Updated: PlayStation 4 Becomes Reality

[AgentCooper]

Big picture, my friend. Big picture. Sony made a calculated risk taking a loss on the PS3, and though IT didn't start making a profit until lately, answer me this: How many Blu-ray movies do you see on the shelf in stores? Now, how many HD-DVDs do you see on the shelves? Sony was one of the key Blu-ray Disc founders, and the PS3 was their knockout punch against Toshiba, Sanyo, RCA, and importantly, Microsoft, who had been promoting, and dumping resources into HD-DVD. So, though their sales numbers didn't show a profit for the PS3 until recently, overall it was a huge win for Sony and their allies that were together pushing the Blu-ray format.

But what has the net positive of that been? Sure, Blu-ray movies managed to win over HD-DVDs, but it's been 7 years, and film companies are still releasing on DVD? What does that tell you? Surely if Blu-Ray was a real victory, DVDs would have been on their way to obsolescence ages ago. Instead, if my local HMV shelves are any indicator (not that that'll be around for much longer), the vast majority of films and TV shows are sold on DVD. They're cheaper, and many people (myself included) prefer the look of standard-def DVDs over the High-Def soap opera look of Blu-Ray. If I'm watching Once Upon A Time In The West, I don't want to feel like I'm watching a sandy episode of East Enders.

And really, surely this is all nothing more than a dick contest? Yeah, Sony's Blu-Ray dick turned out longer than Microsoft's HD-Dick. It still hasn't stopped them from losing money.

Again, winning a format contest with Microsoft at the cost of losing all the money you had saved up from the PS1 and PS2 days isn't really winning. It's like spending your life savings on a faster supercar than the one your neighbour has. Sure, you're now faster than them, but you've still got mortgage payments to make, and a Pagani Zonda isn't going to stop the bailiffs from coming.

That's ultimately the bottom line. Sony needs to stop losing money, and in order to do that, they need to stop selling hardware under cost. It simply hasn't worked for them.

DVDS were never going to leave. Blu Ray is considered for the serious movie watcher with a theater set up. The money still goes to the studios regardless on what format its sold on. Yes, DVDS still sell better due to price and the lack of people caring about high def. But, if you want superior picture and sound then Blu-ray is the champion. Toshiba was the one that lost the lion share when HD-dvd lost the format war.

 

[AgentCooper]

DVDS were never going to leave. Blu Ray is considered for the serious movie watcher with a theater set up. The money still goes to the studios regardless on what format its sold on. Yes, DVDS still sell better due to price and the lack of people caring about high def. But, if you want superior picture and sound then Blu-ray is the champion. Toshiba was the one that lost the lion share when HD-dvd lost the format war.

I don't agree with that logic. Sorry to say, but that to me, that's the reasoning people use when they can't admit they've been beat.

Sony never marketed Blu Ray as a niche movie-buff format. When they were trying to get it off the ground, they were marketing it as the future of home entertainment. They were trying to market it as the same sort of change from VHS to DVD, a fundamental paradigm shift that changes the nature of home viewing. That's not what's happened. Some people have taken to Blu-Ray, but it's not become the paradigm shift Sony marketed it as. Once the DVD/VHS struggle was over, it didn't take companies long to stop producing tapes. Right now, companies are still going to be making DVDs for the considerable future. And that's going to sting for Sony, seeing as they tried to sell Blu-Ray as the future format.

Companies don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars marketing products just to movie-buffs. That's the sort of money they spend on products they want to get mainstream acceptance. Sony doesn't get to change the rules of the competition after they already lost. They marketed Blu-Ray as the successor to DVD, and sank money into it trying to make that so. DVD is still around, and is still the most popular physical entertainment medium. The rate things are going now, it's going to be digital streaming that kills the format off, not Blu Ray. For Sony, that's another kick in the balls. They tried to lead an entertainment format change, and they failed.

And I don't think the picture on Blu-Ray is superior. I like the look of film at standard def. I like seeing 16mm or 32mm film, and the grainy, earthy quality it has. I couldn't imagine watching Once Upon A Time In The West any other way. Blu-Ray makes everything look like a soap opera. The image may be clearer, but that isn't the same as better. I don't want my Westerns looking like soap operas.

In no fashion was Blu-ray ever going to take over DVD sales in any form. Sony might have marketed as a upgrade to DVD. That did'int happen and Blu-Ray found an outlet for serious movie lovers. DVD will always sell better then Blu-ray. minus the rare exceptions like Avengers selling better on Blu-ray. The picture is always superior on Blu-ray. This is fact and even if you can't see it. I suggest going to movie forums and comparing the dvd stills versus the blu ray still. I prefer Blu-ray due to enhanced pictures quality and I have a nice theater quality surround sound set system. Indiana Jones and the Bond 50 set are gorgeous when done right in the mixing department. Minus Goldeneye and its DNR heavy.

 

[RicoADF]

This.... actually doesnt look bad. ok color me interested. not the i want to buy interested, the i want to see how ti ends up interested.

Playing as you download - game assets does not work this way. they have to invent different way to store all assets for each level seperately, which puts A LOT of work on developers. then again they somewhat have to do that in part with discs model since the disck readers arent as fast as HDDs so they cant handle a "4gb dump of assets with need to read random parts all the time" so well.

8Gb of DDR5 RAM? That's INSANE!

Yeah, that's almost as good as my computer! Wait...

That's better than any computer. PC's only have DDR3 RAM. Only GPU's have DDR5 memory.

Does not matter much really. this is more of a future gaming thing. DDR5 gives you more ram speed, but DDR3 gives you enough for any game currently in existence already. sure, in future we may need faster than DDR3, but currently we dont. so id rather have 16 gb of ddr3 than 8 gb of ddr5. and the good thing with PCs, i can easily and cheaply put the ddr5 when the need comes. though kudos to SOny for looking at the future, but then they should have started with 16gb of it too. well, its better than 512 right?

8 GB is overkill on PC, its even more overkill for consoles. 16 would be outright wasteful.
Remember most games use only 1GB of ram, some can use 2. No current games can use 4 as their 32bit software and thus cannot write to more, heck from what I read most engines can't do above 1-2. Sufficet to say 8GB is plenty.

 

[likalaruku]

Wonder how long it will be until no gaming platform is selling physical copies anymore.

 

[Strazdas]

8 GB is overkill on PC, its even more overkill for consoles. 16 would be outright wasteful.
Remember most games use only 1GB of ram, some can use 2. No current games can use 4 as their 32bit software and thus cannot write to more, heck from what I read most engines can't do above 1-2. Sufficet to say 8GB is plenty.

Simply: Depends
More complex:for regular gaming 8 gb is plenty because most of "popular" games are now sadly moving onto trying to push everything on graphic processor and ram instead of using the regular ram. however that will chance once the new consoles will come as those are holding that down a lot lately. there is also the case of ram intensive games, like civilization, where a "huge" map on a long run can easily fill 10 gb of ram if it has a chance, in fact to avoid that they flush the ram every (auto)save since civ4 v1.06 because peoples games were crashing due to lack of ram. and while this is quite extreme case, i admit, it is far from begin the only one. and being a strategy gamer i meet it quite often.
Then there is also the fact that PC is more than just gaming. streaming, video recording, converting all eat ram in nice chunks (not to mention that win7 eats over 1gb just on idle, that hungry beast). but i dont think i need to tell you of all program ram usage possibilities.

capcha: carbon copy
no, i dont want to duplicate my ram!

 

[RicoADF]

8 GB is overkill on PC, its even more overkill for consoles. 16 would be outright wasteful.
Remember most games use only 1GB of ram, some can use 2. No current games can use 4 as their 32bit software and thus cannot write to more, heck from what I read most engines can't do above 1-2. Sufficet to say 8GB is plenty.

Simply: Depends
More complex:for regular gaming 8 gb is plenty because most of "popular" games are now sadly moving onto trying to push everything on graphic processor and ram instead of using the regular ram. however that will chance once the new consoles will come as those are holding that down a lot lately. there is also the case of ram intensive games, like civilization, where a "huge" map on a long run can easily fill 10 gb of ram if it has a chance, in fact to avoid that they flush the ram every (auto)save since civ4 v1.06 because peoples games were crashing due to lack of ram. and while this is quite extreme case, i admit, it is far from begin the only one. and being a strategy gamer i meet it quite often.
Then there is also the fact that PC is more than just gaming. streaming, video recording, converting all eat ram in nice chunks (not to mention that win7 eats over 1gb just on idle, that hungry beast). but i dont think i need to tell you of all program ram usage possibilities.

capcha: carbon copy
no, i dont want to duplicate my ram!

Even civ V 8GB is more than enough. The 'running out of ram is because it can't use more than 4GB, being a 32bit software. So once it hits 4GB that's it, they need to flush it to prevent that. Also that sounds like a memory leak, games don't really need that much.

 

[triggrhappy94]

I saw a graphics trialer for this. It's interesting to see such a strong focus on particle physics. It looks like they're trying to turn it into a gimmick (they really don't need to, it's already impressive), but I'd rather have intense particle physics than 3D, so no complaint.