HN Reader

Could the PS6 be the last console generation with an expressive improvement in compute and graphics? Miniaturization keeps giving ever more diminishing returns each shrink, prices of electronics are going up (even sans tariffs), lead by the increase in the price of making chips. Alternate techniques have slowly been introduced to offset the compute deficit, first with post processing AA in the seventh generation, then with "temporal everything" hacks (including TAA) in the previous generation and finally with minor usage of AI up-scaling in the current generation and (projected) major usage of AI up-scaling and frame-gen in the next gen.

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.

I was going to say "again?", but then I recalled DirectX 12 was released 10 years ago and now I feel old...

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 industry, and at large the gaming community is just long past being interested in graphics advancement. AAA games are too complicated and expensive, the whole notion of ever more complex and grandiose experiences doesn't scale. Gamers are fractured along thousands of small niches, even in sense of timeline in terms of 80s, 90s, PS1 era each having a small circle of businesses serving them.

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

Teenage me from the 90s telling everyone that ray tracing will eventually take over all rendering and getting laughed at would be happy :)

Funny that I thought the biggest improvement of PS5 is actually crazy fast storage. No loading screen is really gamechanger. I would love to get xbox instant resume on Playstation.

Graphic is nice but not number one.

It feels like each time SCE makes a new console, it'd always come with some novelty that's supposed to change the field forever, but after two years they'd always end up just another console.

I really hope that this doesn't come to pass. It's all in on the two worst trends in graphics right now. Hardware Raytracing and AI based upscaling.

This video is a direct continuation of the one where Cerny explains logic behind PlayStation 5 pro design and telling that the path forward for them goes into rendering near perfect low res image then upscaling it with neural networks to 4K.

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.

So this is AMD catching up with Nvidia in the RT and AI upscaling/frame gen fields. Nothing wrong with it, and I am quite happy as an AMD GPU owner and Linux user.

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.

Graphics could stand to get toned down. It sucks to wait 7 years for a sequel to your favorite game. There was a time where sequels came out while the games were still relevant. We are getting sequels 8 years or more apart for what? Better beard graphics? Beer bottles where the liquid reacts when you bump into it? Who cares!

  | 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         |

We are 5 full years into the PS5's lifetime. These are the only games that are exclusive to the console.

  | 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         |

Nintendo is getting it right (maybe): focus on first-party exclusive games and, uh, a pile of indies and ports from the PS3 and PS4 eras.

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.

I really dislike the focus on graphics here, but I think a lot of people are missing big chunk of the article that's focused on efficiency.

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.

How about actually releasing games? GT7 and GOW Ragnarok are the only worthwhile exclusives of the current gen. This is hilariously bad for 5 year old console.

Seems like the philosophy here is, if you're going to do AI-based rendering, might as well try it across different parts of the graphics pipeline and see if you can fine-tune it at the silicon level. Probably a microoptimization, but if it makes the PS6 look a tiny bit better than the Xbox, people will pay for that.

> the new architecture is focused on more efficient running of the kinds of machine-learning-based neural networks

so fake frames generation ?

Digital Foundry just released a video discussing this:

https://youtu.be/Ru7dK_X5tnc

Hopefully their game lineup is not as underwhelming as the ps5 one.

I wonder how many variants of the PS6 they'll go through before they get a NIC that works right.

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".

So we're getting a new console just to play AI-upscaled PS4 and PS5 "remasters"... and I suspect it’ll probably come without any support for physical media. The PS5 will be my last console. There's no point anymore.

There sure is a lot of visionary(tm) thinking out there right now about the future of gaming, But what strikes me is how few of those visionaries(tm) have ever actually developed and taken a game to market.

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.

"Uh oh, I don't like that sound of that..."

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.

I see this as a test ground for the next thing on PC.

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

I'm seriously concerned that the PS9 development is far behind schedule. I certainly won't be able to teleport it, and I doubt it will be as immersive as promised.

This reminds me of the PlayStation/2 developer manual which, when describing the complicated features of system, said something like "there is no profit in making it easy to extract the most performance from the system."

I wish devs would just make PS2 level graphics and let GenAI take care of the rest, the wait times for each AAA game is nuts.

A new PS console already?

PS5 will be remembered as the worst PS generation.

Cell processor 2: electric boogaloo

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.

Both raytracing and NPUs use a lot of bandwidth and that is scaling the least with time. Time will tell if just going for more programmable compute would be better

I can't help but think that Sony and AMD would be better off developing a GPU-style PCI-card module that has all their DRM and compute and storage on the board, and then selling consoles that are just normal gaming PCs in a conveniently-sized branded case with a PS card installed. If the card was sold separately at $3-400 it would instantly take over a chunk of the PC gaming market and upgrades would be easier.

Maybe Sony should focus on getting a half-respectable library out on the PS5 before touting the theoretical merits of the PS6? It’s kind of wild how thin they are this go around. Their live service gambles clearly cost them this cycle and the PSVR2 landed with a thud.

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

Soon real games will be 10 pixels, and everything else is upscaled

Noone is gonna give you some groundbreaking tech for your electronic gadget.... As IBM showed when they created the Cell for Sony and then gave almost the same tech to Microsoft :D.

Why? Hasn't it only been 5 years according to the public? Stop being greedy.