When the GDC 2016 bells were tolling, a late minute rumor Sony were working on an updated Playstation 4 started swirling on the internet. Since then reports have popped up that the Playstation 4.5 (though some folks are dubbing the machine the PS4K) have stated the machine will have considerably upgraded hardware and will likely launch this year.
A new report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) seems to corroborate these earlier reports, stating that Sony aren’t going to abandon the original Playstation 4, instead they will manufacture the system alongside the older, currentĀ model.
This upgraded console will supposedly fix issues with the ‘vanilla’ Playstation 4, including its inability to natively read 4K Blu-Ray discs and the fact the machine isn’t capable of displaying 4K content (because of the HDMI version). These fixes are potentially why the system has been given the nickname of Playstation 4K by some developers.
Strangely, last year Sony had hinted they were indeed considering an updated system with 4K Blu-Ray support, and Netflix had also told Huffington Post that Sony were “promising” the updated PS4 revision would sport the ability to stream at 4K (something Netflix currently offers as a streaming option).
Rumors from yesterday hinted that the Playstation 4.5 / Playstation 4K would be launching within the Holiday period of 2016, and would retail at $400 US dollars. This is the same price as the Playstation VR will be released as, and the same pricing as the original model when it hit store shelves back in 2013.
We’ve speculated a lot regarding the performance of the machine, and two potential options seemĀ most likely. The first is a PS4 which enables the two Compute Units currently disabled in the retail models GPU, and possibly an increase in the various clock frequencies of the system. The other possibility is a system based entirely on Polaris and will offer a large performance boost over the retail system (up to 2x performance per watt according to AMD, compared to the older GCN architecture found in current GPU’s).
PS4K is touted to be capable of “ultra-high definition resolution graphics,” and will supposedly extend backwards compatibility to older titles, and also the older model should offer full compatibility with newer games.
New source: Wall Street Journal