and prices for both the PlayStation 4 Slim and PS4 Pro, tons of HDR footage from upcoming games and even a few bits about how the PS4 Pro would better handle PlayStation VR games. That's on top of perhaps the biggest announcement of the keynote: All 40 million + PS4s will get an update that adds HDR video capability. And that's just the beginning.
The PlayStation 4 Pro vs. the original PS4: What's changed?
With only three years since the release of the PlayStation 4, Sony isn't quite ready to give us a completely new console. But while it did unveil a new slim redesign, there's also the PlayStation 4 Pro: Not quite full 4K gaming, but the new HDR option looks good enough to give players a taste of the next generation. We've pitted the stats of the new systems up against the OG PS4 to see how far we've come in the past few years.
Watch 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' running on the PS4 Pro
To show off the capabilities of its new, more powerful PlayStation 4, Sony has called on Bioware and the highly anticipated Mass Effect: Andromeda. The first (official) gameplay was demoed on stage at the PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro unveiling, giving fans their best glimpse yet of the new game. In a roughly three-minute teaser, we see our rugged hero exploring a planet overrun by creepers and other strange vegetation. Platforms drenched in green light show signs of civilisation, however, and before long you're wandering past groups of floating, seemingly non-violent aliens.
The PlayStation 4 Pro is not an Ultra HD Blu-ray player
During today's announcement of the new PS4 Pro, we heard a lot about the enhancements offered by 4K and HDR, but there was one thing not mentioned: Ultra HD Blu-ray. Our reporters at the event asked and confirmed there is not an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive in the new console, although it will include 4K and HDR apps from Netflix and YouTube.
PlayStation 4 will play Netflix and YouTube videos in HDR
Sony made much ado over high dynamic range imagery for gaming on the PlayStation 4 Pro at its September event, but don't worry -- it knows you want to watch HDR videos, too. The console maker announced that both Netflix and YouTube are making new apps that should play HDR videos on all PS4 models. You'll need a Pro to play videos from either service in 4K, alas, but this still means that you'll get richer colors when you're watching Luke Cage and other supporting shows. At least the Netflix app will be available around the time of the PS4 Pro's November launch, so you'll have a way to show off your HDR-capable TV in the near future. Find all the news from Sony's big PlayStation event right here.
Sony will upgrade all PS4s with HDR
At today's announcement of two new PlayStation 4 consoles, Sony had news for existing owners too: a firmware update will make every PS4 (going back to the launch models) ready for HDR video. There weren't a lot of specifics on what exactly what your console will support, but we'll find out more info as it becomes available. Sony showed off some sweet gaming demos with the PS4 Pro showing what HDR can do, but we'll have to see how well older hardware supports the feature, or if it's only for video streams.
Sony's 4K game console is called PlayStation 4 Pro
Sony's 4K PlayStation 4 upgrade has been something of an open secret since before E3, but today the company officially unveiled its high end game console. It's called PlayStation 4 Pro -- and it'll be available on November 10th for $399/£349. It boasts an upgraded, x86-64 "Jaguar" AMD CPU with 8 cores, a 4.2 teraflop AMD Radeon GPU, three USB ports, 5GHz WiFi support and a 1TB HDD. Sony say's it's twice as fast as the regular PS4, and, of course, it's designed specifically for UHD TVs and PlayStation VR.
The PS4 Slim hits shelves on September 15th for $300
Sony isn't done with the PlayStation 4. The company today revealed a thinner version of the PS4, a console that's been lurking around the rumor mill for months now. The "Slim," as it's commonly known, lands on September 15th for $300/£259. The PS4 Slim features a 500GB hard drive and the guts of a standard PS4, plus a few cosmetic and convenience upgrades, including a lightbar at the top, more space between the front-facing USB ports and the removal of the optical port. The console is about 30 percent smaller than the standard PS4, which came out in 2013, and it plays all existing PS4 games.
Live from Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro event
Apple isn't the only big tech company making headlines today: Sony is also set to divulge its next console plans at its PlayStation event in NYC. While the company hasn't revealed any specifics yet, we're expecting to get a look at the PlayStation 4 Neo, its faster, 4K-ready PS4 follow-up. And of course, the thinner PS4 Slim will likely make an appearance as well, after being unceremoniously leaked over the past few weeks.
Watch today's PlayStation Meeting right here!
It only took about six months, but we're (hopefully) finally going to get all of the details possible about the PlayStation Neo today. Will it include an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive like the Xbox One S? How much will it cost? Oh, right, updates about the PlayStation 4 Slim are all but guaranteed today too. And guess what? You can follow along with all the action right here, both with our liveblog and the Twitch player embedded below!
