Sony's marketing and communication about the PS4 Pro

Callibretto said:
4k image downsampled to 1080p counts as "improvement in 1080p"

The easiest and quickest way for dev to make pro mode is to simply use the checkered rendering to output a 4k image. That 4k image would look better than base ps4 no matter what tv you use.
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Sure... if downsampling is implemented in games (which I don't believe would come automatically), it would probably look a bit better on 1080 TVs, but that's hardly worth the console to me. There's a reason Sony isn't advertising that as a 1080 TV advantage. Like I said, wouldn't it be better if Sony mandated a 1080 mode for all games? Without that, the message absolutely isn't as clear as it could/should be.
 
Vinc said:
Sure... if downsampling is implemented in games (which I don't believe would come automatically), it would probably look a bit better on 1080 TVs, but that's hardly worth the console to me. There's a reason Sony isn't advertising that as a 1080 TV advantage. Like I said, wouldn't it be better if Sony mandated a 1080 mode for all games? Without that, the message absolutely isn't as clear as it could/should be.
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What reason you think they arent? They clearly talked about 1080p advantages in their presentation.
 
Shin-chan said:
I feel like some people are being deliberately obtuse about the Pro at this point. It's a more powerful PS4 for $100 more than the next most powerful console on the market. It's not a lot to ask for, all things considered.

The specifics of how that power will be used are up in the air, but we've seen several examples already, and it would actually be ridiculous for Sony to mandate that it's used in specific ways, leaving developers no autonomy or room to maneuver.

The product itself is simple as fuck though. You know that iPad Pro? How it's a more premium version of the iPad? Well this is a PS4 Pro. It's a more powerful, premium version of the PS4. And the price hike is far more reasonable than that example.
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Yeah it's weird. The way people on here have been acting you'd think that a company had never done more powerful hardware revisions before. And yet...
 
Callibretto said:
4k image downsampled to 1080p counts as "improvement in 1080p"

The easiest and quickest way for dev to make pro mode is to simply use the checkered rendering to output a 4k image. That 4k image would look better than base ps4 no matter what tv you use.
Click to expand...

Especially considering that the pure rendering pipeline will be 1800p, then checkboarded to 2160p (4K). That's WAY better than rendering at 1080p.
 
I don't think it is confusing at all and is mostly people looking at the thing so closely that they completely miss what it is. Its just a more powerful PS4. It plays the same games but at a higher resolution or higher frame rate or maybe both.

Consumers are already used to this with just about every other electronic devices. "This device will do everything you need it to do, or you can pay a little more and get this one which will do all the same things but a little better."

This is the case with phones, TVs, movies, computers, tablets, routers, etc.
 
To be honest, I plan to buy a 4K TV at some point over the next two years anyway, so I'll likely buy this and pray I get a few benefits on a 1080 TV before I upgrade. The problem is that by the time I upgrade to 4K, the console might be cheaper or the Scorpio might reveal itself to be a much better deal or something. Heh... we'll see. But yeah, I definitely see why people think the messaging and value proposition are a little muddy with this one. I think MS has a clear path to do a better job with the Scorpio, being second out of the gate and all.
 
Vinc said:
Sure... if downsampling is implemented in games (which I don't believe would come automatically), it would probably look a bit better on 1080 TVs, but that's hardly worth the console to me. There's a reason Sony isn't advertising that as a 1080 TV advantage. Like I said, wouldn't it be better if Sony mandated a 1080 mode for all games? Without that, the message absolutely isn't as clear as it could/should be.
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I'm pretty sure they did advertise that as an advantage when the showed of shadow or mordor. I mean would you prefer sony lie to you and claim every game will run at X and do y? They don't know. Just like the first year of any new console some games look great and some look terrible. I mean sony can't even guarantee every ps4 game will look better than every x1 game.


I understand if you're not buying what they are selling which is fine. I'm not either I just think its another thing to say you don't understand what they are selling. Which to me at least is pretty clear.
 
gtj1092 said:
I'm pretty sure they did advertise that as an advantage when the showed of shadow or mordor. I mean would you prefer sony lie to you and claim every game will run at X and do y? They don't know. Just like the first year of any new console some games look great and some look terrible. I mean sony can't even guarantee every ps4 game will look better than every x1 game.


I understand if you're not buying what they are selling which is fine. I'm not either I just think its another thing to say you don't understand what they are selling. Which to me at least is pretty clear.
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I don't want them to lie to me and even appreciate their honesty, but the product itself should be more clearly defined and justify its existence better. Technical requirements help with that. I just think giving everyone complete freedom ends up being a disservice to the customer and diminishes the system's perceived value while also making the messaging more confusing. I basically just agree that the messaging around the system isn't as good as it could be. It's great that it's honest, but the product itself doesn't make for as exciting an upgrade as it could be. I never said I didn't understand what they were selling- I do... but it's impossible for me to see the benefits I'll have from buying the product. I can only make guesses, which is bad messaging.
 
Vinc said:
Sure... if downsampling is implemented in games (which I don't believe would come automatically), it would probably look a bit better on 1080 TVs, but that's hardly worth the console to me. There's a reason Sony isn't advertising that as a 1080 TV advantage. Like I said, wouldn't it be better if Sony mandated a 1080 mode for all games? Without that, the message absolutely isn't as clear as it could/should be.
Click to expand...
Wait, I thought downsampling is basically just higher resolution image resized to lower resolution. So if developers use checkered rendering to output 4k image, and then its being displayed on 1080p tv, your tv will resize the 4k image to 1080p res, which give you downsampling effect.

Wouldn't that basically mean downsampling is automatic on 1080p tv as long as ps4pro output 4k images?
 
Vinc said:
Sure... if downsampling is implemented in games (which I don't believe would come automatically), it would probably look a bit better on 1080 TVs, but that's hardly worth the console to me. There's a reason Sony isn't advertising that as a 1080 TV advantage. Like I said, wouldn't it be better if Sony mandated a 1080 mode for all games? Without that, the message absolutely isn't as clear as it could/should be.
Click to expand...

720p = 921,600 pixels
1080p = 2,073,600 pixels
1800p = 5,760,000 pixels

This basic math shows that the jump from 1080p to 1800p is bigger than the jump from 720p to 1080p. And you KNOW there's a clear difference between 720 and 1080.

This will not be a small little difference. It'll be clear in the image quality department.
 
they can start by actually fixing the ridiculous input lag on almost all of their 4K tv even the flagship launched this year. Find it baffling that a company that is in the game and tv business can't even get their own tv to work properly with the products they are trying to sell you even their 8000 dollar tv.
 
Damn,

Some people are so confused that are saying the OP is confused when he is talking about confused people here on this forum.

Yeah, I agree with the ones talking about looking to close and losing sight of the big picture.
Sure, the thing with the framerates could be better explained perhaps. PS4 Pro holding itself down for parity sakes would be a bummer (note that this is different than the parity of "target framerate").

TL;DR - Stuff is better with PS4 Pro regardless of your TV.
 
I think I know what it is. Sony did a crap conference, we wanted a good one, but they spent less money on it than a usual thing they would do. We wanted a fanfare and we got Mark, I thought it was kinda cool and I geeked out of a bit.

Fact is if you understand what it is to upgrade your graphics card in a PC you have a similar idea what this is.

I think Sony thought HDR was a mic drop moment for current PS4 owners. It wasn't and Microsoft has used recent faliures against sony. But HDR could of been a mic drop moment, I mean Xbox wants you to spend more money and buy a slim for this feature even though current PS4 owners don't have to in order to get HDR. And some how this has been spun to make Sony look bad, because its 'confusing'.

Well I guess Microsoft is happy...
 
It's not confusing at all, honestly.

Sony gave us all the info needed and I've been able to accurately and efficiently relay that to my customers.

If you have a 4K TV, you will see a noticeable difference for supported titles; 1080p TVs will see a similar, but diluted effect should the developers go for that.

Simply put, it's an upgrade, but like any upgraded hardware (phones, tablets, video cards, etc..) it's up to the developers to use the new technologies.

This is like a cell phone upgrade, you'll notice a difference right out of the gate, but not all legacy or even some future titles won't take full advantage.

The customer response for where I work has been tremendous and pre-orders are quite high on the hardware, so it seems to me, that the message was clearly and concisely delivered by Sony.
 
Callibretto said:
Wait, I thought downsampling is basically just higher resolution image resized to lower resolution. So if developers use checkered rendering to output 4k image, and then its being displayed on 1080p tv, your tv will resize the 4k image to 1080p res, which give you downsampling effect.

Wouldn't that basically mean downsampling is automatic on 1080p tv as long as ps4pro output 4k images?
Click to expand...

Seems logical, but it's possible that the game would simply render at the display resolution instead. I can think of an example from the PS3 gen, where Splinter Cell Chaos Theory HD rendered natively at 720p if your TV didn't support 1080p (or if you had that unchecked in the settings), instead of downscaling from 1080p which the game supported. This actually improved the framerate, so a lot of people forced it to display in 720 by unchecking the resolution. It's really a game by game basis thing, and I would think devs would need to allow downsampling for it to work.
 
mckmas8808 said:
720p = 921,600 pixels
1080p = 2,073,600 pixels
1800p = 5,760,000 pixels

This basic math shows that the jump from 1080p to 1800p is bigger than the jump from 720p to 1080p. And you KNOW there's a clear difference between 720 and 1080.

This will not be a small little difference. It'll be clear in the image quality department.
Click to expand...

Sure, but on a 1080p TV those pixels won't be apparent, I'll just get slightly better image quality equivalent to better anti-aliasing. Any game with a good anti-aliasing solution won't benefit too much from supersampling, especially down from a non-native, checkerboard-rendered 4K resolution. Personally, I think it would be better if every game was mandated to have improvements geared towards any type of TV (1080 or 4K) that you might own. It would make the product more desirable and its benefits more clear for someone like me who doesn't own a 4K TV.
 
Abdiel said:
Not making any difference for us in retail. We've been able to clearly communicate to our customers what so many on here seem to be willingly obtuse about. Preorders have been very solid, our in store Sony rep is already really excited about the response we've had from both new buyers and existing PS4 owners. We've been able to talk to our customers very clearly about what the product is, and there's been a positive response.

It's stunning to me how people on GAF have seemed to be almost deliberately obfuscating things for themselves, when the information has been communicated with almost agonizing specificity by Sony, and then sources like Digital Foundry provide greater clarity and specifics in technical respects.

Seriously. Blows my fucking mind.
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LogN said:
It's not confusing at all, honestly.

Sony gave us all the info needed and I've been able to accurately and efficiently relay that to my customers.

If you have a 4K TV, you will see a noticeable difference for supported titles; 1080p TVs will see a similar, but diluted effect should the developers go for that.

Simply put, it's an upgrade, but like any upgraded hardware (phones, tablets, video cards, etc..) it's up to the developers to use the new technologies.

This is like a cell phone upgrade, you'll notice a difference right out of the gate, but not all legacy or even some future titles won't take full advantage.

The customer response for where I work has been tremendous and pre-orders are quite high on the hardware, so it seems to me, that the message was clearly and concisely delivered by Sony.
Click to expand...
Cool its going to be interesting to see how does does in Nov.
 
The marketing is fine... the concept on the other hand, is terribly unexciting. "Please pour out more money to buy an upgrade to our under-oops-powered console, that you will mainly utilize along with your new TV that you are not planning to buy!"
 
I'm not confused, but I can see why some people are.

I think Sony needs to show footage side by side of games that support it for different displays.
 
Vinc said:
Sure, but on a 1080p TV those pixels won't be apparent, I'll just get slightly better image quality equivalent to better anti-aliasing. Any game with a good anti-aliasing solution won't benefit too much from supersampling, especially down from a non-native, checkerboard-rendered 4K resolution. Personally, I think it would be better if every game was mandated to have improvements geared towards any type of TV (1080 or 4K) that you might own. It would make the product more desirable and its benefits more clear for someone like me who doesn't own a 4K TV.
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I'm very much opposed to two different targets for 1080p and 4K. Decisions like that cripple my ability to enjoy games which is why I play on consoles.
 
OMG this is so confusing! Will my ps pro turn on when i press my power button and its connected to a 1080p tv??? How does this work? :p
 
kaching said:
Come on, border, you've been here longer than I have. Gears wasn't a launch title for the 360 and wasn't even shown until the following E3, I believe. Don't you remember all the "xbox 1.5" complaints before the release of the 360? Launch period library relied on a lot of mostly just uprezzed PS2/Xbox titles and even the brand new games, like Perfect Dark, weren't as impressive visually as many hoped. Remember Wall Guy??? Clearly, plenty of "confusion" back then too.
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Gears of War was shown behind closed doors at GDC 2005.....public screenshots were at or around the 360 launch IIRC.

In retrospect a lot of the E3 360 FUD from that era was from the opposing fanboys, who were still hellbent on believing that the 2005 Killzone 2 demo was reality and were eager to jump on an unimpressive slate of launch games. At the same time, Microsoft was still at least promising HD resolutions on every game.....not a more wishy-washy "Well let's see what developers want to do with this extra power".

I'm don't think any of this is particularly relevant, unless you think that a year from now the PS4 Pro is going to get some Gears-like game that establishes a new high watermark for graphics and performance. Given the restrictions on developers really leaning into Pro that seems somewhat unlikely.
 
Vinc said:
Sure... if downsampling is implemented in games (which I don't believe would come automatically), it would probably look a bit better on 1080 TVs, but that's hardly worth the console to me. There's a reason Sony isn't advertising that as a 1080 TV advantage. Like I said, wouldn't it be better if Sony mandated a 1080 mode for all games? Without that, the message absolutely isn't as clear as it could/should be.
Click to expand...

Spoken like someone who has never played games using downsamlling..


Downsampled 1080p modes are one of the largest leaps in IQ you can posssibly get on your 1080p set. It effects every facit of the image in an immensely positive way. Upscaling IS worth it, and Sony is advertising it as an improvement, several times during the announment actually.
 
Nocturno999 said:
I'm not confused, but I can see why some people are.

I think Sony needs to show footage side by side of games that support it for different displays.
Click to expand...

The problem for Sony on all fronts is that they can't convey most of the difference the PS4 Pro will bring via traditional print or online media. If people are sitting at their desktop/laptop displays that are already sub-4k, that don't support HDR, then all Sony (or even MS) can do is describe how it will be enhanced. Once these systems (and some showcase games) are out, the best thing Sony could do is flood retail store chains with 4k/HDR displays and swap out the displays in the existing PS4 displays to units that will utilize HDR. Let people be wowed with 1080p plus possible HDR games' image quality and be even more wowed by the 4k/HDR games' image quality on the Pro kiosks.

Sony's playing walking a dangerous path of trying to make people really want the Pro without disparaging the regular PS4.
 
danhese007 said:
I'm surprised you're just finding this out since you're in almost all PS4 Pro thread. They literally said games have to be patched to make use of the extra power. You were just in The Witcher thread where CDPR said no PS4 Pro patch.
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It's called concern trolling, and they're quite good at it.
 
BigTnaples said:
Spoken like someone who has never played games using downsamlling..


Downsampled 1080p modes are one of the largest leaps in IQ you can posssibly get on your 1080p set. It effects every facit of the image in an immensely positive way. Upscaling IS worth it, and Sony is advertising it as an improvement, several times during the announment actually.
Click to expand...

I have actually used downsampling. Good AA is a good enough replacement to dissuade me from buying a new console just for it. It's just not enough for me to get a brand new console for, even if it does end up affecting every game. I'd rather have guaranteed other improvements for 1080p, such as increased framerate.
 
The improvements are probably gonna depend mostly on what developers choose to do. Will they push 4K, or will more of them stick to 1080p and focus on better performance and visual eye-candy?
 
Head.spawn said:
MS is going to deliver a confusing message on their hardware next year?

They were pretty clear about what Xbox One S did, launched without any issues. They were straight to the point with the Scorpio preview.

I don't see that happening.
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No they weren't or are you forgetting about the gears performance statements prior to launch? They were trying to sell regular XB1s before the S and we didn't know about what it did. I did predict better hardware though based on the fact that they needed it for HDR seeing as the XB1 would struggle with bandwidth even on 'SDR'. The launch was without issues but they certainly weren't clear about what it did. We found that out from DF.
 
I was perhaps one of the most vehement and staunchest haters of Ps4K before it was announced, and I actually want it (maybe not for the best reasons, but still)
 
Vinc said:
I have actually used downsampling. Good AA is a good enough replacement to dissuade me from buying a new console just for it. It's just not enough for me to get a brand new console for, even if it does end up affecting every game. I'd rather have guaranteed other improvements for 1080p, such as increased framerate.
Click to expand...
If you think AA is all downsampling does to an image than you have no idea what you're talking about.
 
xenorevlis said:
If you think AA is all downsampling does to an image than you have no idea what you're talking about.
Click to expand...

I think for some, it's good enough and not worth trading in and buying a system that costs $100 more to obtain better visual quality. It's just like how many people planning to get the Pro seem to think streaming video is good enough to not want to spend any more money for better quality.
 
Abdiel said:
Not making any difference for us in retail. We've been able to clearly communicate to our customers what so many on here seem to be willingly obtuse about. Preorders have been very solid, our in store Sony rep is already really excited about the response we've had from both new buyers and existing PS4 owners. We've been able to talk to our customers very clearly about what the product is, and there's been a positive response.

It's stunning to me how people on GAF have seemed to be almost deliberately obfuscating things for themselves, when the information has been communicated with almost agonizing specificity by Sony, and then sources like Digital Foundry provide greater clarity and specifics in technical respects.

Seriously. Blows my fucking mind.
Click to expand...

Just in case anyone missed it.
 
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