It’s true. All of it. Yesterday Giant Bomb leaked all of the PS4K (codenamed “NEO”) specs, and we weren’t sure what to think. Most everyone accepted the leak as legitimate, as the details were so specific, but others called into question some of the anemic upgrades. Today, we’ve learned from Digital Foundry that the leak is legitimate and Sony is sending out dev kits to developers. “Sony is now openly sharing this specification with developers and while Giant Bomb beat us to the punch, we have access to the same documentation. There is no doubt – this is real. This is the new, more powerful PlayStation 4.” Oh mama. Before we continue, take a look at the specs pictured above.
The only significant upgrade here will be the GPU, which looks to be faster and more powerful. We’re looking at the same CPU cores, just overclocked, which may end up holding that GPU back. I can’t imagine we’ll see games that are currently running at 30 fps and below suddenly make the jump to a buttery 60 fps; not with that CPU bottleneck. Sony also claims that that extra 512MB of memory will only be usable on the Neo, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be opened up for the base model as well, unless the faster speed and bandwidth means the OS simply won’t need as much memory as before.
From October onward, Sony is requiring that all PS4 games come in two flavors: base mode and Neo mode. There will be absolutely no Neo exclusives, and developers are encouraged to go back to their existing games and patch in Neo support. We expect the biggest difference we’ll see between games running on a base PS4 and a Neo will be slightly sharper visuals and smoother, more consistent frame rates. In other words, that feeling that every Xbox One owner experiences when they see headlines about the newest multi-plat running on their platform at 900p with unstable frame rates while running at 1080p, 60 fps on PS4? Yeah, PS4 early adopters will be swallowing that bitter pill before long. Sony hasn’t revealed an official price or release date yet, but when they do, I’ll get you guys the scoop.