I've been waiting for the rumour mill to be concluded in terms of the PS4 Slim and PS4 Neo leaks, as I genuinely was looking at getting a PS4 so I could play Uncharted 4 and the Last of US Remastered, but it made sense to wait and see what the price point and specs of the new PS4 consoles were before I committed.
Well yesterday Sony finally announced them in the form of the new look PS4 (no slim naming convention as such because it will simply replace the current model) and the more powerful PS4 Pro, which was formerly known as the PS4 Neo.
It's awesome that the wait is over, but to be honest the announcement has put me in two minds whether to opt for the slim or grab the original PS4 second-hand at a bargain price and be done with it....
The main reason being that during the showpiece Sony announced that via a Firmware upgrade the original is going to get HDR support, which kind of seems baffling, considering this is surely a key selling point of the Pro. Plus the so called slim model, while starting at £269, offers no major upgrades as such over the original in terms of on-board spec. You only get aesthetic changes and weight/power-saving saving gains.
In fairness you do get a re-modelled DS4 controller (v2) with a slight boost to ergonomics and its light beam is now viewable from the front of the controller.
On the other hand the Pro version seems to be based on the core design of the original, with an extra third tier added to it's casing. Yet unlike the Xbox One S Sony decided to omit an 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray drive from its specs. Despite 4K support it seems their core media focus is on streaming services such as Netflix/YouTube. I think I read that Sony believe that most users of the PS4 prefer to stream content. On top of this Sony did not want to take away from the core-experience, which is of course games.
While this line may have worked in years gone by there was an opportunity here that has been missed in my opinion. Having the option to play physical 4K discs is better than not having it at all (at least you can make a choice as to what media you play) and with Microsoft's Xbox One S costing £250, it surly would not have cost much more to include an improved drive as standard.
Personally I don't do a vast amount of streaming because the annoying aspect about it is the dependency on the Internet connection. Thus if your Internet connection is buggered you will either get a below par experience or it won't play at all if the Internet goes down. At least with physical media you won't have this problem.
We have to remember though that the Pro console is a mid-generation upgrade and despite the above niggle its key selling point has to be the price tag. At £350 this is pretty good going for a console that will be able to tap into 4K displays (with HDR support) from a gaming point of view.
Mind you I suspect most games will probably be up-scaled to 4K or at least offer improved visual fidelity going forwards (thanks primarily to the HDR). I would be surprised though to see any games come out in native 4K resolution (let-alone run at 60 FPS) unless the console's custom hardware has more power than meets the eye.
All your old games will work on the new console thankfully, but what is useful here is that the Pro will most certainly provide 1080P gaming as standard for every game released on the platform from now on. Plus if developers decide to do so they can patch their existing games to take advantage of the Pro's extra power for improved frame-rates; which is going to be handy for those with 1080P screens.
However now it's over to Microsoft and if the tech giant can price their upcoming Scorpio in the same ball park figure as the Pro, then for me it would be difficult to justify the latter given that a 4K TV is also an investment and the Scorpio will potentially offer more of a chance to get native 4K gaming.
Then again, I come back to my earlier comment that the PS4 Pro is a mid-generation upgrade, where as the Scorpio sounds more like an Xbox Two. Thus I think when the PS5 will be announced it will offer native 4K gaming with even more power and thus the never-ending cycle will continue!
Either way the PS4 New look model is out on the 16th September starting at £269.99 (500GB version), where as the PS4 Pro (1TB HDD as standard) costs £349 and is out in November (10th).
For me it seems the slim model is there to tempt those users not yet on the PS4 bandwagon, but with what appears to be only cosmetic changes you could go down the second-hand route and grab the older model at a much cheaper price. While the Pro is there to tempt existing users to upgrade to take advantage of 4K.
However there are draw-backs as it does not offer a full all-in-one 4K experience (because of the lack of a 4K UHD Blu-ray drive), so if you have got a 4K TV you may not get the most out of it from a media point of view. Then again, once I get hold of one for review I will be able to see for myself if this theory pans out.