There’s been much speculation since the late GDC 2016 rumor Sony were working on a Playstation 4.5 (though some folks are also referring to the console as a Playstation 4K). A new rumor insists that the system won’t release in 2017 like many predicted, but instead will release this holiday season.
The rumor says that the Playstation 4K shall appear on store shelves in time for Christmas (though an exact release date wasn’t revealed). The pricing of the system is the same as what the original Playstation 4 debuted at, $400 US dollars.
Update: The upgraded PS4 is known as NEO, and a whole bunch of specs, performance info and other details have been leaked. Check out this updated article for more info on the PS4 Neo.
The same source revealed that the Playstation 4K already has developers working on the system and that the difference in the games versus the vanilla machine is ‘noticeable’. There will be titles supposedly developed specifically for the for the Playstation 4.5, but supposedly they will run on the standard vanilla PS4, but with differences in performance.
Of course, whether you believe these rumors true or not is down to your own opinion; and for that matter the Playstation 4.5 hasn’t even officially been confirmed by Sony – who’ve remained fairly tight lipped on the subject.
As we’ve discussed in our own analysis of the rumor and the potential specs, there are two likely scenarios for the machine. The first is that the PS4K will offer a significant upgrade from the base unit, probably providing about 2x the performance over the vanilla model. This still won’t be enough to truly render games at 4K, but will offer enough additional performance for developers to render at higher resolutions, higher and more stable frame rates or potentially better graphical detail.
The second option is the PS4.5 will have additional clock speed on the CPU and GPU, with potential for the two disabled CU (Compute Units) activated in this model. Such a system would probably separate the hardware’s performance with a gap similar to that found between the Xbox One and the ‘vanilla’ Playstation 4.
Though it was unlikely, the 2016 release window of the PS4k also scuppers the chances of the system having HBM2 (though it was incredibly unlikely anyway due to the cost and unnecessarily levels of performance for a console).
The release date and pricing information come to us from The Know, owned by Rooster Teeth. As usual, take with truck of salt until Sony confirm.
Source – The Know | Thanks to John for messaging the tip!
