Last night (UK time, at least), Sony held a press conference in order to announce their newest hardware, namely – the PS4 Slim and the PS4 Neo. Of course, they hadn’t announced any of that beforehand, but pretty much anyone with half a brain cell could figure it out solely based on what has been happening in the last few months. I mean, there have been rumors about a new version of the PS4 that would be able to output in 4K Ultra HD resolution as early as March of this year, with Kotaku reporting that this new piece of hardware will have an upgraded GPU in order to increase graphical fidelity for PSVR titles (and you should be more than familiar with PSVR, as I’ve talked about it more than once on this blog before). A few months later, rumors about a different version of the PS4 – nicknamed the PS4 Slim – began emerging, with one of the units even showing up for auction. In the days leading up to last night’s conference, several reviewers managed to get their hands on fully functioning PS4 Slim units, doing their best to review them and even open them up. That made the conference a bit awkward, because Sony pretty much had nothing new to announce other than to reveal the new name of the 4K capable PS4, which will now be named the PS4 Pro. Hooray.
As expected, the console will be able to stream 4K video from Netflix, and will also output certain games in 4K resolution. The bad part is that not ALL games will be upscaled – developers will need to specifically make their games compatible with the new model, so it’s a fair guess that only future triple A releases will be this lucky. So far we’ve got confirmation that Ubisoft’s “For Honor” and “Watch_Dogs 2”, as well as Activision’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops III” and “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare” will support PS4 Pro, which means that we can probably expect games from those publishers to look phenomenal on 4K TVs. All first-party PS4 games, such as “Horizon: Zero Dawn” and Insomniac’s “Spider-Man” title will also be supported, but that goes without saying. The nicest (and only) surprise of the press conference was that we got the first ever live gameplay footage from “Mass Effect: Andromeda”, which means that there’s a very good chance EA might join in on the 4K game.
The PS4 Slim will cost $299 and the PS4 Pro will cost $399, and they’ll both be out this November. But what does that mean for you? Should you be buying either of them? Well… As it stands, neither is a “must buy at launch”, but they are pretty good deals under certain conditions. If you still don’t have a PS4 and are looking for a relatively cheap way to get one, then the Slim is definitely a pretty good idea – it’s small, reliable and will get the job done. After all, the standard PS4 is a pretty damn amazing console in its own right, so a slimmer version can only benefit it. If you have a 4K TV and/or are considering buying PSVR, then a PS4 Pro might be for you. As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the Pro will greatly increase the graphical fidelity of the VR experience (the conference mentioned the ability to render twice as many pixels), so even if you don’t have a 4K TV, the Pro is a great purchase just for that extra punch in VR (not to mention, the added GPU will undoubtedly have other benefits even on standard HDTVs, such as increased framerate). I personally have pre-ordered the PSVR, and am planning on buying a PS4 Pro and a 4K TV in the near future. I probably won’t get the console at launch, I’ll wait a bit to see the reviews, but for now I’m certainly interested!