The handheld is coming at the same time or slightly later than the PS6.
PlayStation 5 Leak Reveals New ‘Low Power’ Mode, Fueling Handheld Console Reports
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The fundamental differences being
1) this is for handheld games
2) has the same amount of memory
3) most importantly, it isn't mandatory so doesn't hold back anything
nial
Member
The need for continued momentum in unit sales is exactly what overcomes all of this. Going from 2028 instead of 2027 changes absolutely nothing for the pandemic recovery or diminishing returns. Nothing.
PS5 Pro is purely aimed at the hardcore base. It's rarely a factor when we're clearly talking about devices with wide market appeal, PS5 Pro is not one of them.
If we actually look at trends, no, PS2 lasted 6 years and 8 months, PSP lated 7 years, PS3 lasted 7 years in the West and 7 years and 3 months in Japan (longest PlayStation generation yet), PS Vita lasted 7 years and 2 months until discontinuation, and PS4 lasted 7 years in the West and 6 years and 8 months in Japan (exactly like PS2). It's been a very consistent trend since 2000.
I don't see any benefit for Sony on launching two devices with unified libraries 2 years from each other.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
You likely know better than me but sounds like they want to launch them together if possible
saintjules
Member
If it's at the same time, that would be interesting. Would wonder what the strategy of that will be.
Maybe it's a gimmick where you can use both the Console and Handheld simultaneously for certain games.
Ok? What does this change if it's not mandatory. It's like saying the switch is holding back PS5.
pacman4000
Neo Member
Technically the Pro has, IIR Cerny correctly, a 16TF "RDNA2+" GPU with no dual issue implemented.
If it's not a mandate, it completely changes the concept and perspective of the product...
Good luck then with native support for third-party games and even Sony's first-party games developing PS6 games.
This point would leave it in the position of a "complementary device" or a PS Portal 2 .
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Ev1L AuRoN
Member
A PSP binary compatibility with PS5 looks far-fetched to me. PS5 hardware is not meant to be mobile, and reducing it will crawl its performance to values much lower than more modern mobile chips. Meaning, games will need to be ported or, at very minimum, recompiled to this new SKU. At this point, it makes sense to go the ARM route.
nial
Member
I think that could be why Sony is doing this 2.5 years from the actual launch. It will require a ton of testing, QA and actual developer patching if needed.
Why if It's an AMD SoC? The steamdeck is binary compatible (for the most part) with much more powerful PCs.
Ev1L AuRoN
Member
Sony goes to extreme lengths to ensure binary compatibility in their products, just read about the Pro consoles, PS4 e PS5 pro.
On PC, you have the shader compilation pass to deal with, that is what made them binary compatible. On consoles in the other hand, the shaders come compiled, which save a lot of CPU time and help to deal with stutters.
TBH I don't fully understand either, but from what I understand. Being binary compatible mean an easier time for the developers, and it keeps costs to a minimum to support the new SKU, specially being a more niche product that won't move the same numbers as their main system.
When the architecture changes. They will need to resource to emulation or a wrapper to translate the code to the new SKU. Historically, Sony always shies away from emulation, preferring hardware compatibility. To be precise, for this to work like a PC handheld, Sony must port over their API to be hardware-agnostic or the very least compatible with the new architecture.
UltimaKilo
Gold Member
I hope you are right on that timeline.
I don't follow you. PS6 is a totally different hardware and we already know the rumoured target specs.
Zathalus
Member
Some want the PS6 to launch later, but the SoC design is getting finalised this year so releasing it later then 2027 won't get you a more powerful console, it would just look dated.
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nial
Member
DevonExplorer
Neo Member
What is odd is that PSSR is disabled in this low power mode though. Think you said in another thread that the PS handheld has AI upscaling, so why not use it in this mode as well then.
nial
Member
Same reason there's no DLSS on BC Switch 1 games on Switch 2. There's no PSSR on base PS5, either, this would only apply to PS6 games on the PS handheld.
kevboard
Member
it's RDNA3+ (some RDNA4 stuff like RT)
so it should have dual issue, but maybe they even turned it off, as it's as I said completely useless for gaming
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Loxus
Member
kevboard
Member
ok, but like I said, it's not like it makes a difference. you basically have to half RDNA3 tflops values to have a decent comparison to RDNA2, that's all I'm saying. AMD's dual issue fp32 can not be used by games in any meaningful way... or by most programs in fact.
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sachos
Member
Came here to say this, im not a fan of the handheld trend because it has the potential to hold back the biggest games, specially if it has to run PS6 games too. But hey, it is what it is.
rickybooby87
Member
FingerBang
Member
I don't think Sony, nor MS or Nintendo, can really do much at this moment in time. They're limited by the slowdown of Technology after several decades of exponential growth/progress.
Nintendo had to drop their gimmicks and made the most iterative product ever (still great, don't get me wrong). They can improve software, reduce friction, but I can't see how new hardware in 3-4 years will be able to offer generational improvements.
Some kind of technological breakthrough is needed and I'm confident it will happen. Just not by the next generation. Unless we're willing to pay 1000+ for a more substantial jump in performance.
Wouldn't be shocked to see the PS5 gen last even longer than 8 years tbh
They could get to maybe 2.5X faster in rasterisation and 3.75X faster in RT, and then use that to enable Path Tracing at 1080p, while upscaling to 4K via FSR 4/5. The same game would run on the PS5 with limited RT effects.
Zathalus
Member
Seems like RDNA4 fixed that issue.
9060 XT - ~25 TF
5060 Ti - ~ 25 TF
7700 XT - ~ 35 TF
All three of the above GPUs perform very close to each other in raster.
Physiognomonics
Member
The bigger games will be cross gen with PS5 for many years and this handheld will have the same amount of memory as PS5. it'll just run the PS5 games at lower resolution / framerate. In the case of XSS we can see now, the main problem is memory.
dgrdsv
Member
9060 XT @ 3150MHz is 25.8 TFs
5060 Ti @ 2700 MHz is 24.9 TFs
The latter is some 5-10% faster so there's still some deficit per TF in comparison.
And yes RDNA's VOPD is still not very usable. The advancements RDNA4 made come from perf/clock improvements which are mostly down to memory subsystem more than from increasing the math efficiency.
Yep, RDNA4 perf per clock/CU is mostly due to improved memory compression, memory prefetching, larger L2 cache, more powerful Scalar ALU and Dynamic VGPR support.
Zathalus
Member
Yeah, but the TF comparison between RDNA4 and Blackwell is far closer than the previous generation, as can be seen from the 7700 XT.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Shame it's 3nm. I thought 2nm would be possible in 2027/2028 in a package of that size.
Loxus
Member
"I'd like to take a moment to do something we very rarely do, which is talk about the future. Specifically, I'd like to talk about the future potential in each of these three key areas.
First there's rasterized rendering by which I mean the conventional rendering strategies that were all we had up through PS4 Pro or so. There's not a whole lot of growth left here, it mostly has to come from making the GPU bigger or memory faster.
Ray tracing is different, it's still early days for the technology and I suspect we're in for several quantum leaps in performance over the next decade.
Machine learning though has the greatest potential for growth and that's an area we're beginning to focus on. Some of that growth in machine learning will come from more performant and more efficient hardware architectures."
If we use RDNA4 as an example and what Mark Cerny said on PS5 Pro Technical Seminar above, i wouldn't worry about the PS6 performance to be honest and doesn't include all the other hardware improvements.
"Here we did not bring in the doubled floating point math from rdna3 because achieving that bonus in performance would require a recompile for PS5 Pro and as I said, having two versions of each compiled piece of code would create more work than we're comfortable asking the developers to do."
Again from the PS5 Pro Technical Seminar above, it's very certain the PS6 would utilize an optimized dual-issue for ps6 version of games, which can give more performance while keeping the relatively GPU small.
We all here worried about the PS6 performance and it may end up having the most improvements compared to the previous generations.
mayham2199
Member
lol the PS5 is going to carry-on for much longer than 3-5 more years.
It amazes me that people still don't get we are past "generations". The hardware advancements are no longer paradigm shifting for game development like they once were. This is normal as technology matures.
Devs can barely ship a game that pushes the ps5 to its limit (that also doesn't take 5+ years and 200 million dollars to make), but somehow in a few years time they will be ready to make games so advanced that ps5, or a ps6 portable, will be holding them back? The ps5 will absolutely be relevant for many more years to come. I don't even see ps4 completely disappearing for a long time.
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asdasdasdbb
Member
The hardware is definitely holding things back. But yes, it's questionable how much devs care.