PS5 Specs

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Wow $10 to $18 per disc? God damn I never had any idea they were so expensive. Looks like next gen they'll probably stick with what MS does now and give you the 1080p game on disc and make you download all the 4k assets.

$10 to $18 is the retail purchase cost of a blank 100GB BD-R writable Blu-Ray disc.

 

And the reason they're so expensive is low volume. Not a lot of people buy them.

 

The bulk cost of a manufactured Blu-Ray disc is about $2 or so.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Wow $10 to $18 per disc? God damn I never had any idea they were so expensive. Looks like next gen they'll probably stick with what MS does now and give you the 1080p game on disc and make you download all the 4k assets.

Keep in mind this is consumer pricing and what @dalekphalm said.

 

But another thing I wanted to bring up about cartridges. This is what an microSD card looks like stripped down:

Here's a normal SD card for comparison's sake

And this is what an N64 cartridge with battery backed saving looks like (this is from a Ocarina of Time cart)

 

Lots more material and components to worry about here.

[Noctua_Boy]

8 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

This ain't back in the day though. Now you have day 1 patches and it's considered acceptable for games to run like crap early on, both console and PC.

Vote with your wallet. I never buy a game day one , DLC Pass or..without reading reviews.

[Noctua_Boy]

7 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

They wouldn't kill the optical disk drive. As long as optical disk media exists, the goal of Sony with the PlayStation is to be the premium-yet-affordable, all-in-one entertainment system, so they'll continue to put it in. And it's likely they wouldn't put on NVME either. Its performance has no appreciable benefit to having it for a gaming system of any sort.

 

Blu-Ray is capable of up to 72 MB/sec transfers and PS4 games are designed to be partially installed before letting the player run them.

The wont kill the Optical Drive because Discs are still massively cheaper , nothing to do with being a media center machine. When was the last time you bought a Music CD? DVD , Blue ray?

The PS4 Pro dont even support 4K BLU RAY MOVIES , Sony Pictures has 4K BLUE RAY Movies out there , figure that one out?

Sony Ps4 came out as a game focused console with deep roots on social media , streaming and downloads.

 

The PS4 uses a USB BUS to access the Hard drive data , the costs between Sata Controllers and NVME Controllers is about $20 , which is usually the difference in price between 256GB Sata vs NVME DRIVES...and this falling , if this gets lower than $10 by 2019 I have a feeling the would rather future proof the device. Sata 3 = 600mb/s     NVME=2000mb/s+ read speeds.(no big difference here. Sata is being faded out in favour of NVME.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Noctua_Boy]

7 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I don't think the carts will happen, as you'd probably need to go to 128GB. 4k games already run north of 100GB on XBox One X, and I don't want to pay extra for large cartridges like I had to in the N64 days. Maybe a lot of you guys are too young to remember, but N64 games were super expensive. Check this 1997 Black Friday ad from Best Buy:

 

 

I mean $59 for Starfox 64 / Goldeneye / Mario Kart 64 is nuts, much less $59 being the big sale price. I could swear these games were normally $69 also. Those are $90 games in today's US dollar at the sale price shown in this ad and $106 in today's USD for the regular price I remember.

i do remember going to Toys'r'US asking for a N64 , checking for the price of the games......giving that N64 back to the clerk and asking for a PSX. Money well spent. That was about the time Sony announced the Dual Shock and MGS was released. I say around 1998.

Still , i was envy of some of my friends when they they had Goldeneye on blast

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

44 minutes ago, Noctua_Boy said:

Vote with your wallet. I never buy a game day one , DLC Pass or..without reading reviews.

Yeah I think I have bought two games Day 1 this decade: Horizon Zero Dawn which I preordered after it got glowing reviews, and Shadow of the Colossus last week after it got killer reviews and Sony had sent me a 20% off coupon. Thankfully both completely lived up to the hype. Then again reviews can be full of shit too. My previous Day 1 buy was GTA IV in 2008 which got 10/10 reviews everywhere and that game was horrible. I think I'd rate GTA IV 4/10 at best.

[SteveGrabowski0]

29 minutes ago, Noctua_Boy said:

i do remember going to Toys'r'US asking for a N64 , checking for the price of the games......giving that N64 back to the clerk and asking for a PSX. Money well spent. That was about the time Sony announced the Dual Shock and MGS was released. I say around 1998.

Still , i was envy of some of my friends when they they had Goldeneye on blast

 

I had an N64 but I didn't think it was a good system at all. Back then DOS and Windows games were far superior. I didn't like that generation of consoles. It wasn't until Dreamcast and PS2 that console started getting awesome again IMO.

[Stefan Payne]

Yes but back in the day the things were completely different.

The CD was new for a Game System (and also had some huge disadvantages).

The Cartdridges were small and expensive. 

 

The difference between a normal N64 Module and a CD was factor 10 or more!

Yes, we are talking about 64MiB at most, if we are lucky.

 

Today things are totally different. 

 

There is no capacity limitations of Flash Memory cards.

 

And the chips in those old Cartdidges were so called "Masked ROM". That means that the content is burned in at manufacturing...

 

Another thing to consider:
Look at this:

 

 

Just look at how much space the Optical drive takes in this System!
And how much smaller it could have beebn without that optical drive. You can save something like 2/3 of the space and/or integrate the Powersupply...

 

Or look at the Playstation 4:

Still around 1/3rd of the space wasted on the opt. drive.

 

 

Or XBox one S:

 

 

Or XBox 360 Slim:

 

 

So with modern consoles, the optical drive takes somewhat around 1/3 to 1/2 of the space of the console. If you get rid of that, it frees up space, gives you way more possibilitys for cooling solutions or other stuffs...

 

 

[dalekphalm]

8 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Yes but back in the day the things were completely different.

The CD was new for a Game System (and also had some huge disadvantages).

The Cartdridges were small and expensive. 

 

The difference between a normal N64 Module and a CD was factor 10 or more!

Yes, we are talking about 64MiB at most, if we are lucky.

 

Today things are totally different. 

 

There is no capacity limitations of Flash Memory cards.

 

And the chips in those old Cartdidges were so called "Masked ROM". That means that the content is burned in at manufacturing...

 

Another thing to consider:
Look at this:

 

 

Just look at how much space the Optical drive takes in this System!
And how much smaller it could have beebn without that optical drive. You can save something like 2/3 of the space and/or integrate the Powersupply...

 

Or look at the Playstation 4:

Still around 1/3rd of the space wasted on the opt. drive.

 

 

Or XBox one S:

 

 

Or XBox 360 Slim:

 

 

So with modern consoles, the optical drive takes somewhat around 1/3 to 1/2 of the space of the console. If you get rid of that, it frees up space, gives you way more possibilitys for cooling solutions or other stuffs...

 

 

Quite frankly, if space was an issue, I'd just like a larger console to fit things like better cooling or "other stuffs".

 

Because I'd rather have that optical UHD Blu-Ray drive, just in case I'd need it. I very much embrace the "entertainment device" concept of modern consoles. Limiting them just to gaming is a disservice, when they excel at being media devices.

[asus killer]

21 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Yep, people bitch about game prices, but frankly, with inflation, games should cost upwards of $100+ today - thank fucking god they don't.

 

back in the day they had to make cartridges with memory and some with cpus onboard, and video games were a fringe item, they didn't sell like today making production costs and sales revenue much more unbalanced. 

Even for the PSX prices that was when the shift from cartridges to cds started and the prices dropped a lot with the playstation for example, but still they were riding on the high prices from the cartridges days.

There is no way that's comparable to today.

[dalekphalm]

7 minutes ago, asus killer said:

back in the day they had to make cartridges with memory and some with cpus onboard, and video games were a fringe item, they didn't sell like today making production costs and sales revenue much more unbalanced. 

Even for the PSX prices that was when the shift from cartridges to cds started and the prices dropped a lot with the playstation for example, but still they were riding on the high prices from the cartridges days.

There is no way that's comparable to today.

Just to clarify, that's a generalization and not entirely correct.

 

Take Super Mario Bros, for the NES. That game sold over 40 million copies, which is more than Skyrim (the best selling Elder Scrolls game).

 

Certainly, lots of old NES/SNES/N64 games didn't sell that well. But plenty sold more than many PC Games today.

 

Yes, the cartridge itself cost more - that's correct. So yes, modern game developers can streamline costs because there's less physical production involved.

 

Take a look at that flyer posted above. FF7 was released in January of 1997 - that's a Black Friday (November) 1997 flyer. FF7 was $49.99 in November 1997.

 

With inflation, that means it is the equivalent of $77.20 right now. FF7 also sold almost 10 million copies - again, more than most PC Games today sell.

 

So while it's not a direct comparison, there's definitely merit in comparing the relative price of old console games, versus the price we pay today, and see where and how the cost is reduced in modern game development.

[asus killer]

27 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Just to clarify, that's a generalization and not entirely correct.

 

Take Super Mario Bros, for the NES. That game sold over 40 million copies, which is more than Skyrim (the best selling Elder Scrolls game).

 

Certainly, lots of old NES/SNES/N64 games didn't sell that well. But plenty sold more than many PC Games today.

 

Yes, the cartridge itself cost more - that's correct. So yes, modern game developers can streamline costs because there's less physical production involved.

 

Take a look at that flyer posted above. FF7 was released in January of 1997 - that's a Black Friday (November) 1997 flyer. FF7 was $49.99 in November 1997.

 

With inflation, that means it is the equivalent of $77.20 right now. FF7 also sold almost 10 million copies - again, more than most PC Games today sell.

 

So while it's not a direct comparison, there's definitely merit in comparing the relative price of old console games, versus the price we pay today, and see where and how the cost is reduced in modern game development.

in my view today there are less gigantic games because people tend to spread more their attention to several games and genres, still to the average game it was harder to sell, you literally had to have a very good game or invest a lot on advertising, i bought a lot of magazines. Now the information comes to you, social media and it's easier for gamers to communicate to each other.

The games back then cost almost all the same but it's hard to imagine some games that were not blockbusters paying for nintendo royalties, the cartridge, advertising, etc... and comparing to say PUBG, make a game launch on steam the unfinished product, etc...

No one could back then release a broken game to make cash and then patch it with the customers money, for example.

My point being... you cannot just apply inflation and that's that, it's a world of small and big differences from now and then. Things are not comparable in my view.

I have no idea how a game should cost but comparing to that posters seems wrong to me.

[Stefan Payne]

In the olden days most of the time was spend on the headache of limited system resources and computing power. Just look at the video of the 8bit guy how the NES worked. And what crazy limitations it had. And that some games seem to be able to "break" those limitations (His Example was Super Mario Bros 3)...

 

Today most of the resources go to the high quality content...

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Stefan Payne said:

In the olden days most of the time was spend on the headache of limited system resources and computing power. Just look at the video of the 8bit guy how the NES worked. And what crazy limitations it had. And that some games seem to be able to "break" those limitations (His Example was Super Mario Bros 3)...

 

Today most of the resources go to the high quality content...

I don't think it was really breaking any perceived limitations moreso than asking "is it really that important?" Like the reason why most NES games for a while would only scroll in the horizontal or vertical direction was likely because game developers didn't want people to see graphical glitching from the loading seam. See:

 

[skywake]

On 14/02/2018 at 9:31 PM, SteveGrabowski0 said:

SSDs are not getting cheaper. Wow your Switch boots up in 18 seconds vs my PS4 Slim booting in 30 seconds. Neither one is instant and both times are short enough to not matter. It makes no sense to waste money on something so useless. Price matters hugely in the console space and when you say you want an SSD in the system then you're really saying you want a weaker gpu and cpu.

18 seconds? Dude, try 3-4 seconds. You press the home button and then the same button three times to turn it on and it's on the home screen. The speed of a home console should be more than just FPS. If that means having a super marginally weaker CPU/GPU so they can put a ~128GB SSD in there for the OS and most frequently used applications? Then yes. That's exactly what I'm saying they should do. 

 

On 16/02/2018 at 1:29 AM, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I don't think the carts will happen, as you'd probably need to go to 128GB. 4k games already run north of 100GB on XBox One X, and I don't want to pay extra for large cartridges like I had to in the N64 days. Maybe a lot of you guys are too young to remember, but N64 games were super expensive. Check this 1997 Black Friday ad from Best Buy: I mean $59 for Starfox 64 / Goldeneye / Mario Kart 64 is nuts, much less $59 being the big sale price. I could swear these games were normally $69 also. Those are $90 games in today's US dollar at the sale price shown in this ad and $106 in today's USD for the regular price I remember.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to prove by citing prices from 20 years ago. We all know that during the N64/PS era the N64 suffered because of the significantly smaller capacity of cartridges. We're talking games that were 10x smaller or less than a single disk sometimes costing twice as much. That's far removed from where we find ourselves now. Why cite 1997 prices when we literally have a console on the market right now that's using cartridges?

 

A few examples of multi-platform games using Australian pricing from one retailer:

Syrim Special Edition: $69 on PS4/XBOne, $79AU on Switch
LA Noire: $79AU on Switch/PS4/XBOne

NBA 2K 18: $69AU on Switch/PS4/XBOne

FIFA 18: $89AU on PS4/XBOne, $79AU on Switch

Lego City Undercover: $79AU on Switch, $89AU on PS4/XBOne
 

In general you don't pay more for games on the Switch despite it using cartridges. If anything bringing up the state of cartridges vs discs highlights just how far we've come. They're pretty close to being on-par now in terms of the ability for publishers to at least absorb the costs so consumers aren't paying more. Though to be fair none of the above games come on >16GB cartridges. L.A. Noire for example is a 30GB game on Switch but it you buy the cartridge they hit you with a 14GB day one download. Though they do the same with "100GB games" on PS4/XBOne anyways so what's the difference?

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 hour ago, skywake said:

18 seconds? Dude, try 3-4 seconds. You press the home button and then the same button three times to turn it on and it's on the home screen. The speed of a home console should be more than just FPS. If that means having a super marginally weaker CPU/GPU so they can put a ~128GB SSD in there for the OS and most frequently used applications? Then yes. That's exactly what I'm saying they should do. 

Most frequently used applications? You're not trying to get Photoshop or MATLAB to load quicker. A console isn't a PC so a boot + applications drive makes no sense. You're not even going to get one AAA game on your ridiculous SSD after factoring in space for the OS, overprovisioning, and the fact drives are measured in GB but game sizes and drive space in GiB. 128GB barely makes sense on a PC any more much less a console that's likely to have 100GB games.

 

I'm not buying 3-4 seconds on a cold boot for the Switch. If we're talking waking up from rest mode my PS4 Slim with its stock 500GB drive does it in 16 seconds from the time you hit the home button on the controller to turn it on. Wasting money on an SSD to trim a few seconds off the wake up time seems ridiculous.

 

1 hour ago, skywake said:

In general you don't pay more for games on the Switch despite it using cartridges. If anything bringing up the state of cartridges vs discs highlights just how far we've come. They're pretty close to being on-par now in terms of the ability for publishers to at least absorb the costs so consumers aren't paying more. Though to be fair none of the above games come on >16GB cartridges. L.A. Noire for example is a 30GB game on Switch but it you buy the cartridge they hit you with a 14GB day one download. Though they do the same with "100GB games" on PS4/XBOne anyways so what's the difference?

What's the point of even having the cartridge then if it's only 16GB of 100GB? Full digital would make way more sense in that case. Cartridges and small drive sizes work for Switch since it's a handheld (so optical would be retarded) and since its games don't have graphics requiring the large file sizes a 4k targeted console like the PS5 will. You're trying to shoehorn these ideas from PC and handheld that make little sense on a strictly home console that's going to be hooked up to a 4k TV.

 

Anyways, you're not the target market. You're not going to buy a PS5 based on how dismissive I have seen you be towards Playstation's exclusives in other threads. You don't seem to care much about graphics or price. But you're probably in the minority. Microsoft got their teeth kicked in releasing a more expensive console with diminished graphical power to pay for extras that didn't affect the gaming performance. It didn't work for Nintendo to release a graphically weak console with the Wii U.

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Most frequently used applications? You're not trying to get Photoshop or MATLAB to load quicker. A console isn't a PC so a boot + applications drive makes no sense. You're not even going to get one AAA game on your ridiculous SSD after factoring in space for the OS, overprovisioning, and the fact drives are measured in GB but game sizes and drive space in GiB. 128GB barely makes sense on a PC any more much less a console that's likely to have 100GB games.

 

I'm not buying 3-4 seconds on a cold boot. If we're talking waking up from rest mode my PS4 Slim with its stock 500GB drive does it in 16 seconds from the time you hit the home button on the controller to turn it on. Wasting money on an SSD to trim a few seconds off the wake up time seems ridiculous.

 

What's the point of even having the cartridge? Full digital would make way more sense in that case. Cartridges and small drive sizes work for Switch since it's a handheld (so optical would be retarded) and since its games don't have graphics requiring the large file sizes a 4k targeted console like the PS5 will. You're trying to shoehorn these ideas from PC and handheld that make little sense on a strictly home console that's going to be hooked up to a 4k TV.

 

Anyways, you're not the target market. You're not going to buy a PS5 based on how dismissive I have seen you be towards Playstation's exclusives in other threads. You don't seem to care much about graphics or price. But you're probably in the minority. Microsoft got their teeth kicked in releasing a more expensive console with diminished graphical power to pay for extras that didn't affect the gaming performance. It didn't work for Nintendo to release a graphically weak console with the Wii U.

Speaking as someone who has an XBOX One S:

Boot time is a bit slow, even from standby (I leave it on "always on standby" mode so it can update, etc, when powered off), but not enough to cause a problem. When I turn it on via a controller, it's ready to use inside 30 seconds, which is fine.

 

Loading apps, etc, are almost instant. Yes, an SSD would likely make it faster, but when I load the YouTube app, I'm watching a video within seconds. This is not an issue. It would be NICE to have, but it is definitely not a requirement. I'd rather the console manufacturers make it easy to swap your HDD for any SATA based drive, in an easy to do manner, rather than sell the console with an SSD.

 

Having a larger HDD is far more useful than having an SSD, or an SSD + HDD. Digital downloads are the future (As PC Gamers, we should all already know this - STEAM!). I have yet to buy a single physical game - all my XBOX games are digital downloads, and the 500GB HDD that it came with is far too small. We need bigger, not necessarily faster. I have multiple games that are not installed due to insufficient space.

 

Fortunately, the One X comes standard with a 1TB drive, and has a 2TB option. I'm sure any hypothetical PS5 will match or beat these options.

 

Also, even with current consoles, you can plug in a USB HDD - but it's less convenient, and is another "thing" to clutter your setup with.

 

Game sizes are going nowhere but up - especially as 4K becomes the "target" more and more.

[skywake]

10 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Most frequently used applications? You're not trying to get Photoshop or MATLAB to load quicker. A console isn't a PC so a boot + applications drive makes no sense. You're not even going to get one AAA game on your ridiculous SSD after factoring in space for the OS, overprovisioning, and the fact drives are measured in GB but game sizes and drive space in GiB. 128GB barely makes sense on a PC any more much less a console that's likely to have 100GB games.

You're so stuck on this, you still don't get it. I'll spell it out for you. When I say most "frequently used applications" on a console I am obviously not talking about photoshop, that shouldn't need to be explained but there you go. What I'm talking about here is something similar to those SSHDs or Intel's Optane. On a file or even lower level the OS can go "hey, these files are loaded into memory a lot. Lets keep a copy on the faster storage". Now that might be built in apps, it's definitely going to be the OS and system menu but it might also be the assets that are always loaded on that one game you play week after week.

 

Quote

I'm not buying 3-4 seconds on a cold boot for the Switch. If we're talking waking up from rest mode my PS4 Slim with its stock 500GB drive does it in 16 seconds from the time you hit the home button on the controller to turn it on. Wasting money on an SSD to trim a few seconds off the wake up time seems ridiculous.

Well if we're going to be that pedantic let me get out a timer. Just now timing it from a cold boot the Switch gets to the lock screen in ~10sec, pressing the home button when in standby gets you there instantly. If you think that's a non benefit? Cool. All I was saying was that a "next-gen" console should improve on its predecessors in every aspect not just FPS. Especially if they are selling the hardware on the idea of it being high spec.

 

Quote

What's the point of even having the cartridge then if it's only 16GB of 100GB? Full digital would make way more sense in that case. Cartridges and small drive sizes work for Switch since it's a handheld (so optical would be retarded) and since its games don't have graphics requiring the large file sizes a 4k targeted console like the PS5 will. You're trying to shoehorn these ideas from PC and handheld that make little sense on a strictly home console that's going to be hooked up to a 4k TV.

Yes, this is true as of today. And it's also true that for the Switch they had no other option because it's a portable console. That wasn't my point. My point was to say that we have a console on the market that uses cartridges, digging up catalogues from 1997 to prove a point is misleading. Things have changed since then. A 2017 era cartridge is more compelling when put against even a BDXL disk than a 1997 era cartridge was against the CD.

 

The 3DS and Vita launched in 2010 with 2GB cartridges being the standard and 4GB being an available option. The Switch is on the shelves now with 16GB being the standard and 32GB being an available option. I don't think it's a stretch to say that by the time a PS5 launches sometime after 2020, likely closer to 2022 that we will be talking 64GB+ at a reasonable price and capacity will not be of cartridges anymore. Games are not getting bigger faster than cartridges are. This is not 1997 when a large game on the N64 was 10-20x smaller than a CD and FF7 was on 3 discs.

 

21 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Quite frankly, if space was an issue, I'd just like a larger console to fit things like better cooling or "other stuffs". Because I'd rather have that optical UHD Blu-Ray drive, just in case I'd need it. I very much embrace the "entertainment device" concept of modern consoles. Limiting them just to gaming is a disservice, when they excel at being media devices.

This is probably the best reason why they should stick to optical media. Though it is kinda amusing that you're bring up this point when at the same time the idea of some amount of flash being included is being dismissed outright as an unnecessary expense. You know I hear that Microsoft got screwed over releasing a console that did more media stuff at the expense of a better gaming experience. So surely it would be wise to omit the ODD in exchange for a cheaper cartridge slot and faster storage options even if it means no UHD BluRays. Obviously you don't care about graphics or price  

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 hour ago, skywake said:

You're so stuck on this, you still don't get it. I'll spell it out for you. When I say most "frequently used applications" on a console I am obviously not talking about photoshop, that shouldn't need to be explained but there you go. What I'm talking about here is something similar to those SSHDs or Intel's Optane. On a file or even lower level the OS can go "hey, these files are loaded into memory a lot. Lets keep a copy on the faster storage". Now that might be built in apps, it's definitely going to be the OS and system menu but it might also be the assets that are always loaded on that one game you play week after week.

Yes I don't get it when you want a small SSD at the expense of cpu and/or gpu power. The reason PC gamers always cite for buying SSDs is boot times, snappy interface, and quicker startup of programs. Your 10 second cold boot number seems a little low in comparison to the videos I see on youtube where cold boots look like they take more like 18 seconds. I don't see the point in blowing money for the interface when the programs you're loading in a console are mostly games. Do you think cutting the cpu down to something cheaper to pay for your SSD isn't going to have huge adverse effects for load times? Because that's going to get the axe first to pay for your SSD in a console that will be targeted for 4k. Loading a game isn't just transferring the data from your drive and bam you're in. You're not helping load times as much as you think putting an SSD in while trying to maintain the constraint that the system should be $400 or less since the cpu factors heavily into load times for games. And since your SSD isn't replacing any part of a hard drive, it's not replacing any fraction of hard drive cost since. You'll still need at least a 1TB mechanical drive.

 

1 hour ago, skywake said:

All I was saying was that a "next-gen" console should improve on its predecessors in every aspect not just FPS. 

And yet you're a Switch fan? By your own criteria the Switch is pretty disappointing considering it takes a huge step back in graphics from the XB1 and PS4. Sony tried going with your kitchen sink approach with the PS3 and it almost killed the company when people didn't want to pay $650 for a console. People don't want to pay $500 for one either, which is why XBox One sales were lousy until they released the One S on a smaller lithography for $200 to $250 in late 2016.

 

1 hour ago, skywake said:

Yes, this is true as of today. And it's also true that for the Switch they had no other option because it's a portable console. That wasn't my point. My point was to say that we have a console on the market that uses cartridges, digging up catalogues from 1997 to prove a point is misleading. Things have changed since then. A 2017 era cartridge is more compelling when put against even a BDXL disk than a 1997 era cartridge was against the CD.

 

The 3DS and Vita launched in 2010 with 2GB cartridges being the standard and 4GB being an available option. The Switch is on the shelves now with 16GB being the standard and 32GB being an available option. I don't think it's a stretch to say that by the time a PS5 launches sometime after 2020, likely closer to 2022 that we will be talking 64GB+ at a reasonable price and capacity will not be of cartridges anymore. Games are not getting bigger faster than cartridges are. This is not 1997 when a large game on the N64 was 10-20x smaller than a CD and FF7 was on 3 discs.

My point was much more expensive media makes game prices more expensive. That the cost isn't usually absorbed by the producer. The 3DS and Vita can use small cartridges because their resolution is tiny in comparison to 1080p much less 4k and they pretty much had to use them being portables. I don't agree that 2022 is the likely time to see a PS5. I expect them not too long after 7nm is in production since that big of a node shrink should give them the power to produce something much more powerful than base PS4/XB1 at similar prices. And 64GB isn't enough, you're talking 128GB being the size likely needed for AAA games in the next gen. There is no way Sony isn't going all out on 4k next gen with how cheap 4k TVs have become. And given the half gen refreshes aren't 4k capable except for a small minority of games, I don't think it's a stretch that we'll see the new consoles pretty early in the 7nm era. If you think 7nm is going to run into big enough difficulties to miss its target by three to four years then 2022 would make sense, but I'm basing 2020 on the idea that 7nm only misses its target date by a year or two.

[Stefan Payne]

24 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

And 64GB isn't enough, you're talking 128GB being the size likely needed for AAA games in the next gen.

Why shouldn't it be enough??
You could also go for a hybrid approach like they did with that Skating Game lately.

 

You can put most of the game on Cartdrige, optimized for 1080p and put the 4k Textures as a free DLC option. 

 

 

High speed internet connections should be rather common and if you can play the game for a couple of hours while the rest is downloading in the background, that should be enough.

 

But I agree with you that the PS5 is in the works and will come either next year (end) or the year after....

[skywake]

2 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Yes I don't get it when you want a small SSD at the expense of cpu and/or gpu power. The reason PC gamers always cite for buying SSDs is boot times, snappy interface, and quicker startup of programs. Your 10 second cold boot number seems a little low in comparison to the videos I see on youtube where cold boots look like they take more like 18 seconds.

I assume you're talking about the video that comes up as the first result when you do a search for "Switch boot" on youtube. Yeah, that's when you first boot the system when you first take it out of the box. It doesn't do that afterwards. I literally have my Switch on my desk right now. If I put it into sleep mode and press the home button it's on within a fraction of a second, basically instantly. Performing a full shutdown of the system and doing a cold boot right now I got 11s from pressing the power button to the lock screen. A full system restart was 16s. And it's not just the boot times but the system in general is very snappy.

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And yet you're a Switch fan? By your own criteria the Switch is pretty disappointing considering it takes a huge step back in graphics from the XB1 and PS4. 

Except it's a portable device so it's not really competing in the same space and the PS4/XBOne are its contemporaries not it's predecessors. Graphically it's a massive step above the 3DS and Vita, conceptually it's a decent upgrade from the Wii U and technically it's doing things that the PS3 and 360 couldn't. And in any case, I don't have to worship every aspect of a device to buy it and like it. All I'm saying is that if a theoretical PS5 launched in 2020/2022 for $500-550AU it should be as snappy as the Switch was in 2017 especially given that I assume it's not going to be limited by a portable form factor.

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My point was much more expensive media makes game prices more expensive. That the cost isn't usually absorbed by the producer. 

Are you even listening to yourself? Did you read anything I said? You cited 1997 pricing of N64 cartridges vs CDs as the reason why cartridges were a bad option. I made a counter point by showing prices of Switch games vs the same games on PS4/XBOne at one of my local retailers as of today. To put it simply:

 

- The capacity of cartridges at prices publishers are able to absorb are much closer to discs than they were 20 years ago (~1/3rd vs < 1/20th)

- The capacity of cartridges are growing faster than discs historically have (2x every ~5 years for discs, 2x every ~2.5 years for cartridges)

- Unlike 20 years ago extra data for a game can be downloaded and saved on mass storage (eg "100GB games" on 50GB PS4 discs)

So your point was heard but it's a moot point. In less than a handful of years cartridges will be the superior to discs in every aspect at prices that publishers will be able to absorb. That's just the cold hard facts of the matter. If you were starting from scratch and choosing a physical media for a console that would launch in 2020/2022 you would use cartridges. Plain and simple.

 

With that said here are three factors that will potentially stop this from happening or at least delay it. Firstly the fact that movies are still sold on discs and a large portion of the market expects their game console to be able to play them. Secondly the fact that current gen games are on discs and if you remove the optical drive you kill any chance of backwards compatibility. Lastly there's a fair chance that physical media for games as we know it may just be dropped at some point.

[dalekphalm]

6 hours ago, skywake said:

You're so stuck on this, you still don't get it. I'll spell it out for you. When I say most "frequently used applications" on a console I am obviously not talking about photoshop, that shouldn't need to be explained but there you go. What I'm talking about here is something similar to those SSHDs or Intel's Optane. On a file or even lower level the OS can go "hey, these files are loaded into memory a lot. Lets keep a copy on the faster storage". Now that might be built in apps, it's definitely going to be the OS and system menu but it might also be the assets that are always loaded on that one game you play week after week.

 

Well if we're going to be that pedantic let me get out a timer. Just now timing it from a cold boot the Switch gets to the lock screen in ~10sec, pressing the home button when in standby gets you there instantly. If you think that's a non benefit? Cool. All I was saying was that a "next-gen" console should improve on its predecessors in every aspect not just FPS. Especially if they are selling the hardware on the idea of it being high spec.

 

Yes, this is true as of today. And it's also true that for the Switch they had no other option because it's a portable console. That wasn't my point. My point was to say that we have a console on the market that uses cartridges, digging up catalogues from 1997 to prove a point is misleading. Things have changed since then. A 2017 era cartridge is more compelling when put against even a BDXL disk than a 1997 era cartridge was against the CD.

 

The 3DS and Vita launched in 2010 with 2GB cartridges being the standard and 4GB being an available option. The Switch is on the shelves now with 16GB being the standard and 32GB being an available option. I don't think it's a stretch to say that by the time a PS5 launches sometime after 2020, likely closer to 2022 that we will be talking 64GB+ at a reasonable price and capacity will not be of cartridges anymore. Games are not getting bigger faster than cartridges are. This is not 1997 when a large game on the N64 was 10-20x smaller than a CD and FF7 was on 3 discs.

 

This is probably the best reason why they should stick to optical media. Though it is kinda amusing that you're bring up this point when at the same time the idea of some amount of flash being included is being dismissed outright as an unnecessary expense. You know I hear that Microsoft got screwed over releasing a console that did more media stuff at the expense of a better gaming experience. So surely it would be wise to omit the ODD in exchange for a cheaper cartridge slot and faster storage options even if it means no UHD BluRays. Obviously you don't care about graphics or price  

Your reasoning is flawed, because you assume that the SSD would increase the performance of the games. This might be true in SOME cases, but largely, I think, the XBOX One X, for example, is not being held back by lack of an SSD, in terms of game performance.

 

Would it be beneficial? Sure. But not at the expense of, say, a UHD Blu-Ray drive, or even worse, a weaker CPU or GPU, to keep the cost down.

 

At best, from your reasoning, they could only put a very small NAND cache drive, and they'd essentially have an SSHD. In which case, it would likely be far more cost effective to put an actual SSHD in the system. I would not be opposed to that.

3 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Why shouldn't it be enough??
You could also go for a hybrid approach like they did with that Skating Game lately.

 

You can put most of the game on Cartdrige, optimized for 1080p and put the 4k Textures as a free DLC option. 

 

 

High speed internet connections should be rather common and if you can play the game for a couple of hours while the rest is downloading in the background, that should be enough.

 

But I agree with you that the PS5 is in the works and will come either next year (end) or the year after....

Here's the thing okay - digital downloads are already a thing. You can buy literally every PS4 or XBOX One game on digital download.

 

However, those who want to game but have shitty internet, or limited bandwidth, would much rather appreciate the entire game (including 4K textures) on the purchased media - whether that's Flash based, or Disc based.

 

There's absolutely no point in intentionally limiting the 4K textures to a DLC download, because you want to meet some totally arbitrary storage cap for your media.

 

If the hypothetical PS5 is going to go back to a Flash Cart, it had damn well better be of sufficient size for the entire game, including 4K textures. If that means 128GB cards, so be it.

 

But I simply don't think there's really any benefit to a flash cart. In all likelihood, the games are going to be installed onto the system anyway, not run of the Flash Cart. So the main benefit to a flash cart would be faster install time - which is not a bad thing, certainly, but if it makes the physical game more expensive compared to the digital download, or compared to a optical Disc? I'd pass.

 

And you can sure that more often then not, if the physical media drives up production cost, they're going to pass that down to the consumer.

 

It all comes down to how much we can squeeze into a price people are willing to pay. Console gamers are not willing to spend as much on the physical console as some (note: some, not all) PC gamers, who will drop $1K+ on a gaming PC.

 

IF component pricing is flexible enough to add such extras, like an SSD (cache or no cache), the ability to use Flash Media for your games, etc, then sure that's great. But if that comes at the expense of more useful things like better CPU, better GPU, a UHD Blu-Ray player, etc, then I don't know if we'll see them.

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 hour ago, skywake said:

Except it's a portable device so it's not really competing in the same space and the PS4/XBOne are its contemporaries not it's predecessors. Graphically it's a massive step above the 3DS and Vita, conceptually it's a decent upgrade from the Wii U and technically it's doing things that the PS3 and 360 couldn't. And in any case, I don't have to worship every aspect of a device to buy it and like it. All I'm saying is that if a theoretical PS5 launched in 2020/2022 for $500-550AU it should be as snappy as the Switch was in 2017 especially given that I assume it's not going to be limited by a portable form factor.

So you can compare portable and home systems but I can't? That doesn't make any sense. The whole reason for cartridges and flash storage in the Switch is because it's a portable running lower resolution games that needs to conserve battery life. You wanted to compare apples and oranges. And as long as you're making excuses, the PS5 and the Switch will be contemporaries too. So PS5 only has to be faster and snappier than XB1/PS4 by your standards, which it should be with a likely upgrade from Jaguar to Ryzen cores even if it sticks with 5400 RPM mechanical drives and blu-ray discs.

 

1 hour ago, skywake said:

Are you even listening to yourself? Did you read anything I said? You cited 1997 pricing of N64 cartridges vs CDs as the reason why cartridges were a bad option. I made a counter point by showing prices of Switch games vs the same games on PS4/XBOne at one of my local retailers as of today. To put it simply:

 

- The capacity of cartridges at prices publishers are able to absorb are much closer to discs than they were 20 years ago (~1/3rd vs < 1/20th)

- The capacity of cartridges are growing faster than discs historically have (2x every ~5 years for discs, 2x every ~2.5 years for cartridges)

- Unlike 20 years ago extra data for a game can be downloaded and saved on mass storage (eg "100GB games" on 50GB PS4 discs)

So your point was heard but it's a moot point. In less than a handful of years cartridges will be the superior to discs in every aspect at prices that publishers will be able to absorb. That's just the cold hard facts of the matter. If you were starting from scratch and choosing a physical media for a console that would launch in 2020/2022 you would use cartridges. Plain and simple.

In how few years? If the cartridges use flash memory it doesn't seem like that has been getting cheaper the last couple of years so your near term extrapolation could be off. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

2 hours ago, skywake said:

Secondly the fact that current gen games are on discs and if you remove the optical drive you kill any chance of backwards compatibility.

I don't think Sony cares about supporting backwards compatibility to disc games in the slightest. Otherwise you'd be able to play PS1 and PS2 discs on the PS4, as the Jaguar cores in the PS4 have no problem whatsoever running the emulators. Though the PS4 cpu is definitely too weak to emulate PS3. Sony wants you to rebuy those games in digital format off the PSN Store or subscribe to their crap streaming service. It sucks but they're in a position of power over Microsoft right now so they don't have to offer little things like that as XBox has to in a bid to gain market share back. I think the only hope for PS4 BC in PS5 is Switch absolutely hammering PS4 in game sales for the next couple of years, though I see that as unlikely given how many PS4 have already been purchased and with Switch unlikely to have two must have games on par with BOTW and Odyssey this year. I do think those two games will still be enough to drive a lot of hardware sales though until they have a full fledged Pokemon rpg that will sell through the roof again.

[skywake]

7 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

At best, from your reasoning, they could only put a very small NAND cache drive, and they'd essentially have an SSHD. In which case, it would likely be far more cost effective to put an actual SSHD in the system. I would not be opposed to that.

If you had been reading what I was saying this is basically what I've been arguing for from the start. Just some fast flash on the system to store at least some fraction of the most commonly used applications. Maybe a bit more than the ~8GB you typically see in an SSHD though

 

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But I simply don't think there's really any benefit to a flash cart. In all likelihood, the games are going to be installed onto the system anyway, not run of the Flash Cart. So the main benefit to a flash cart would be faster install time - which is not a bad thing, certainly, but if it makes the physical game more expensive compared to the digital download, or compared to a optical Disc? I'd pass. And you can sure that more often then not, if the physical media drives up production cost, they're going to pass that down to the consumer.

Except it wouldn't be that much more expensive as I've already shown. This isn't 1997. And there are benefits other than speed some of which will actually cost you less money. The main ones being that it doesn't make any noise and a cartridge slot costs less. On the second point it costs less not just for the drive itself but also in the R&D and shipping costs in physically making space for it. And with some people going digital only surely if you're never buying discs you'd rather not have to pay extra for a component you'd never use. I say kill the optical drive, jump on cartridges and use the money saved removing the ODD to put a small SSD in the system

 

7 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

So you can compare portable and home systems but I can't? That doesn't make any sense. The whole reason for cartridges and flash storage in the Switch is because it's a portable running lower resolution games that needs to conserve battery life. You wanted to compare apples and oranges.

I was comparing the physical media itself, you were comparing graphical horsepower. We expect that a GPU that you can squeeze into a portable system will be at least a generation behind in terms of spec. The Switch is the first portable console that's less than a full console generation behind in that regard. So I don't think it's reasonable to be complaining that the Switch is less capable graphically than the PS4. However it is entirely fair for me to be comparing prices of modern day discs and cartridges because if a home console was to use cartridges it would literally be the same tech as what the Switch is using. 

 

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In how few years? If the cartridges use flash memory it doesn't seem like that has been getting cheaper the last couple of years

If anything it's the opposite. ROM chips have been getting cheaper faster than they historically have and improvements in capacity of optical media have stagnated. At the average rate ROM chips have been getting cheaper and with 16GB being available now ~50GB (i.e. 64GB) will be the standard by 2020 with 128GB being a higher capacity option. In theory optical discs could keep chugging along but there doesn't seem to be any desire to come up with a new optical disc format. Put simply by the time a theoretical PS5 would be at its peak cartridges available will be bigger than the discs it would likely use.

And this isn't just me pulling figures out of thing air, here's a graph showing where things have been going for the last 30+ years. Note how the lines are converging in this graph, this is what I'm talking about. And this was with the costs of cartridges being passed onto consumers in the 90s vs now (hence the Switch now appearing above trend). As I said we're only a handful of years away from capacity not being a factor, they are now less than an order of magnitude away compared to the 90s where they were a couple of orders of magnitude away. And with other benefits to cartridges? I think it's a leap that consoles need to take.