No pricing for Canada anywhere eh? I wonder if they'll follow Xbox in not just doing the direct price conversions and actually eating some of it for a change, i.e 499 CAD for the DE rather than 522.
Good thing they don't just play one game, and as an entertainment product the cost of either platform per dollar of entertainment over 7 years is extremely competitive.
I also went the entire 8th gen with just one controller, so ymmv.
Yup it's 499 and 630, which is actually nice that they're eating a part of the direct conversion. Microsoft is eating up to 60 dollars of the Series X conversion.
Looking at storage (and the size of today's games):
PS5 Digital: flagship hardware + 825 GB (for $399) Xbox Series S: mid-end hardware + 500 GB (for $299)
Gotta say, the PS5 Digital actually makes a compelling hardware price argument here. Microsoft's proprietary NVMe expansion slots (by Seagate) don't have pricing, but some leaks point to 1 TB for an eye-watering $220 more.
I'm not sure the storage size matters too much as long as you can still connect external drives for storage. You keep what you're actively playing on the internal SSD and everything else on an external HDD. If you want your whole library on an NVME SSD, it's going to be expensive, but I'm not sure why you'd do that.
I agree that the all digital PS5 is priced well, though.
If you play 1-2 games AAA games, I agree completely: an external HDD is a much better buy for the odd transfer (roughly 30 minutes per 100 GB), instead of saturating your internet connection.
But, adding 30+ minutes per 100 GB HDD->NVMe transfer to get the next-gen storage performance does feel tedious.
Still, not a new problem; PC gamers have faced the SSD vs HDD priority dilemma for years now. In the end, yes: the all-digital PS5 price cuts down on a friction point by not shrinking the SSD.
Makes you wonder if Microsoft will release a Series S at 1 TB for $349 to compete.
At least we now have cheaper SATA SSD alternatives with higher capacities. We can run M.2/NVMe for OS & most commonly played games, then offload the lesser common stuff on SATA :) Yay for platform flexibility :D
Can't use external drives for PS5 games, but can for PS4 games. Simply not fast enough for PS5 games. If they allow you to backup PS5 game data to an external for faster transfer back to the internal drive, guess that'd be better than nothing and probably faster than reinstalling from disc or download.
Hope Sony increased their PS Store bandwidth, but I doubt they did and it's still slow for downloading.
PS5 Digital is potentially cash black hole as you can't buy used games as they are signed to account. We will have to see if you can use those on "flagship" consoles, but for now Digital/S in my opinion looks way worse.
I really don't understand this sentiment. Digital stores including Sony's have extremely aggressive discounting on older stuff (often even after just 6-12 months) in the 50-90% range all the freaking time. Constant bundle sales, monthly sales, weekly special offers, big holiday sales, etc etc. And they are never out of stock. You just fill up a big wishlist and glance at it once in a while or during major sale periods and see what is available at a big discount. Or price tracking sites will just notify you if you want. Digital has been the absolute cheapest way to get games around here, far more than previously. Maybe in some more metro areas the used game market was enough to make that less true, but digital offers the good deals to everyone. If anything these days the real problem is backlog!
Even here is the flyover states, buying physical is STILL cheaper then buying digital. Digital sales are nice, but by the time you see $30 on a digital title the physical title is $9.99 at gamestop. Metro areas are even cheaper then that.
If you only buy digital those "sales" seem great, until you start lookign at the prices of physical copies around you
No dog in the fight here, but you can't just throw any old SSD in the Sony. I am assuming 'to spec' SSDs for them will not be any cheaper than Xbox options...
Same: both are competitively priced overall. Can't fault either Sony or MS for their pricing: a good sign for this console generation.
A great point. Perhaps why the extra 325 GB of storage will be more handy on the PS5 Digital. This transcription from Sony makes it seem as these first-gen PCIe 4.0 drives aren't going to be up to snuff (and they're already at the $180/TB mark), so perhaps the native-SSD-performance pricing will be quite close.
So far, there's no exclusivity being mentioned for PS5 SSDs. If multiple vendors compete, we can hope for lower prices with more confidence - down the line - than from exclusive MS/Seagate deal.
Developers are complaining about the 10 GB of RAM in the Xbox Series S.
Meanwhile, stomaching the $500 for full PS5 or XSX is probably worth it just so you can pick up more used and on-sale disc games over the console's lifetime.
It's worth it to me just for an all-in-one device. Games, video streaming and discs. A decent standalone Ultra HD Blu-ray player alone will set you back $200-300.
If they are smart about use of the SSD it should be OK. NVMe can shore up shortages in RAM. But given how much more you get with the X in other areas, it is hard to justify not paying the extra. You get a much more capable system. For the PS5 this is not the case and I wonder if it will get users looking for a cheaper but still 4K solution as a result.
I have a sneaking suspicion Microsoft pulled the specfs as far apart as they did because they want to be sure game developers have a reason to build for less-capable systems so it can provide a general Windows baseline for a gaming PC outside consoles.
They may be making games for this for the next decade, so if you can get hardware that matches it in a PC you can hope to have support.
"NVMe can shore up shortages in RAM." No SSD can shore up being short on RAM. As soon as you have to traverse the PCIe bus to the SSD, due to lack of RAM, you add on latency and have a massive bandwidth bottleneck. The Xbox S' SSD only has the bandwidth of the old PC-2700 DDR RAM from the early 2000s and the PS5's SSD only has the bandwidth of DDR2-5300, all be it both at a latency multiple order of magnitudes higher.
The point of the SSD as stated by Sony is that instead of keeping several seconds of gameplay padding in RAM like you would have to in a lesser system, you can just keep 1-2 seconds worth of gameplay in RAM. By the time you turn around, you can practically re-fill the entire games RAM capacity. No replacement for RAM you have to do multiple fast operations on, but used as a streaming system it could be very effective at increasing effective memory.
That's a heaping load. Streaming that much data, even from NVMe SSD, is goign to take more then a single second. Bandwidth transfer rate isnt the only factor, as has been pointed out latency is a serious problem. SSDs couldnt fix the megatexture issue with rage, they helped, but the "stream all your data from storage" plan has never worked well, for good reason.
This is all from the same company that sang the praises of the CELL architecture only to be BTFOd by the cheaper slower xbox 360 for the majority of the generation.
And lets leave streaming systems on the dirt floor where they belong. No matter how many times its tried, this thing called "latency" shows up and obliterates the service. Seems game companies cant grasp how important latency is.
If cell was so good it would have been used later on in things other than the PS3. I remember there was talk of IBM using cell for supercomputers, but it never was used for that.
They do have a PCIe bus. The SSDs are NVMe with PCIe 4.0 x2 (Xbox) or x4 (PS5) connections. That IO "chip" you are talking about is actually a feature call DMA (direct memory access) it has been around since the 90s. The last time I can remember having to enable DMA was on the HDD for my 1996 IBM Aptiva running Windows 95. Otherwise it has been enabled by default for storage every since.
Surely they can just set the LOD lower for the Series S and have the console intelligently load in lower-res versions of the textures? That should sort them out - most people who buy it will be playing at 1080p anyway.
It will take more time to figure out the full implications of it. Consider that the RAM available for games (7.5 GB? XSX reserves 2.5 GB for the operating system) is just low. Lower than XSX, PS5, Xbox One X, and many PCs.
Drive adds maybe $10. They got scared by the series x, and maybe hoping to make it back by breaking up the used game market. $400 for what you get is the best deal in hardware EVER.
No, the reason is they want to push people into digital game purchases (really "licensing"). Since the only way to get games in the digital edition is thru PS Store, Sony and game publishers will get to sell the games new to every customer and don't have to compete with physical stores. Also, no used games for you!
BoM is closer to 30 dollars, and Sony does actually pay licencing for UHD Blu Ray despite popular belief. If it saves them 50 dollars a pop, that's an easy subsidy since the digital edition can't play used games, higher margin digital sales, etc.
What's up with the m.2 upgrade? It must only allow PCIE4, but that still can't rule out slower drives. How does the heatsink attach? What about double sided drives?
It actually doesn't let you use slower drives. They said a drive would have to have 7-8GB/sec for it to be used in the ps5, so it will probably cost as much if not more than the Xbox's expansion drive.
Sony said that they would test drives and publish a compatibility list, but I don't think they said anything about the console itself running a SSD performance test, nor have they stated that the console will reject unapproved SSDs.
The bolted on drive is an ugly eyesore, and it costs an extra $100. Who is going to buy that in an era where Sony is going to have massive games that dont fit on the disk on purpose because of the new SSD tech.
Actually, new SSD tech can allow game sizes to shrink. There's no more need to duplicate assets for a slow HDD. Something else could cause game sizes to grow, like higher resolution textures.
As odd as it sounds, I think Sony may have intentionally kept the price high for the disc edition (or depending how you look at it, the digital edition low - they're probably selling it at a significant loss.)
It's clear they are launching a price-attack on physical media in order to eliminate the used game\rental market. There is precedent to this. They tried this with the Vita (and technically the UMD-less PSP) to go all digital, but a decade ago the market wasn't ready for such a radical shift.
Physical media will survive for at least a decade because they put disc drives in the top models. Although maybe some developers will not bother publishing a disc version of their games.
If there is a mid-generation refresh of these consoles, or another generation of consoles (PS6/XXX), then disc drives might be ditched forever. There is a slight chance that we could see a consumer version of 300 GB to 1 TB Archival Discs make it into a new console, but it's more likely that broadband internet satellites ensure that almost no potential console customers don't have a fast internet connection, so Sony and Microsoft go discless or consoleless with game streaming.
I don't mind digital only if the download has no DRM like GOG that I can store and transfer at my discretion. I also like the fact that digital means a game will never be out of print and one can always pick up a top selling game really cheap like $10 years after release.
However, having the only option is to "rent" digital only with device locked DRM without a second hand market to push down retail price is a terrible norm for the future.
Not sure I really have anything against digital only. Yes, it does eliminate gray market disc sale and resale which can offer some excellent value and there is the potential to lose out on long-term usage as well if the software distribution servers become unavailable so there are certainly good reasons to keep physical media. However, lots of games sold on disc now basically require online access anyway since large portions of the game are downloaded and then there are updates to fix various bugs as well which, if not fixed, could be game breaking (looking at you Bethesda - always looking at you) if they are not available for download. Also first party digital shops routinely offer discounts and deals. I think that discounts would continue to be offered even in the absence of competition from physical media mainly to compete with other distribution platform discounts.
Exactly. But I suspect a lot of people are going to eat the long-term savings of having a disc-based console (where you can recoup investment in games by reselling them) in order to save up-front on a cheaper console.
And Sony is betting on this. Because we all know Sony, Microsoft and ESPECIALLY Nintendo despise the rental and resell market. Nintendo has effectively made renting games borderline illegal in Japan and they have tried everything they can in other regions to minimize economic impact of used games by devaluing games after "Nintendo Codes" have been claimed by the original owner on the cartridge serial number, etc. Sony isn't new to this either. They axed UMD with the PSP and made the Vita entirely download-only (yet it still needed a proprietary form factor SD card which is probably the single thing that killed it)
Nintendo's best console was the Famicom because it didn't have DRM. It learned its lesson when 3rd party games became common. Also, Nintendo didn't manage to figure out, with the Famicom, that hardwiring controllers is an extremely stupid idea. It's funny how such a games juggernaut made half-baked decisions like that and the ZIF slot in the NES. Fairchild managed to make a ZIF work properly in the mid 70s and Nintendo should have learned from its mistake about hardwired controllers.
Since the Famicom, Nintendo has tried to be ruthless about controlling the games allowed on its machines. One of the sad things about copyright and the NES DRM chip is that Metroid was never given a Famicom/NES sequel. That's one of the company's bigger blunders. If 3rd parties had had the ability to put games onto the system and copyright weren't so strict then a 3rd-party Metroid sequel could have been something, especially if Nintendo would have bought it and refined it.
This is going to make it hard for me to justify a new graphics card. I live in Japan and the price of the PS5 is actually cheaper here than in the States (by like $10 at current rates), but the new Nvidia cards are about $300 more expensive here (RTX 3070 and RTX 3080). I could buy a lot of games with that price difference.
That's kind of an overstatement. They massively oversold it, but it's not trash - just not the second-coming of GPU Christ, either. I did find it quite funny that people are hailing its value when it provides almost exactly the same FPS-per-dollar as the RX 5700.
AMD will beat RTX 3070, and will have one or more GPUs with 16 GB VRAM. If they can also beat RTX 3080 while using less energy, they have a winner. If not, there's pricing to fall back on.
Stop being a fan boy throwing claims without solid proof. Next gen AMD GPUs might be faster and more competitive but they are not out yet, anything you claim is based on rumors or speculation so just stop please.
What I'm more curious about it the dubious prospect of registering on PSN for a preorder. I've spent literally thousands of dollars on game, this year alone; probably closer to tens of thousands considering years of PS4 ownership. My hope was that would buy me a spot in line for pre-order; quid pro quo, right? But what: its's just a fucking free-for-all? Slap in the face...
I almost wish it were a controlled experiment with identical games and everything, because the strategies are so different: put a *lot* of separation between your models, with a higher high end and lower low end, or make them nearly identical.
(I also wonder about the cost structure -- how much more each digital PS5 costs Sony than each Series S costs Microsoft, and what Microsoft paid upfront to get two SoCs and two more radically different designs. All that, of course, we'll probably never hear about.)
Microsoft have definitely made the larger up-front investment, but every Series S unit they build will save them some money. From the lower RAM and storage to the smaller SoC and less-elaborate cooling, their losses are probably fairly low on that unit, and they'll likely eliminate them entirely with the inevitable 5nm refresh in 18 months to 2 years time. It's a smart move.
Sony, by contrast, have done a rather odd thing - they're already losing money on the standard PS5, so if the digital-only variant sells well it'll then it'll hurt them financially. They'll make money back from the digital-only sales, but so will MS with the Series S, so the only advantage they have is the lower development cost. I suspect they'll regret that by the end of this generation.
It would be odd for Sony to not also benefit from a 5nm refresh and falling prices of other components over time as well. I would think that technological advancement cost benefits would be equally useful to either company if the business elects to make use of them.
Also, lets not forget that both companies offer subscription-based services for their platforms and either have or are building out cloud-based gaming services. There are certainly places that lack network capacity and people that will opt for locally positioned gaming hardware for various reasons such as latency concerns, but we are inching closer to a world where game streaming is a realistic alternative. I would argue that for non-reflex based games, we are very much there already.
XSS is the cheapest, PS5D has the best price/performance, XSX is the fastest and has a drive, PS5 is for fanboys. Pretty reasonable lineup from both, I find all 3 relevant consoles to be a sensible purchase.
PS5 DE is OK if you're willing to give up potential savings from discs.
Assuming the teraflops numbers are even equivalent (because they might not be using the same RDNA2 and raytracing feature set), 15% less graphics performance in PS5 doesn't matter much. The SSD/expansion situation should be more interesting.
It makes perfect sense if you don't have a 4K display and have no intention to upgrade, though.
Also, those clocks/TFLOPS on the PS5 are clearly a peak measurement - the real sustained performance deficit is likely to be 20-25%. It sounds like they're having difficulty getting decent yields of chips that will even hit those peak clocks.
Why would XSS need to run X1X enhanced games if it doesn't support 4K?
MS has already stated that although it'd run X1S version of games, it'll be with better texture filtering, better frame-rate, etc. 10GB is enough for that.
They haven't mentioned this, but IMO XSS might also run X1S games at 1080 minimum too, since it has the horsepower. X1S barely manages to hit 1080, let alone maintain it, in a lot of games.
I know a few people who don't plan to upgrade their TVs yet - they're still rocking Full HD models - for whom the Series S is an absolute steal. Microsoft did a smart thing there: People can buy a Series S now, and then if they replace their TV in a few years' time they can upgrade to the Series X for 4K gaming and keep the same games library.
I think my biggest issue with Sony PS5 is their performance metrics are max theoretical and not sustained. Unloke Xbox with locked clockes the Sony will vary depending on thermal headroom and load.
Sony is definitely making a lot less on the digital version and n00bs are gonna fall for it and get sucked into the "ecosystem". Personally i'm more in favor of MS's Game Pass model.
"massively overpriced" is a value judgement that you are trying, and failing, to present as fact. You have multiple posts that read like someone butt-hurt because they can't afford a console or something.
These companies have been doing this a long time, they know what the "value" of their consoles are to players, and they set their prices accordingly.
I still can't get over how ugly the PS5 is. If I get one of these, I'm printing my own case and throwing away that piece of garbage they wrapped it in.
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tipoo - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
No pricing for Canada anywhere eh? I wonder if they'll follow Xbox in not just doing the direct price conversions and actually eating some of it for a change, i.e 499 CAD for the DE rather than 522.tipoo - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Nice, followed MS and ate 20-30 dollars of the conversion, so it's actually cheaper here.Alistair - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
do the math, you are paying over $800 in Canada for the PS5 with a second controller, over $900 with a gamethat is $900+ in Canada to get what you got with the SNES, a system and an extra controller and game
they raised the price on everything in canada to above xbox, system, controller, and games
I think the value proposition is laughable, you want to pay $900+ to play one game?
MrTeal - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
I say the same thing about cars. You need to spend $20,000 for the car itself, $2000 for plates and insurance and $60 for a tank of gas.You want to spend $22,060 to drive 500km? Laughable.
MrVibrato - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
That kinda reminds me of the old joke about an arab prince going to university in europe...tipoo - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Good thing they don't just play one game, and as an entertainment product the cost of either platform per dollar of entertainment over 7 years is extremely competitive.I also went the entire 8th gen with just one controller, so ymmv.
khanikun - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Saw $630 CAD on Best Buy preorder. Not sure how official that istipoo - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Yup it's 499 and 630, which is actually nice that they're eating a part of the direct conversion. Microsoft is eating up to 60 dollars of the Series X conversion.ikjadoon - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Looking at storage (and the size of today's games):PS5 Digital: flagship hardware + 825 GB (for $399)
Xbox Series S: mid-end hardware + 500 GB (for $299)
Gotta say, the PS5 Digital actually makes a compelling hardware price argument here. Microsoft's proprietary NVMe expansion slots (by Seagate) don't have pricing, but some leaks point to 1 TB for an eye-watering $220 more.
cfenton - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
I'm not sure the storage size matters too much as long as you can still connect external drives for storage. You keep what you're actively playing on the internal SSD and everything else on an external HDD. If you want your whole library on an NVME SSD, it's going to be expensive, but I'm not sure why you'd do that.I agree that the all digital PS5 is priced well, though.
ikjadoon - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
If you play 1-2 games AAA games, I agree completely: an external HDD is a much better buy for the odd transfer (roughly 30 minutes per 100 GB), instead of saturating your internet connection.But, adding 30+ minutes per 100 GB HDD->NVMe transfer to get the next-gen storage performance does feel tedious.
Still, not a new problem; PC gamers have faced the SSD vs HDD priority dilemma for years now. In the end, yes: the all-digital PS5 price cuts down on a friction point by not shrinking the SSD.
Makes you wonder if Microsoft will release a Series S at 1 TB for $349 to compete.
Drkrieger01 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
At least we now have cheaper SATA SSD alternatives with higher capacities. We can run M.2/NVMe for OS & most commonly played games, then offload the lesser common stuff on SATA :)Yay for platform flexibility :D
khanikun - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Can't use external drives for PS5 games, but can for PS4 games. Simply not fast enough for PS5 games. If they allow you to backup PS5 game data to an external for faster transfer back to the internal drive, guess that'd be better than nothing and probably faster than reinstalling from disc or download.Hope Sony increased their PS Store bandwidth, but I doubt they did and it's still slow for downloading.
Makaveli - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Agreed based on what I'm seeing the PS5 Digital wins that no contest.Tabalan - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
PS5 Digital is potentially cash black hole as you can't buy used games as they are signed to account. We will have to see if you can use those on "flagship" consoles, but for now Digital/S in my opinion looks way worse.zanon - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
I really don't understand this sentiment. Digital stores including Sony's have extremely aggressive discounting on older stuff (often even after just 6-12 months) in the 50-90% range all the freaking time. Constant bundle sales, monthly sales, weekly special offers, big holiday sales, etc etc. And they are never out of stock. You just fill up a big wishlist and glance at it once in a while or during major sale periods and see what is available at a big discount. Or price tracking sites will just notify you if you want. Digital has been the absolute cheapest way to get games around here, far more than previously. Maybe in some more metro areas the used game market was enough to make that less true, but digital offers the good deals to everyone. If anything these days the real problem is backlog!TheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Even here is the flyover states, buying physical is STILL cheaper then buying digital. Digital sales are nice, but by the time you see $30 on a digital title the physical title is $9.99 at gamestop. Metro areas are even cheaper then that.If you only buy digital those "sales" seem great, until you start lookign at the prices of physical copies around you
ExarKun333 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
No dog in the fight here, but you can't just throw any old SSD in the Sony. I am assuming 'to spec' SSDs for them will not be any cheaper than Xbox options...ikjadoon - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Same: both are competitively priced overall. Can't fault either Sony or MS for their pricing: a good sign for this console generation.A great point. Perhaps why the extra 325 GB of storage will be more handy on the PS5 Digital. This transcription from Sony makes it seem as these first-gen PCIe 4.0 drives aren't going to be up to snuff (and they're already at the $180/TB mark), so perhaps the native-SSD-performance pricing will be quite close.
https://wccftech.com/playstation-5-has-a-regular-n...
Zagor Te Nay - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
So far, there's no exclusivity being mentioned for PS5 SSDs. If multiple vendors compete, we can hope for lower prices with more confidence - down the line - than from exclusive MS/Seagate deal.nandnandnand - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Developers are complaining about the 10 GB of RAM in the Xbox Series S.Meanwhile, stomaching the $500 for full PS5 or XSX is probably worth it just so you can pick up more used and on-sale disc games over the console's lifetime.
Molor1880 - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
It's worth it to me just for an all-in-one device. Games, video streaming and discs. A decent standalone Ultra HD Blu-ray player alone will set you back $200-300.GreenReaper - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
If they are smart about use of the SSD it should be OK. NVMe can shore up shortages in RAM. But given how much more you get with the X in other areas, it is hard to justify not paying the extra. You get a much more capable system. For the PS5 this is not the case and I wonder if it will get users looking for a cheaper but still 4K solution as a result.I have a sneaking suspicion Microsoft pulled the specfs as far apart as they did because they want to be sure game developers have a reason to build for less-capable systems so it can provide a general Windows baseline for a gaming PC outside consoles.
They may be making games for this for the next decade, so if you can get hardware that matches it in a PC you can hope to have support.
schujj07 - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
"NVMe can shore up shortages in RAM."No SSD can shore up being short on RAM. As soon as you have to traverse the PCIe bus to the SSD, due to lack of RAM, you add on latency and have a massive bandwidth bottleneck. The Xbox S' SSD only has the bandwidth of the old PC-2700 DDR RAM from the early 2000s and the PS5's SSD only has the bandwidth of DDR2-5300, all be it both at a latency multiple order of magnitudes higher.
tipoo - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
The point of the SSD as stated by Sony is that instead of keeping several seconds of gameplay padding in RAM like you would have to in a lesser system, you can just keep 1-2 seconds worth of gameplay in RAM. By the time you turn around, you can practically re-fill the entire games RAM capacity. No replacement for RAM you have to do multiple fast operations on, but used as a streaming system it could be very effective at increasing effective memory.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
That's a heaping load. Streaming that much data, even from NVMe SSD, is goign to take more then a single second. Bandwidth transfer rate isnt the only factor, as has been pointed out latency is a serious problem. SSDs couldnt fix the megatexture issue with rage, they helped, but the "stream all your data from storage" plan has never worked well, for good reason.This is all from the same company that sang the praises of the CELL architecture only to be BTFOd by the cheaper slower xbox 360 for the majority of the generation.
And lets leave streaming systems on the dirt floor where they belong. No matter how many times its tried, this thing called "latency" shows up and obliterates the service. Seems game companies cant grasp how important latency is.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
Cell would have been a lot better if two of its cores hadn't been disabled to improve yields.schujj07 - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
If cell was so good it would have been used later on in things other than the PS3. I remember there was talk of IBM using cell for supercomputers, but it never was used for that.beginner99 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
These consoles don't have a pcie bus and especially the ps5 had a dedicated chip for IO that can load from ssd directly into ram.schujj07 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
They do have a PCIe bus. The SSDs are NVMe with PCIe 4.0 x2 (Xbox) or x4 (PS5) connections. That IO "chip" you are talking about is actually a feature call DMA (direct memory access) it has been around since the 90s. The last time I can remember having to enable DMA was on the HDD for my 1996 IBM Aptiva running Windows 95. Otherwise it has been enabled by default for storage every since.Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Surely they can just set the LOD lower for the Series S and have the console intelligently load in lower-res versions of the textures? That should sort them out - most people who buy it will be playing at 1080p anyway.nandnandnand - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
It will take more time to figure out the full implications of it. Consider that the RAM available for games (7.5 GB? XSX reserves 2.5 GB for the operating system) is just low. Lower than XSX, PS5, Xbox One X, and many PCs.Falloutboy - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
A lot of value being able to use last generations controllers for the new Xbox though.Pinn - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Drive adds maybe $10. They got scared by the series x, and maybe hoping to make it back by breaking up the used game market. $400 for what you get is the best deal in hardware EVER.bsd228 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
UHD players are still pricey, at least ones that support Vision.Hul8 - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
No, the reason is they want to push people into digital game purchases (really "licensing"). Since the only way to get games in the digital edition is thru PS Store, Sony and game publishers will get to sell the games new to every customer and don't have to compete with physical stores. Also, no used games for you!Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Pretty much - but as you noted, you're stuck to their licencing, so it's not such good deal in the end.Tams80 - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
$10 BOM for an UHD Blu-ray player? I'm calling malarkey on that.tipoo - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
BoM is closer to 30 dollars, and Sony does actually pay licencing for UHD Blu Ray despite popular belief. If it saves them 50 dollars a pop, that's an easy subsidy since the digital edition can't play used games, higher margin digital sales, etc.Pinn - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
What's up with the m.2 upgrade? It must only allow PCIE4, but that still can't rule out slower drives. How does the heatsink attach? What about double sided drives?SirDragonClaw - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
It actually doesn't let you use slower drives. They said a drive would have to have 7-8GB/sec for it to be used in the ps5, so it will probably cost as much if not more than the Xbox's expansion drive.PixyMisa - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Sony will publish a list of qualified drives. Anything else won't work.tipoo - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
It tests an installed SSD for performance before allowing it. Sony will publish a compatibility listBilly Tallis - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Sony said that they would test drives and publish a compatibility list, but I don't think they said anything about the console itself running a SSD performance test, nor have they stated that the console will reject unapproved SSDs.SirDragonClaw - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
This makes the PlayStation 5Digital Edition look pretty decent, and the non Digital Edition look terrible.
PixyMisa - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Yes. I would bet they were aiming at $449 for the Digital Edition and trimmed it by fifty bucks at the last minute.nandnandnand - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
You can probably save $100 if you buy several used or on-sale disc games. Average number of games bought per PS4 console was around 9.5, apparently.Sttm - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
The bolted on drive is an ugly eyesore, and it costs an extra $100. Who is going to buy that in an era where Sony is going to have massive games that dont fit on the disk on purpose because of the new SSD tech.nandnandnand - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Actually, new SSD tech can allow game sizes to shrink. There's no more need to duplicate assets for a slow HDD. Something else could cause game sizes to grow, like higher resolution textures.Samus - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
As odd as it sounds, I think Sony may have intentionally kept the price high for the disc edition (or depending how you look at it, the digital edition low - they're probably selling it at a significant loss.)It's clear they are launching a price-attack on physical media in order to eliminate the used game\rental market. There is precedent to this. They tried this with the Vita (and technically the UMD-less PSP) to go all digital, but a decade ago the market wasn't ready for such a radical shift.
Maybe this time will be different.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
Maybe this time consumers won't be willing to pay Sony more for less hardware.Sttm - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
RIP Physical media. Better looking cheaper digital edition going to become the norm now.nandnandnand - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Physical media will survive for at least a decade because they put disc drives in the top models. Although maybe some developers will not bother publishing a disc version of their games.If there is a mid-generation refresh of these consoles, or another generation of consoles (PS6/XXX), then disc drives might be ditched forever. There is a slight chance that we could see a consumer version of 300 GB to 1 TB Archival Discs make it into a new console, but it's more likely that broadband internet satellites ensure that almost no potential console customers don't have a fast internet connection, so Sony and Microsoft go discless or consoleless with game streaming.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Those satellites have been promised for yonks yet still dont exist.Perhaps we should see if they can actually function before deciding to base gaming's future on them.
SaolDan - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
I would never buy a digital only console. I like selling the games or letting my friends borrow them once im done with them.wr3zzz - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
This.I don't mind digital only if the download has no DRM like GOG that I can store and transfer at my discretion. I also like the fact that digital means a game will never be out of print and one can always pick up a top selling game really cheap like $10 years after release.
However, having the only option is to "rent" digital only with device locked DRM without a second hand market to push down retail price is a terrible norm for the future.
Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
100% agreed.webdoctors - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
A lot of games have massive downloads after purchase and/or require some online component.Great prices by Sony, and even MS in this time. Surprised, based off the specs I would've expected it to cost much more.
PeachNCream - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Not sure I really have anything against digital only. Yes, it does eliminate gray market disc sale and resale which can offer some excellent value and there is the potential to lose out on long-term usage as well if the software distribution servers become unavailable so there are certainly good reasons to keep physical media. However, lots of games sold on disc now basically require online access anyway since large portions of the game are downloaded and then there are updates to fix various bugs as well which, if not fixed, could be game breaking (looking at you Bethesda - always looking at you) if they are not available for download. Also first party digital shops routinely offer discounts and deals. I think that discounts would continue to be offered even in the absence of competition from physical media mainly to compete with other distribution platform discounts.Samus - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Exactly. But I suspect a lot of people are going to eat the long-term savings of having a disc-based console (where you can recoup investment in games by reselling them) in order to save up-front on a cheaper console.And Sony is betting on this. Because we all know Sony, Microsoft and ESPECIALLY Nintendo despise the rental and resell market. Nintendo has effectively made renting games borderline illegal in Japan and they have tried everything they can in other regions to minimize economic impact of used games by devaluing games after "Nintendo Codes" have been claimed by the original owner on the cartridge serial number, etc. Sony isn't new to this either. They axed UMD with the PSP and made the Vita entirely download-only (yet it still needed a proprietary form factor SD card which is probably the single thing that killed it)
Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
Nintendo's best console was the Famicom because it didn't have DRM. It learned its lesson when 3rd party games became common. Also, Nintendo didn't manage to figure out, with the Famicom, that hardwiring controllers is an extremely stupid idea. It's funny how such a games juggernaut made half-baked decisions like that and the ZIF slot in the NES. Fairchild managed to make a ZIF work properly in the mid 70s and Nintendo should have learned from its mistake about hardwired controllers.Since the Famicom, Nintendo has tried to be ruthless about controlling the games allowed on its machines. One of the sad things about copyright and the NES DRM chip is that Metroid was never given a Famicom/NES sequel. That's one of the company's bigger blunders. If 3rd parties had had the ability to put games onto the system and copyright weren't so strict then a 3rd-party Metroid sequel could have been something, especially if Nintendo would have bought it and refined it.
San Pedro - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
This is going to make it hard for me to justify a new graphics card. I live in Japan and the price of the PS5 is actually cheaper here than in the States (by like $10 at current rates), but the new Nvidia cards are about $300 more expensive here (RTX 3070 and RTX 3080). I could buy a lot of games with that price difference.nandnandnand - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
RTX 3080 is confirmed trash anyway, you're not missing out right now.Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
That's kind of an overstatement. They massively oversold it, but it's not trash - just not the second-coming of GPU Christ, either. I did find it quite funny that people are hailing its value when it provides almost exactly the same FPS-per-dollar as the RX 5700.nandnandnand - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
AMD will beat RTX 3070, and will have one or more GPUs with 16 GB VRAM. If they can also beat RTX 3080 while using less energy, they have a winner. If not, there's pricing to fall back on.Eliadbu - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Stop being a fan boy throwing claims without solid proof. Next gen AMD GPUs might be faster and more competitive but they are not out yet, anything you claim is based on rumors or speculation so just stop please.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
30% faster then the 2080ti for $700.Sure, "trash". What a joke.
callmemusashj - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
What I'm more curious about it the dubious prospect of registering on PSN for a preorder. I've spent literally thousands of dollars on game, this year alone; probably closer to tens of thousands considering years of PS4 ownership. My hope was that would buy me a spot in line for pre-order; quid pro quo, right? But what: its's just a fucking free-for-all? Slap in the face...twotwotwo - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
I almost wish it were a controlled experiment with identical games and everything, because the strategies are so different: put a *lot* of separation between your models, with a higher high end and lower low end, or make them nearly identical.(I also wonder about the cost structure -- how much more each digital PS5 costs Sony than each Series S costs Microsoft, and what Microsoft paid upfront to get two SoCs and two more radically different designs. All that, of course, we'll probably never hear about.)
Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Microsoft have definitely made the larger up-front investment, but every Series S unit they build will save them some money. From the lower RAM and storage to the smaller SoC and less-elaborate cooling, their losses are probably fairly low on that unit, and they'll likely eliminate them entirely with the inevitable 5nm refresh in 18 months to 2 years time. It's a smart move.Sony, by contrast, have done a rather odd thing - they're already losing money on the standard PS5, so if the digital-only variant sells well it'll then it'll hurt them financially. They'll make money back from the digital-only sales, but so will MS with the Series S, so the only advantage they have is the lower development cost. I suspect they'll regret that by the end of this generation.
PeachNCream - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
It would be odd for Sony to not also benefit from a 5nm refresh and falling prices of other components over time as well. I would think that technological advancement cost benefits would be equally useful to either company if the business elects to make use of them.Also, lets not forget that both companies offer subscription-based services for their platforms and either have or are building out cloud-based gaming services. There are certainly places that lack network capacity and people that will opt for locally positioned gaming hardware for various reasons such as latency concerns, but we are inching closer to a world where game streaming is a realistic alternative. I would argue that for non-reflex based games, we are very much there already.
watzupken - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Pricing looks decent. The digital only version is indeed more attractive especially if you don't need the drive.Zizy - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
XSS is the cheapest, PS5D has the best price/performance, XSX is the fastest and has a drive, PS5 is for fanboys. Pretty reasonable lineup from both, I find all 3 relevant consoles to be a sensible purchase.nandnandnand - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Even if you ignore the GPU performance, nobody should be buying XSS. ~300 GB less storage, but the lower RAM is the biggest problem:https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/microsoft-res...
PS5 DE is OK if you're willing to give up potential savings from discs.
Assuming the teraflops numbers are even equivalent (because they might not be using the same RDNA2 and raytracing feature set), 15% less graphics performance in PS5 doesn't matter much. The SSD/expansion situation should be more interesting.
Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
It makes perfect sense if you don't have a 4K display and have no intention to upgrade, though.Also, those clocks/TFLOPS on the PS5 are clearly a peak measurement - the real sustained performance deficit is likely to be 20-25%. It sounds like they're having difficulty getting decent yields of chips that will even hit those peak clocks.
nandnandnand - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Sony denied reports of a chip shortage related to bad yields.The performance situation should become more clear once people actually have the consoles in their hands and developers start talking more.
eddman - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Why would XSS need to run X1X enhanced games if it doesn't support 4K?MS has already stated that although it'd run X1S version of games, it'll be with better texture filtering, better frame-rate, etc. 10GB is enough for that.
They haven't mentioned this, but IMO XSS might also run X1S games at 1080 minimum too, since it has the horsepower. X1S barely manages to hit 1080, let alone maintain it, in a lot of games.
Spunjji - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
I know a few people who don't plan to upgrade their TVs yet - they're still rocking Full HD models - for whom the Series S is an absolute steal. Microsoft did a smart thing there: People can buy a Series S now, and then if they replace their TV in a few years' time they can upgrade to the Series X for 4K gaming and keep the same games library.cknobman - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
I think my biggest issue with Sony PS5 is their performance metrics are max theoretical and not sustained.Unloke Xbox with locked clockes the Sony will vary depending on thermal headroom and load.
Not to mention Xbox game pass, crossplay, etc....
isthisavailable - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Sony is definitely making a lot less on the digital version and n00bs are gonna fall for it and get sucked into the "ecosystem". Personally i'm more in favor of MS's Game Pass model.Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
A friendly reminder that all consoles are massively overpriced.Every console sale = higher prices for PC gaming.
Why? You're paying to promote artificial walled software gardens. You're paying MS and Sony to place a tax on PC gaming.
bji - Sunday, September 27, 2020 - link
"massively overpriced" is a value judgement that you are trying, and failing, to present as fact. You have multiple posts that read like someone butt-hurt because they can't afford a console or something.These companies have been doing this a long time, they know what the "value" of their consoles are to players, and they set their prices accordingly.
vol.2 - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
I still can't get over how ugly the PS5 is. If I get one of these, I'm printing my own case and throwing away that piece of garbage they wrapped it in.Vitor - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
Im pretty sure there will be a 3nm ps5 pro. 7nm will be outdated by next year.zodiacsoulmate - Thursday, September 24, 2020 - link
Well the PS5 is peak performance right? How about sustained performance?