However, I'm pessimistic on how this can keep evolving. RT already takes a non trivial amount of transistor budget and now those high end AI solutions require another considerable chunk of the transistor budget. If we are already reaching the limits of what non generative AI up-scaling and frame-gen can do, I can't see where a PS7 can go other than using generative AI to interpret a very crude low-detail frame and generating a highly detailed photorealistic scene from that, but that will, I think, require many times more transistor budget than what will likely ever be economically achievable for a whole PS7 system.

Will that be the end of consoles? Will everything move to the cloud and a power guzzling 4KW machine will take care of rendering your PS7 game?

I really can only hope there is a break-trough in miniaturization and we can go back to a pace of improvement that can actually give us a new generation of consoles (and computers) that makes the transition from an SNES to a N64 feel quaint.

The main goal of Direct3D 12, and subsequently Vulcan, was to allow for better use of the underlying graphics hardware as it had changed more and more from its fixed pipeline roots.

So maybe the time is ripe for a rethink, again.

Particularly the frame generation features, upscaling and frame interpolation, have promise but needs to be integrated in a different way I think to really be of benefit.

The times of console giants, their fiefdoms and the big game studios is coming to an end.

  | Game                                      | Release Year |
  |-------------------------------------------|--------------|
  | GTA III                                   | 2001         |
  | GTA Vice City                             | 2002         |
  | GTA San Andreas                           | 2004         |
  | Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus     | 2002         |
  | Sly 2: Band of Thieves                    | 2004         |
  | Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves                | 2005         |
  | Infamous                                  | 2009         |
  | Infamous 2                                | 2011         |

  | Game                                      | Release Year |
  |-------------------------------------------|--------------|
  | Astro's Playroom                          | 2020         |
  | Demon's Souls                             | 2020         |
  | Destruction AllStars                      | 2021         |
  | Gran Turismo 7                            | 2022         |
  | Horizon Call of the Mountain              | 2023         |
  | Firewall Ultra                            | 2023         |
  | Astro Bot                                 | 2024         |
  | Death Stranding 2: On the Beach           | 2025         |
  | Ghost of Yōtei                            | 2025         |

Graphic is nice but not number one.

How good it will be? Just look at the current upscalers working on perfectly rendered images - photos. And they aren't doing it in realtime. So the errors, noise, and artefacts are all but inevitable. Those will be masked by post processing techniques that will inevitably degrade image clarity.

But the way it is framed as a revolutionary step and as a Sony collab is a tad misleading. AMD is competent enough to do it by itself, and this will definitely show up in PC and the competing Xbox.

Come to think of it, Sony is also stuck in the PS4 era since PS5 pro is basically a PS4 pro that plays most of the same games but at 4K/60. (Though it does add a fast SSD and nice haptics on the DualSense controller.) But it's really about the games, and we haven't seen a lot of system seller exclusives on the PS5 that aren't on PS4, PC, or other consoles. (Though I'm partial to Astro-bot and also enjoyed timed exclusives like FF16 and FF7 Rebirth.)

PS5 and Switch 2 are still great gaming consoles - PS5 is cheaper than many GPU cards, while Switch 2 competes favorably with Steam Deck as a handheld and hybrid game system.

If we can get high texture + throughput content like dual 4k streams but with 1080p bandwidth, we can get VR that isn't as janky. If we can get lower power consumption, we can get smaller (and cooler) form functions which means we might see a future where the Playstation Portal is the console itself. I'm about to get on a flight to Sweden, and I'd kill to have something like my Steam Deck but running way cooler, way more powerful, and less prone to render errors.

I get the feeling Sony will definitely focus on graphics as that's been their play since the 90s, but my word if we get a monumental form factor shift and native VR support that feels closer to the promise on paper, that could be a game changer.

https://youtu.be/Ru7dK_X5tnc

so fake frames generation ?

As someone working at an ISP, I am frustrated with how bad Sony has mangled the networking stack on these consoles. I thought BSD was supposed to be the best in breed of networking but instead Sony has found all sorts of magical ways to make it Not Work.

From the PS5 variants that just hate 802.11ax to all the gamers making wild suggestions like changing MTU settings or DNS settings just to make your games work online... man, does Sony make it a pain for us to troubleshoot when they wreck it.

Bonus points that they took away the Web browser so we can't even try to do forward-facing troubleshooting without going through an obtuse process of the third-party-account-linking system to sneak out of the process to run a proper speedtest to Speedtest/Fast to show that "no, it's PSN being slow, not us".

Not entirely unlike how many AI academics who step functioned their compensation a decade ago by pivoting to the tech industry had no experience bringing an AI product to market, but they certainly felt free pontificate on how things are done.

I eagerly await the shakeout due from the weakly efficient market as the future of gaming ends up looking like nothing anyone imagineered.

clicks article

"Project Amethyst is focused on going beyond traditional rasterization techniques that don't scale well when you try to "brute force that with raw power alone," Huynh said in the video. Instead, the new architecture is focused on more efficient running of the kinds of machine-learning-based neural networks behind AMD's FSR upscaling technology and Sony's similar PSSR system."

"Yep..."

Sigh.

Why not also give a mini AMD EPYC cpu with 32 cores? This way games would start to be much better at multicore.

Seems they didn’t learn from the PS3, and that exotic architectures don't drive sales. Gamers don’t give a shit and devs won’t choose it unless they have a lucrative first party contract.

PS5 will be remembered as the worst PS generation.

Frankly after releasing the $700 pro and going “it’s basically the same specs but it can actually do 4K60 this time we promise” and given how many friends I have with the PS5 sitting around as an expensive paper weight, I can’t see a world where I get a PS6 despite decades of console gaming. The PS5 is an oversized final fantasy machine supported by remakes/remasters of all their hits from the PS3/PS4 era. It’s kind of striking when you look at the most popular games on the console.

Don’t even get me started on Xbox lol