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[Jean Valjean]

wtf is this

BBC's Sherlock season 3 spoilers

 

[crooked spin]

If this story turns out to be true what will happen to all those visually impressive PS4 games we've seen at E3 and elsewhere? Will they get canceled? Development moved to mobile devices?

 

[Evoga]

How much ram does the always on dualshock flashlight that blinds your retinas take, 1GB??

 

[BigJonsson]

Go ahead, cancel your pre-orders, I'll have fun with my PS4 in a few months

 

[brandonh83]

So much for good games.

 

[kurbaan]

My biggest issue is this. I have no problem with 5.5gb free. That is plenty. I have a big problem with 2.5gb of OS bloat. It screams of reserving space for functions I dont care about.

I want something small, responsive and slick. No realtime app switch, No media apps. Ill even live without recording and streaming footage. I want powerful hardware for the sole purpose of playing games. If I wanted an all in one device, id build a HTPC or use a tablet.


If this is true count me out day one. I will still buy a PS4, but at a much lower price.

They need more ram to make it "responsive and slick". Maybe they need this ram to do the stream game as you download it. Over all I think both consoles are gong with higher reserve at the start because you can always go down but you cant go up.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Might be getting some hard numbers from dev (and not the "small" dev kind).

Will make sure to post here if I do.

Keep us updated bro.

 

[JoeTheBlow]

So here is a theory that I have heard. Note, this is not insider information. A friend who is a developer, not on consoles or PlayStation mind, thinks that the new devkits probably ship with 8GB GDDR5 but the developer tools probably take up 2-3GB on there, leaving addressable RAM at just 5GB. He said the problem is that the APU bus is 256bit which won't allow for more than 8GB RAM until 8Gbit chips are available.

He thinks that the current SDK probably does have 3.5GB reserved for for the OS functions and development tools, but when the next set of kits ship they will have 12GB of RAM and the full 7GB will be addressable.

Requote this on every page, resist the insanity!

 

[dragonelite]

I guess I don't really get what on earth they'd be doing that justifies claiming so much of the system's resources.

Counter what ever Microsoft will come up with i think.
Maybe implement bluestack kind of android emulator and make it easy/easier for android developers to port.
I dont think recording movies or cross game chat will take that much memory . Or instant switching between digital game licenses.

 

[kevm3]

This is what probably happened. Sonys OS runs fine on .5 gb of ram, they get wind of MS with 8gb and 3gb for the OS, they double their RAM and increase the OS footprint to compete feature wise with MS and give devs some extra ram to work with.

Sony announced the ram upgrade BEFORE the one's featureset was announced.

 

[Hex]

less talk more action

Copying someone else's cancel?
With their own image?
Bad form.

 

[jhmtehgamr20xx]

This ain't Saturn, bro; I don't trust anything to my Nintendo's slot unless it's got that Official seal on there.

 

[Deleted member 47027]

this reveal is like:

 

[famousmortimer]

I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

 

[SirIgbyCeaser]

In fact Digital Foundry not believed.:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-durango-vs-orbis

Isn't it lovely how the internet keeps track of things like factually?

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

If this story turns out to be true what will happen to all those visually impressive PS4 games we've seen at E3 and elsewhere? Will they get canceled? Development moved to mobile devices?

All of the games shown have been running on 4-5 GB. I don't think there are any PC games designed to run with minimum 6 GB of video RAM.

 

[Lovegooder]

The Llama guy seems like a douche.

Isn’t it a hoot when a Gaffer takes to Twitter to harass somebody then posts a screenshot of it, commenting, “Just saw this lol.”

 

[Storm Chamber]

Can we stop and compare that to the amount we had this gen?

5.5 is alot alot alot of ram.

Compared to 512MB, definitely.

 

[BigJonsson]

This ain't Saturn, bro; I don't trust anything to my Nintendo's slot unless it's got that Official seal on there.

Yea, I got lazy and posted a non-Nintendo one

 

[Can Crusher]

So much for good games.

And this folks is why Wolverine sucks.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Come the fuck on.
If GDDR5 helped OS speed then why does Xbox use DDR3? Along with all PCs? cos it makes no technical sense to.

Its a limitation of current dev kits, its the only thing that makes the slightest sense. Sony would keep their mouths shut until the better kits come out and shitty sites like DF couldn't spin it into an anti-ps4 story.
Hopefully this gives them cause to finally clarify.

Like I said, I, like pretty much everyone else in here, do not know and can only speculate.

If it is indeed reserving that much RAM for the OS, though, I could see how it would speed things up. Obviously, the dev tool explanation makes more sense, but we really don't know yet.

 

[Shin]

Haha people actually cancelling their pre-orders over this?
They did even bother reading the whole thread? lol

 

[BadAss2961]

this reveal is like:

lol

 

[hydragonwarrior]

I have to ask though - with the RAM advantage out of the way, XBone and PS4 are pretty much equal (more or less) hardware wise? Maybe some of Cloud will do away with some of XBone's performance deficiencies as well.

 

[Tom Penny]

Sony is bloating the OS to implement useless app features limiting the potential for games. Everyone clowned MS for wanting to do all sorts of non game garbage on Xbone. I guess they didn't learn.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Should they even call it PS4 anymore?

 

[labaronx]

ok didn't polygon just run a story noting the difference in development cost for indies on ps4 and x1

if I remember correctly most devs big and small were given loaner dev kits for free and would have to purchase the finalized hardware kits after a year and this is all just a misunderstanding

don't get me wrong I was predicting the os to be 2+ gb but this all just seems weird to me

 

[Dennis]

So here is a theory that I have heard. Note, this is not insider information. A friend who is a developer, not on consoles or PlayStation mind, thinks that the new devkits probably ship with 8GB GDDR5 but the developer tools probably take up 2-3GB on there, leaving addressable RAM at just 5GB. He said the problem is that the APU bus is 256bit which won't allow for more than 8GB RAM until 8Gbit chips are available.

He thinks that the current SDK probably does have 3.5GB reserved for for the OS functions and development tools, but when the next set of kits ship they will have 12GB of RAM and the full 7GB will be addressable.

This could be it.

It makes a lot more sense than 3.5 GB NSA OS.

 

[Raist]

I don't know, overall it sounds like dev kits have 4.5-5.5GB adressable, and from the DF extrapolated that the OS takes up to 3.5GB.

So it might be half true.

 

[excowboy]

I don't think it's surprising or that big of a deal. We knew PS4 could record upto 15mins of gameplay - it was never gonna do that with a piddly bit of RAM allocated. It has all the social stuff and will have apps a la 360/PS3 so logic dictates there has to be a reasonable allocation to the OS. I think the games will be fine - don't worry GAF!

 

[SolarPowered]

Saw this earlier when Eurogamer kept taking the article down.

Sucks if true. Too much for the OS. I get that they want to avoid another crossgame chat situation, but 2.5GB is a bit crazy.

Haha people actually cancelling their pre-orders over this?
They did even bother reading the whole thread? lol

It is a pretty big thread.

 

[backbreaker65]

NM

 

[benny_a]

Isn’t it a hoot when a Gaffer takes to Twitter to harass somebody then posts a screenshot of it, commenting, “Just saw this lol.”

Are you alleging that I'm the guy on twitter?

 

[TheLegendary]

I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

This is no different than what MS is doing.

You always reserve the right to give Devs more RAM as time goes on. This is what MS will do. I'm sure Sony will do it too. But you can't get stuck without the opportunity to expand your OS offerings, especially when MS has the habit of adding significant new features to their console.

 

[nib95]

I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Makes sense.

 

[Pie and Beans]

What hot topic won't Gies make himself look even more of a prat through.

Glad to see the clearly in the know Giant Bomb Xbro's chime in too.

Lets hope this clown car doesnt crash into the side of this not being the actual case. zomg's theory is pretty sound, but we'll see. To go from like 100mb Vita OS to 3.5gb PS4 OS is just... I can't really fathom it. Bare in mind Vita OS has suspend states, cross party chat, app multi-tasking and more.

 

[demosthenes]

I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

People would rather run around w/ their heads cut off. But thanks for posting some sense in the thread.

 

[DragonSworne]

Yeah, I challenged him on that. Over a week after Edge published that Digital Foundry did a Durango vs Orbis spec comparison article in which they were pretty emphatic about the PS4 only having 4GB. And in their post reveal spec analysis article Leadbetter described the 8GB of GDDR5 as a "pleasant surprise". Arthur maintains Digital Foundry had an independent source and just didn't publish.

How many times does Arthur have to confirm he is a lying corporate ballwasher and the only reason he is in gaming journalism is so he can land a community manager job at some game publisher before people stop paying attention to him?

The guy has zero integrity.

 

[Xbudz]

 

[Mad Bowser]

Not a good step for the industry

 

[Odrion]

I like how everyone stating that PC Games only use 3-4 gigs of ram forgets about the video memory they use as well.

edit: For example, BF3 uses about 1.6 gigs in some situations. That's on top of the 3.5 gigs of Ram it can take up as well.

 

[SirIgbyCeaser]

This could be it.

It makes a lot more sense than 3.5 GB NSA OS.

I think that this post is in secret an NDA breaker and the poster is trying to save his own ass, while giving us the truth.

But I could be wrong. It makes a lot of sense.. GDDR5 is both expensive and not as available as DDR3.

 

[dubq]

I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

THIS is a post that should be added to the OP before the article. Fucking voice of reason/sanity right here.

 

[Erebus]

Anyone care to explain me why do consoles need to reserve so many GBs of RAM just for the OS? I mean Windows can run with less than 1GB RAM available on a PC.

 

[Zombie James]

I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Thanks for your perspective. I still think that, overall, this isn't good news, but if developers truly don't need anything more than what they have right now then I guess nothing will be lost in the short-term.

 

[LukasTaves]

I just love these guys who say it doesn't matter, and we shouldn't even be worried about specs. Like we should be ignorant.

Go and make games for the Wii U if it doesn't matter.

Maybe he knows it's just temporary.

Right now, and for a good 1-2 years it really won't matter. 4.5GB is plenty and I doubt a single game would actually need more than that even if it was available... By that time sony will have a bigger picture of where the console stands on the markets it's going to compete and adjust their features/memory usage for that needs...

Edit: Or basically, what famousmortimer said which was a lot better put

 

[Portugeezer]

Talking about Blow? If we're being nitpicky abou, he only said it 'wants' to use over 5 GB, not that it could.

Pretty sure he said Witness was using 5GB's and could possibly use more.

Last tweet.

 

[ReBurn]

Well if this is true then games are going to be a lot less fun. More fun will fit into all of the RAM than the amount of fun that will fit into less than all of the RAM.

I'm so disappointed.

 

[iamshadowlark]

Compared to 512MB, definitely.

It's literally more than a 10x increase.

 

[Gestault]

Any word from Sony insiders in other threads? There's usually a pretty good web of info, even if it's just as simple as "I haven't heard that specifically" with other topics. The non-reaction is sort of disconcerting.