PS5, what will it be ?

I don't think that you can tell folk what to think, but it's great to hear what others think on a forum as this can lead to discussion breaking out. So how do you think the PS5 will be? Do you think that there will even be a PS5?
I defo think there will be a PS5. Sony are investing heavily into the PS ecosystem because it's one of the few profitable divisions of Sony.

I think Sony would love nothing more than the other physical console developers to close up shop and try to go all digital/online/streaming. They'd have 100% of the market share for physical games. It's because of that that I think they will all be afraid to leave the console market. Especially after what happened with MS' E3 reveal.
 
I am pretty sure there were claims the PS3 would be the last console with onboard storage and optical drives etc. A decade on and the PS4 came with a HDD and a blu-ray drive. If the PS5 is to be a 4k console it will need a large HDD and some kind of optical drive.
Why will it need a large HDD? The resolution it outputs doesn't automatically mean that the games will be massively bigger. Sure textures will be a higher resolution, but games are becoming increasingly more procedural so it's not like streaming video where there is a comparable increase in information held within a streamed picture when a resulution is increased. It will need some sufficient storage, but the price of storage is plummeting all the time and I would suggest that a 2tb solid state drive will cost very little in 7 years time.

To be honest though, the disc drives in my consoles are pretty redundant anyway and if I could have bought smaller versions, without the optical drives then I would have done. I would be extremely surprised if the PS5 came with an optical drive in it.
 
I defo think there will be a PS5. Sony are investing heavily into the PS ecosystem because it's one of the few profitable divisions of Sony.

I think Sony would love nothing more than the other physical console developers to close up shop and try to go all digital/online/streaming. They'd have 100% of the market share for physical games. It's because of that that I think they will all be afraid to leave the console market. Especially after what happened with MS' E3 reveal.
Yes I do and I won't repeat my views as i've already gone into vast detail in this thread. I think that games will on the whole continue to be processed locally (Graphics etc.), but developers will start to use the cloud more and more to offload various processing elements.

I can actually see console hardware becoming just graphical powerhouses, with the AI, physics etc. being processed by computing powerhouses in the cloud. Physical media isn't even really the discussion anymore, it's how the digital media will be delivered that is now the issue. When you can download from the internet as quick as you can from a blu ray disc then why bother with a blu ray disc? I think that some elements will be streamed (music, video, AI and physics routines), whilst others (the graphics, gameworld, charater models etc.) will be downloaded quickly to internal memory. This will allow games to be basically streamed without the lag you get when you stream the full product.
 
I personally can't see this being being the last gen of physical hardware. On a global scale are enough markets ready for that change?
For example, where Fibre is concerned - USA may very well be prepared, but most of the UK aren't. What would happen to those who don't yet have access to Fibre?
I for example only gained access to Fibre about 4 months ago. There's still plenty of others going without.

My hope is that physical media isn't banished - although it is inevitable. The reason for this is because as soon as discs go, the second hand market disappears, which means the Sony/MS/<insert publisher here> get to dictate pricing.
Take a look at PSN Store now and you'll see Killzone for £54.99... I can go get this locally for £15 if not less.
If the pricing isn't address on DD then there's a risk the gaming world would suffer (IMO).

I personally would quite welcome a DD only model, providing pricing was decent. Something maybe even along the lines as Pay-as-you-Play models for some games.
Take FIFA - If i could get just the Ultimate Team section of the game for £20 then i'd do that. Then in future maybe if i wanted the Pro clubs section of the game i would pay an extra £15 and so on.

There's various possibilities for the next generation, but's it's going to require a hardware box of some kind (who's really going to want to buy a new TV so they can get an xbox/ps - Then you've got which manufacturers align with which gaming service etc).

VR is something i'm looking forward to, but whoever has the balance between hardware and VR effect will win out. Oculus right now has too much hardware going on IMO, nobody is going to really want to stick that on their mug everytime they play. Alternatively, Sony seem to be edging the right way with Morpheus, as that's a more subtle looking solution.
 
Yes I do and I won't repeat my views as i've already gone into vast detail in this thread. I think that games will on the whole continue to be processed locally (Graphics etc.), but developers will start to use the cloud more and more to offload various processing elements.

I can actually see console hardware becoming just graphical powerhouses, with the AI, physics etc. being processed by computing powerhouses in the cloud. Physical media isn't even really the discussion anymore, it's how the digital media will be delivered that is now the issue. When you can download from the internet as quick as you can from a blu ray disc then why bother with a blu ray disc? I think that some elements will be streamed (music, video, AI and physics routines), whilst others (the graphics, gameworld, charater models etc.) will be downloaded quickly to internal memory. This will allow games to be basically streamed without the lag you get when you stream the full product.
By your logic, DVDs and to a lesser extent Blu-Rays would not be sold anymore. (Vudu has 1080p streaming). I can download and watch a movie from Vudu much quicker than loading up a Blu-Ray and having to wade through warnings and adverts.

I think Physical media will be around for a good while (while also downloading to the console as they do now).
 
By your logic, DVDs and to a lesser extent Blu-Rays would not be sold anymore. (Vudu has 1080p streaming). I can download and watch a movie from Vudu much quicker than loading up a Blu-Ray and having to wade through warnings and adverts.

I think Physical media will be around for a good while (while also downloading to the console as they do now).
I think that their time is limited to be honest. People are moving over to the streaming services in their droves and I know that I haven't bought a Blu Ray in ages! Go back a few years and I would buy several films on disc per month. Also games systems tend to change every 5-7 years, where as optical media does not. Gamers buy games on whatever format they come on (be that tape, floppy disc, cartridge, optical disc, memory card or a digital download) and once new consoles come out, the previous marketplace pretty much dies off. With Blu Ray films, there is a large audience who have players and therefore that market will take longer to move over as that market will be fed whilst there is an appetite.

I stand by my views towards the end of the last gen when we were all speculating about what this gen would hold. They were that this gen would still have a physical option, but it would be the coming of age for DD. I stated that the change over would be slow and if anything, people are moving across to DD faster than even I anticipated.

By the end of the next gen in around 5-7 years time, streaming/downloading tech will have increased vastly and internet speeds are also vastly increasing. At the start of this gen I got around 4mb and there was no sign of fibre around here. Now I have fibre at £5 p/m for 40mb/s. I could go BT and get around 50-60mb/s but at a higher cost and it's just not needed at the moment really.
 
I think that their time is limited to be honest. People are moving over to the streaming services in their droves and I know that I haven't bought a Blu Ray in ages! Go back a few years and I would buy several films on disc per month. Also games systems tend to change every 5-7 years, where as optical media does not. Gamers buy games on whatever format they come on (be that tape, floppy disc, cartridge, optical disc, memory card or a digital download) and once new consoles come out, the previous marketplace pretty much dies off. With Blu Ray films, there is a large audience who have players and therefore that market will take longer to move over as that market will be fed whilst there is an appetite.

I stand by my views towards the end of the last gen when we were all speculating about what this gen would hold. They were that this gen would still have a physical option, but it would be the coming of age for DD. I stated that the change over would be slow and if anything, people are moving across to DD faster than even I anticipated.

By the end of the next gen in around 5-7 years time, streaming/downloading tech will have increased vastly and internet speeds are also vastly increasing. At the start of this gen I got around 4mb and there was no sign of fibre around here. Now I have fibre at £5 p/m for 40mb/s. I could go BT and get around 50-60mb/s but at a higher cost and it's just not needed at the moment really.
I think PS Plus paved the way for digital downloads (edit: on consoles) imo. Before that I had never bought a digital game except maybe the odd phone game.
 
I've come back from the year 2020 using my time machine to post in this thread.

My PS5 has just shipped via Amazon drone.

Release games include 'The Last of Us remastered: remastered' and 'Metro redux: Redux'. There's also the 'Drive Club 4k remaster' but the online still isn't working from the original PS4 version.

Rest mode has been replaced with 'I'll switch on and off and download updates when I feel like it' mode.

Day one patch is 250TB but it only takes 5 days to download.

No optical drive. Everything's gone 'retro' now and the PS5 accepts 7-inch vinyl instead of bluray. There's also an audio cassette add-on.

Messaging is improved. You get a carrier pigeon with each console.

Morpheus never caught on. People kept bashing into things getting injured. Like Nintendo with the silicone WiiMote jackets, Sony provided everyone with bubble-wrap body suits but they were too restrictive.

Can't wait for my console to arrive.
 
I think PS Plus paved the way for digital downloads (edit: on consoles) imo. Before that I had never bought a digital game except maybe the odd phone game.
It did. I had bought a few DD games. Stuff like Wipeout on PS3 was an early water tester and GT Prologue as well. But yes, PS+ got folk used to the idea of DD games by stealth really and they have grown from there. Folk are also used to buying half of most games as DD these days in terms of DLC, which is another way that developers have sold games via DD, almost by stealth.

Fact is, when you buy a game on disc these days, you get no real value from what's in the box, you usually have to install the game anyway and only a portion of the game comes on the disc anyway as so many games rely on DLC now. Some folk think that they control how they buy their media and in a limited day to day sense, this is true. At the end of the day though, it's the publishers who determine how we buy games. If DD wasn't in their interests, then we'd all still be buying our games on physical media as there would be little alternative.
 
I'm 100% digital on the xbox one (only one game but still) and the PS4. I think I will keep it that way as much as i can. I'm happy that way but the pricing really needs sorting if they want many more to take the leap. That's the biggest stumbling block imo.

Steam are stopping keys from elsewhere in the world working for your games soon so that will have a knock in affect on the prices, so I'm sure it won't be as cheap anymore.

Cheaper credit and the US store makes things a little easier on the wallet digitally.

I may have to get some games on disc though as I can get them quite cheap from some old friends :)
 
I think it all comes down to when the main console makers decide to ditch retail. If they do, it will reduce digital pricing and kill off the 2nd hand market in one swoop. They could do it overnight if they wanted.
 
South Korea etc are truly ready to go all digital but the UK?, hardly. We've got from normal broadband speeds downloading 6-12gb games to fibre speeds downloading 30-50gb games, I can't be excited about the glacial pace our internet infrastructure moves at compared to the worlds leading countries.

In the future I want a game to come down in a couple of minutes, either that or stream it. I can see them transitioning Playstation Now into a netflix for games by the time PS5 is due, with various subscription tiers available.
 
How on earth do you manage that?. My line rental alone is like triple that!.
Sorry that's just for the BB. Rental is the usual £16 or so but you need that for the phone anyway so I don't count it.
 
South Korea etc are truly ready to go all digital but the UK?, hardly. We've got from normal broadband speeds downloading 6-12gb games to fibre speeds downloading 30-50gb games, I can't be excited about the glacial pace our internet infrastructure moves at compared to the worlds leading countries.

In the future I want a game to come down in a couple of minutes, either that or stream it. I can see them transitioning Playstation Now into a netflix for games by the time PS5 is due, with various subscription tiers available.
It is a pain on a slow connection. I have only recently come off a 4-5mb one and it was painful to download big files. I used to cringe when downloading say 3gb as it would take several hours. Fibre makes a big difference though as 3gb takes around 10 mins now. At a rate of around 18gb/hour it means that even the biggest of games can be downloaded in 2-3 hours now.

The thing is though, if you were to load the entire contents of a 50gb Blu Ray into the PS4 memory (which of course you can't as the internal memory is only a fraction of that), it would take just over half an hour to load. Just because a game is 50gb, doesn't mean that you have to download 50gb to load it and games take advantage of that now. When you play a Blu Ray game, it installs, which can take a while anyway. Fibre speeds are generally like loading from a 1x - 3x blu ray drive (depending on the speed of fibre you have - i.e. say 40mb/s to 120mb/s) and those speeds make cloud gaming a possibility. By that i'm not talking streaming in the Onlive sense, but more downloading the data as needed from the cloud, instead of from the Blu Ray or HDD.
 
Why will it need a large HDD? The resolution it outputs doesn't automatically mean that the games will be massively bigger. Sure textures will be a higher resolution, but games are becoming increasingly more procedural so it's not like streaming video where there is a comparable increase in information held suggest that a 2tb solid state drive will cost very little in 7 years time.
The PS3 launched with a 40Gb drive here. Later it had 400Gb as standard. The PS4 launched with 500Gb as standard. Either it will be a HDD or it will be solid state but it will probably have a large amount of storage. Disks tend to be a cheap means of disruption as they are little more than tin foil between sheets of plastic.

If Sony want to encourage sales of its new 4K blu-ray it might use it. It's easy to think we will have faster broadband. Not everyone does. Mine could still be better. In global terms, and it is a global product disks are still better for the many countries that aren't going to be getting fast broadband.
 
I think that their time is limited to be honest. People are moving over to the streaming services in their droves and I know that I haven't bought a Blu Ray in ages! Go back a few years and I would buy several films on disc per month. Also games systems tend to change every 5-7 years, where as optical media does not. Gamers buy games on whatever format they come on (be that tape, floppy disc, cartridge, optical disc, memory card or a digital download) and once new consoles come out, the previous marketplace pretty much dies off. With Blu Ray films, there is a large audience who have players and therefore that market will take longer to move over as that market will be fed whilst there is an appetite.
I think you are letting your personal experience cloud your judgement. I still buy blu-rays as they still offer the best picture and sound quality. How will broadband deliver 4K? It can't even deliver 1080p and DTS.
 
My opinion on 4K that is just won't take off. When streaming it's heavily compressed and when i spent a day at Samsung on the UE8500 Curved screens, the 4K Stream looked about the same as the Blu-Ray. For broadcasting its a lot of data to send over the airways and if Sky can't even do 1080p currently i think 4k is a push.

Honestly i think it will be niche for the Movie market who still want discs but i think the mainstream market will go for 1080 streaming at a low price over 4K
 
If 4k is heavily compressed when streaming then what will people watch on their new 4k TV's?

I've been trying to think if you are selling a global product and you rely on a fast broadband how many billions globally you might miss out on? Anyone want to take a guess?
 
I think you are letting your personal experience cloud your judgement. I still buy blu-rays as they still offer the best picture and sound quality. How will broadband deliver 4K? It can't even deliver 1080p and DTS.
Yes at this time they do as the streaming services have to cater for a wide range of speeds. We are talking the next generation here though, which will be at least 5-7 years away. Netflix already have a limited 4k service and whilst the streaming services don't offer quite the picture quality or lossless audio that Blu Ray provides, I find the quality very adequate now and i'm pretty sure that most people will be happy enough with the quality from streamed services.

I guess my point with all of this is that IMO people are viewing it from the wrong perspective. If you think of the cloud as a combination between processing power and storage then it could really deliver in terms of gaming. Storage could be primarily cloud based with a relatively small amount (say 100-250gb) of local flash storage. Graphical assets could be downloaded on the fly from the cloud into local storage. AI, Physics etc. could all be processed in the cloud by super powerful processing powerhouses and that info could be streamed effectively to home consoles. Music could also be streamed on the fly as this requires little bandwidth. This form of intelligent streaming makes much more sense than processing the full game on a remote server and streaming the whole thing.

We've seen how video streming tech has improved over the past few years and i'm sure that there are far cleverer people than me working in this area to ensure that games can be streamed effectively from the cloud with no noticable lag.
 
If 4k is heavily compressed when streaming then what will people watch on their new 4k TV's?

I've been trying to think if you are selling a global product and you rely on a fast broadband how many billions globally you might miss out on? Anyone want to take a guess?

Fibre has come on leaps and bounds over here in even the last couple of years but for the most part, its still expensive (especially unlimited)

It may be me but i think people are beginning to tire of re-buying new formats over and over so i think a good quality 1080 stream from say Netflix or NowTV at a good price will be preferred over 4K Blu-Ray
 
Around twenty years ago there was a guy who came up with the idea of selling people a network computer and everything being done online. It never took off as too much of the world has a dodgy connection or not at all. Also adding in a hard drive or an optical drive adds very little to the cost. If the cost of adding a mass produced optical drive adds £20 or so to your console then it will be added if it means you can still distribute a disk to those without broadband. It's all about money. Games are getting larger with each generation and only a small percentage of the world has a fast connection. Why should I shell out a lot of money for a fibre optic connection? I don't need one.

The PS3 was touted as being the last console to use physical media. It never happened as when the PS4 was being designed there was found to not be a sufficient internet connection globally.
 
.....

We've seen how video streming tech has improved over the past few years and i'm sure that there are far cleverer people than me working in this area to ensure that games can be streamed effectively from the cloud with no noticable lag.

I think this is an important distinction. Streaming games from the cloud [where the only interaction between player and server is controller inputs] is one thing , co-processing between local resources and cloud resources is another; with the latter having a physical limitation that will be virtually impossible to overcome for most use cases whilst local processing power trumps cloud.
 
Fibre has come on leaps and bounds over here in even the last couple of years but for the most part, its still expensive (especially unlimited)
Why should I buy fibre? It's expensive and only available in certain areas. There are some parts of the country that will never have it. It's easy to think "I have a superfast connection so this is the future." Don't you think this might be clouding your judgement?
 

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