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Sony has announced the PlayStation Neo, formerly referred to as "PS4.5" or "PS4K", and Microsoft has announced the Xbox "Project Scorpio". Both will be "mid-cycle refreshes" of the preceding consoles that will significantly boost graphics power, supposedly allowing for existing games to be played at a minimum of 1080p/60FPS, using virtual reality headsets, or at 4K (2160p):
And so gamers have been promised a console for release in 2017 that packs a whopping 6 teraflops of processing power (compared to the current Xbox One's mere 1.31), along with a much improved 320GB/s of memory bandwidth. Even ignoring some of Microsoft's more questionable claims (uncompressed pixels anyone?), those are some impressive specs. Forget 1080p/60fps: Microsoft says that this system is more than enough hardware to push a VR headset (the company isn't saying which one yet, but I'd bet on Oculus), and run regular games at 4K resolution with support for High Dynamic Range (HDR).
[...] The PlayStation Neo has it even harder. Leaked specs put its performance at somewhere around 4.2 teraflops, while its 36 GCN compute units clocked at 911MHz strongly suggest it's using a form of AMD's upcoming Polaris architecture, most likely a down-clocked RX 480. Memory bandwidth is up compared to the PS4 at 218GB/s but far behind that of Scorpio. At this stage, those specs are unlikely to change, particularly as developer kits have already gone out to developers. A radical redesign to match Scorpio's GPU—which, given what we know about AMD's GPU lineup and the cooling setup in Project Scorpio, is likely to be a down-clocked version of Vega rather than an overlocked Polaris—is pretty much off the table.
The two consoles should be available sometime in 2017. Sony is also launching a PSVR head-mounted display on October 13th.
If nothing else, the enhanced capabilities of these new consoles will help relieve "consolitis" (PC games being held back by weak consoles). Both consoles are likely to feature another 8-core AMD CPU: either a higher-clocked Jaguar or possibly a Zen processor.
Previously: Sony Rumored to Be Developing PlayStation 4.5
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday June 17 2016, @08:56PM
Give it a try if you can. My brother and I just got finished with some new demos and we increased the perimeter. With the Vive, you can physically walk around limited by a perimeter which can be a maximum of 5mx5m or 16x16 feet. And the IRL and VR movement is pretty much 1:1 seamless. That movement heavily adds to the immersive experience. My only beef is the damn cable keeps getting in the way but that will be remedied by hanging it from the ceiling. They also need to get shoe sensors to locate your feet but the virtual hands via the controller help with orientation.
The valve Lab demo has a bunch of things to mess with and the robot repair was very impressive. If you played Portal you'll remember the final battle with GLaDOS. GLaDOS makes an appearance toward the end of the robot repair demo and as she approaches you, you really get an actual sense of how massive she is.
We wanted to try a horror game and after some searching we found the Brookhaven Experiment. I have to admit, both of us couldn't deal with more than a few minutes in that damn game. Way too unnerving. The gun has no cursor, like real life, so you really have to aim. Meanwhile, the zombies are approaching from all around. As your aiming trying to kill them you hear the others closing in on you from all around. Panic actually starts to set in and I took the headset off. That's immersive.
Agreed. Facebook doesn't have a clue about gaming. They just threw money at Oculus to gobble up a piece of hip new tech to capitalize on it. That was a good thing because it motivated Valve after some of their employees left to work on the Oculus. And no disrespect to the Oculus developers but don't have shit on Valve/HTC. HTC is an experienced hardware company along with Valve who pretty much set the bar in 1998 with half life and again with Steam, TF2, DotA, Portal, etc.