Sony Computer Entertainment Senior Vice President Masayasu Ito has made a pretty interesting statement in a recent interview. According to him, a new and more powerful version of PS4 is not out of the bounds of reason.
Consoles are closed platforms and they aren’t like PC, they can not be upgraded hardware wise. But that doesn’t mean Sony can’t release a new box with optimized performance.
Nintendo did it with 3DS, didn’t they?
Ito said that since PlayStation 4 is using x86 architecture, it is possible to improve performance over time if needed. However, he says that whether improvements should be made or not is the main question.
Till now, we have seen consoles loss weight over time, get more power efficient etc, after they are launched. But I don’t remember seeing a new performance optimized version of an existing console being released. I don’t think Sony will make this move as not many fans would be happy to spend another $400 for the high-performance version of a console they already own.
Also, how much performance can you squeeze out of the same assets? For real notable improvement and performance difference, you need to upgrade your specs.
So in my opinion, such optimizations for console hardware doesn’t make sense. Unless, Sony finds a way to optimize their existing install base rather than introducing a new PS4 SKU.
