Is The NEO For Real?
Rumors of a new upgraded PS4 have been all the chatter in recent weeks. It has been called the PS4.5 or the PS4K by fans and press alike. Today, according to an article by Giant Bomb, multiple sources have confirmed details of the project, which is internally referred to as the NEO.
No price has been confirmed, but previous reports indicate that the NEO would sell at around $399 (USD).
The article reported the following:
“The NEO will feature a higher clock speed than the original PS4, an improved GPU, and higher bandwidth on the memory. The documents we’ve received note that the HDD in the NEO is the same as that in the original PlayStation 4, but it’s not clear if that means in terms of capacity or connection speed. Starting in October, every PS4 game is required to ship with both a “Base Mode” which will run on the currently available PS4 and a “NEO Mode” for use on the new console.”
According to the report, games running in NEO mode will be able to use the hardware upgrades (and an additional 512 MiB in the memory budget) to offer increased and more stable frame rate and higher visual fidelity.
The new PS4 will also support 4K image output; however, the games themselves are not required to be 4K native.
The article further reports:
“In the documents we’ve received, Sony offers suggestions for reaching 4K/UltraHD resolutions for NEO mode game builds, but they’re also giving developers a degree of freedom with how to approach this. 4K TV owners should expect the NEO to upscale games to fit the format, but one place Sony is unwilling to bend is on frame rate. Throughout the documents, Sony repeatedly reminds developers that the frame rate of games in NEO Mode must meet or exceed the frame rate of the game on the original PS4 system.”
It will come as a relief to many that the NEO won’t supplant the current PS4. Rather it will exist alongside of it and use the same user environment. The PS4 and NEO will use the same PSN store, connect to the same online communities, and offer the same user experience, so expect to see the same cross media bar that you’re used to. Players will be able to retain all of the purchases they made on the PS4.
In another move that will make many fans happy, Sony seems committed to keeping the NEO and the original PS4 player bases connected. As such, there will be no NEO-only games, and Sony will not let developers separate NEO users from original PS4 players while playing on PSN. This extends to developers as they cannot offer exclusive gameplay options or special unlockables for players on the new system.
While there is no release date yet, every PS4 game released as of October of this year will need to support both the original PS4 and the NEO. Additionally, games released in the late September window will require a day one patch that updates them to NEO standards.