PlayStation 5

[Moonface]

I'd find it weird for Sony to be caring about negative responses to not censoring games when a company like Nintendo isn't worrying. There'd have to be something more to it than just the shallow reason of not upsetting people, especially when it likely makes no significant changes to their bottom line. I don't know if these particular games being censored on PS4 have significantly different age ratings compared to the original versions, but that would be the only reason I could see to change a game as a lower rating makes it easier to sell to a wider audience. I know many people don't care about buying an M rated game for their kids but those typically tend to be shooters and violent games, not something presumably sexualised in some manner. Sex is a far more sensitive subject than violence is, and could be a bigger hindrance in sales than it too.

Is it dumb to censor a game purely for sales? Absolutely. It just screams of a company caring more about money than the thing they're making, and while money is important to keep your business going, there are plenty of examples of how things turn out in relation to gaming when a company comes off as only wanting to generate easy profits rather than push artistic vision and creativity. Now sure, Sony still have plenty of games that aren't censored Japanese games that have creativity and artistic vision, but to me it's like when certain genres were dying off during the last generation of consoles then had a resurgence in this one, such as platformers. It just alienates a portion of your fanbase and if someone else is offering what your fans want and the stuff you're still offering that you aren't compromising with, what incentive do people have to continue to support your brand?

It's like the Xbox One scenario of putting everything onto PC. Yes, an Xbox is convenient but outside of that, why stay with it? If you own both a gaming PC and an Xbox One, why buy the Xbox version over the PC version which will always be better and always offer you more?

[Metallix]

As far as I know they are only censoring the stuff where girls look underage. Lots of games where sexually provocative girls supposedly 18 look like they’re 12.

[Moonface]

And Nintendo aren't censoring that same content?

[Dragon Lord]

Like he said, "as far as he knows," and he doesn't know very far.

PlayStation is forcing censorship on more than just girls who look young/petite. They are forcing many visual novel developers to add ridiculous amounts of "light beams" to any CGs showing anything that could slightly be deemed as sexual. I don't have the screenshots on hand, but Siliconera posted an article about a developer who was forced to increase the censorship of their "All-Ages" version for their visual novel on PS4. They showed a few examples, but one was of a female character that in no way "looked like she was 12", and the only "lewd" thing about the CG was that you could see her panties from behind.

The normal CG covered up whatever needed to be covered up well enough, but then Sony forced them to add so much extra light beams to the CG that it looked like her ass was the sun.

So no, it's not "hurr durr girls who look 12" like people like to say. Sony has been forcing Japanese developers of Visual Novels and niche games in general to change stuff in their games.

And yes, Nintendo is allowing things without additional censorship. When NEKOPARA Vol 1 released for PS4 and Switch, the Switch got the all-ages version exactly like it was on Steam. No additional censorship. Sony made them delay the PS4 release to once again increase the fog effect of the bath CGs to cover up much more than actually needs covering up.

Here is an example of a CG after Sony forced the developer to "cover it up a little more"

Of course the excuse is likely "Not safe for kids!", but name one kid you know that would actively search out NEKOPARA on PS4? Unless you know the game exists, and know enough about it to look it up, there's no way you're going to find it on PS4. And at that point, if a kid does know what NEKOPARA is and knows enough about it to look it up, they could just do so on Steam instead and find not only the game there, but the game in it's full 18+ glory.


Yes, these visual novels have sexual content in them (hell, most originated as eroge to begin with), but the all-ages versions cover up enough and already change enough to be mostly harmless. Kids can play GTA or The Witcher and see a LOT more than they could find in the All-Ages versions of games like NEKOPARA.

[Metallix]

• Mark Cerny is once again the Lead System Architect.
  
  
• 8 core AMD 7nm Zen 2 based on third generation Ryzen.
  
  
• Ray-tracing support with custom AMD Navi GPU.
  
  
• Custom AMD unit for 3D Audio, also aided by ray-tracing, a big upgrade.
  
  
• Extremely fast high-end custom SSD storage faster than any solution currently available for PC:
  Spider-Man load times on PS4 Pro: 15 seconds → 0.8 seconds on next-gen PlayStation.
  
  
• Technically supports 8K but Cerny demoed Spider-Man load speed improvements on a 4K screen.
  
  
• New Virtual Reality platform strongly hinted at but also supports current PSVR (meaning millions of VR users 'day one').
  
  
• Death Stranding might be a cross-gen title (speculation in article based on Cerny reply).
  
  
• Physical Media.
  
  
• Backwards Compatible with at least PS4.
  
  
• Four years in development so far.
  
  
• 2020.
  

https://www.wired.com/story/exclusive-so...n-console/

[Moonface]

Backwards compatibility is a huge plus for me and something I cared more about than any of the hardware specs for the PS5. In an ideal world, it would play games from every PlayStation system so that I don't need to keep out a PS3 and a PS2 to play their respective libraries, but I'll take whatever BC I can get.

SSD is great just for the load times. My only concern is that if it's custom, that means that swapping it out for something bigger would be a downgrade in terms of performance. Hopefully Sony gives the PS5 a decent storage size at launch so that changing it doesn't need to be an option. I'd like Sony to offer the SSD's on the market so you could buy a bigger one of theirs if you need it without having to lose out on speeds.

8K support is good to future proof it, although it'll probably take some time into the systems life cycle to have a considerable number of people using the 8K capabilities since people need to buy 8K TV's first.

If 4K/8K is a thing, I expect HDR to be in too. It'd be weird for it to not be, especially since the PS4 Pro has it.

PSVR working with it out of the box is great news. The worst thing Sony could do to that growing market is force everyone back to square one.

Given that remastering games for PS5 will be out of the question now due to BC, I wonder if instead we'll see games getting enhancements for it instead. I can imagine a Sony reveal for the PS5 showing an existing PS4 Pro game being shown on PS5 with improvements to the visuals alongside the load times that will improve regardless of tweaks to the game or not.

[Metallix]

Well there’s still a ton we do not know. If they can do PS1-3 BC they probably want to save that as a big announcement at the formal unveiling at least I’m hoping. So far everything is sounding good. I like that the developed tech even PC isn’t capable of yet as far as the SSD speeds. Will be interesting to see how they achieve that.

Thing is, is $399 doesn’t look possible with all of this. The PS4 was using several year old CPU tech when it came out. This is using stuff that’s coming out this year. At a minimum they’ll want to double ram to 16gb but even without that knowledge the CPU and GPU is going to be hard to wrap up at $399. I think that $499 rumor could be true. Maybe $449. Good thing is I can sell my Pro and a few games for $200 and take a big chunk out of the cost since it plays my games and supports the old VR headset.

[Dragon Lord]

In an ideal world, it would play games from every PlayStation system so that I don't need to keep out a PS3

Unfortunately this will likely never happen. The architecture of the PS3 is completely different than that of the PS4 and what the PS5 will be. This is what made it so difficult for companies to port PS3 games to other systems other than the Vita (and a lot of times they just had to build new versions from the ground up), and is the main reason why the PS4 is unable to read PS3 discs.

I'd like Sony to offer the SSD's on the market so you could buy a bigger one of theirs if you need it without having to lose out on speeds.

Be careful what you wish for. Remember, Sony massively overvalues their own products. Prime example is how a 128 GB Vita Memory Card was $130+ unless you were lucky enough to find one in a massive sale. That's over half of what the Vita itself cost. So if Sony were to sell their own SSDs on the market, you could probably expect them to come with a massive price tag.

Anyways, the specs of the PS5 seem impressive. Unfortunately Sony's continued stance on their horrible new policies kill any hype over it.

[Moonface]

Thing is, is $399 doesn’t look possible with all of this. The PS4 was using several year old CPU tech when it came out. This is using stuff that’s coming out this year. At a minimum they’ll want to double ram to 16gb but even without that knowledge the CPU and GPU is going to be hard to wrap up at $399. I think that $499 rumor could be true. Maybe $449.

Yeah, $399 isn't likely to happen. $499 is going to be hard to swallow like it was for the PS3, but at least here it feels like the money is worth it due to the hardware involved.

I'd like Sony to offer the SSD's on the market so you could buy a bigger one of theirs if you need it without having to lose out on speeds.

Be careful what you wish for. Remember, Sony massively overvalues their own products. Prime example is how a 128 GB Vita Memory Card was $130+ unless you were lucky enough to find one in a massive sale. That's over half of what the Vita itself cost. So if Sony were to sell their own SSDs on the market, you could probably expect them to come with a massive price tag.

True. If they released their own SSD's but with horrific pricing, then I'd rather take the hit to my performance and buy something cheaper if I really had to. If need be I'll just use an external HDD/SSD to store game data that I'm not using and have my current games stored in the system itself, unless game installs become substantially quicker due to the SSD.

[Dragon Lord]

Honestly, I can very well see the launch price of the PS5 being upwards of $699 (even $799 wouldn't surprise me). If they are going to put in a bunch of custom parts, it's going to drive the price of the system up by a significant amount. If they were to release this at $499 or $599, it'd make me worry where they made cuts to lower the cost of the system.

The number one thing that makes me believe this thing is going to have a hefty price tag is the fact that they are putting a part into it that people can't even get for their PCs. Is Sony is going to spend that much money into powering the PS5, they are going to need to make it up some where.

[Metallix]

Yeah, $399 isn't likely to happen. $499 is going to be hard to swallow like it was for the PS3, but at least here it feels like the money is worth it due to the hardware involved.

Nah I don’t think it’ll be anything at all like PS3 sticker shock. I was doing some checking on buying power(US dollar wise) and $599 in 2006 is the equivalent to $756 in today’s money. That’s over $250 more than the rumored $500 launch price. Another interesting fact is $299 in 1995(PS1 launch) is worth exactly $499 today. Also, at least in America, the economy is really strong. PS3 launched at the start of our Great Recession.

[Moonface]

The economy is better than it was during the PS3 launch for sure; I just think that compared to the PS4 price tag that $499 would still be a bit hard to stomach because of it being $100 more than the last system. Then again, no one seemed to mind about the cost of a PS4 Pro.

My point on it being hard to swallow was more just people wanting it to be cheaper because the higher the launch cost is, the more likely I think it is that people will wait until a price drop occurs. Why would I spend $500 on a day-one console when I could wait a year for the library to bulk out a bit and grab the thing cheaper due to an official price drop or a Black Friday deal? I know that argument can be made for any console at any price, but I think the higher you go, the higher the chances also go that people will wait for a better deal, especially when we all know such deals are guaranteed to happen.

[Karo]

So I am pretty excited that my PS4 library will be compatible with this! I am so happy that they decided to actually do this! Thank god! Now I don't have to feel like it not worth buying a PS4 game becasue it can run on my future PS5! As for the other stuff I think it seem like a major improvement over the PS4 and I am not quite sure if I am worried about them overpricing it if they do.....then I really think they are going to hurt themselves in the long run and unless they had tons of exclusive at launch they are going to crash and burn.

Now it also possible that the console might not be that bad, but the controllers and accessories will be bad one of the best example is Nintendo! Joycon are ridiculously expensive for what you get, but they get away with it.

[Moonface]

Now it also possible that the console might not be that bad, but the controllers and accessories will be bad one of the best example is Nintendo! Joycon are ridiculously expensive for what you get, but they get away with it.

I doubt they'll even change the controllers that much if BC is a thing. PS1 to PS2 saw no changes to the controllers in regards to features, and I don't even see what new features could be put into a DualShock 5.

[Metallix]

The economy is better than it was during the PS3 launch for sure; I just think that compared to the PS4 price tag that $499 would still be a bit hard to stomach because of it being $100 more than the last system. Then again, no one seemed to mind about the cost of a PS4 Pro.

My point on it being hard to swallow was more just people wanting it to be cheaper because the higher the launch cost is, the more likely I think it is that people will wait until a price drop occurs. Why would I spend $500 on a day-one console when I could wait a year for the library to bulk out a bit and grab the thing cheaper due to an official price drop or a Black Friday deal? I know that argument can be made for any console at any price, but I think the higher you go, the higher the chances also go that people will wait for a better deal, especially when we all know such deals are guaranteed to happen.

Yes I agree there will always be people like that who want to wait or only look at numbers rather than value. It’s numerical value is 100 but it’s worth is $63 so only the price of a game or controller more. I think many gamers can swallow that cost if it is worth that extra value.

So far the PS5 is looking to be tremendously more valuable than PS4. Its using much newer tech whereas the PS4 launched with old weak tech. It plays the previous system’s games whereas PS4 didn’t play PS3 games. Games are getting an improvement rather than just graphics and audio is actually getting a huge improvement whereas PS4 had no improvement in that area. There’s still much we don’t know though, there could be more.