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PlayStation Earbuds and Project Q Announced Announced - 8 inch screen remote device

ToTTenTranz

Banned
This is a peripheral, not a console.
The DualSense Edge isn't meant to be a mass market peripheral, which is why its cost is ridiculous.
If Project Q isn't meant as a mass market peripheral, then it's going to be $250 or more. A couple thousand whales will buy it and that's it.

If Project Q is meant to be mass market, then it might actually be pretty cheap. Looking at a bill of materials for something like this:

- 8" 1080p60 IPS screen: $35
- Batteries: $10
- low-end SoC for decoding: $10
- WiFi chip: $5
- Rest (DualSense buttons, PCB, enclosure, manufacturing): $25


They could sell this for $120 with a healthy 40% markup and make it a nearly mass market peripheral.
But again, I don't know if Sony prefers to make this for niche whales.
 
This is what made me wonder. Right now only PS Plus Premium members can cloud stream games, right? Is this device really meant to only be for those couple of people? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Are there more streaming related plans by Sony we don't know of, yet?

I think it will be mainly marketed as a PS5 companion device. Basically something that allows you to play your PS5 games via remote play. If the option to stream is in the cards, then it works to Sony's benefit in that it will incentivize people to sign up for the premium tier of PS Plus.
 
That remote play device must be the most useless gaming tool ever made. Just make a PS4 portable at this point instead of half-assing it.

Right! Makes a portable with the GPU power of the PS4, throw in NVMe storage with PS5's compression tech, basically it could have been a hybrid PS4/PS5 design that would have been compatible with PS5 games, just with reduced CPU/GPU power.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Cool, just want to be sure. The Deck screen imo is a PoS, this should be better but not hugely at least on paper. There is a handheld pc with good screens but sadly they do cost alot more.

I think this device lives and dies by the price.
The resolution on the Deck is a lowly 720p-ish, whereas this is full 1080p, which probably isn't such a big boon for this, but is a huge limitation of a full portable PC like the deck IMO.

I think the Q lives or dies on if they can do a pack-in for a PS5 Slim at current PS5 pricing - especially for the Japanese market where using a handheld for gaming is the defacto standard - as lots of us would probably buy a second PS5 for the lower power use and welcome a WiiU tablet controller to free up more gaming time when the lounge TV is in use.

Hopefully they see the cool features the WiiU had from software like Art Academy Atelier, and make the Q a touchscreen with pressure sensitivity for professional digital art at 1080p - even if they sell an expensive stylus with an enhanced art package as an extra. Kids today love being creative with games like Minecraft and adding in that feature to the OS and the handheld would really add value IMO and give them an angle to launch similarly creative games

I still have my WiiU hooked up with Atelier in the drive in case the kids want to draw on the big screen.
 

Fake

Member
The battery needed to run native ps4 games vs the battery needed for streaming explains why there is no ps4 portable.
Not everyone does 15min gaming sessions.

Steam deck exist and use a Ryzen CPU. And replicate a AMD Jaguar mobile CPU with Steam deck battery, running PS4 games at native 720p on a LCD/OLED 720 panel is super possible.
PS4 catalogue is very vast, and nothing is dennying a portable PS4 of stream PS5 games via cloud.
 

ToadMan

Member
I still dont understand the purpose of this device...everyone has a decent smartphone for streaming.

I can think of some use cases and perhaps Sony is aiming the Q at non-western markets more?

But anyway, lets not forget that Sony is historically a device company that has grown into content production. They sell the console and TV already, so a matched up streaming device is another way to keep people in their ecosystems and suits Sony’s strengths of device engineering.

If the price vs performance vs UI is right I’d be tempted even though I have multiple devices - I’d be interested in a quick to power up/leave lying around the house option for gaming when I’m not at the couch and TV.

But the price is critical.
 

01011001

Banned
You are getting hung up on separate chip which has no direct correlation to how well a Wifi 6 card in the PS5 can or can't be used by the PS5 OS in an PAN (effectively an AP bridge mode for the tablet controller) and continue in normal AP client mode or LAN mode at the same time for the PS5's normal internet connection - by utilising time division multiplexing.

The Wifi card can almost certainly operating two modes simultaneously (2.4GHz for wireless 802.11 B/G/N and 5GHz for 802.11 N/AC) and have them serve multiple devices at a time like any decent ARM router can with a fraction of the Switching capability of PS5, as router typically don't have+400GB/sec RAM bandwidth for the Wifi card DMA data packets, and don't have brawny high-end SMT capable 8 core laptop CPUs running north of 3GHz to facilitate the time division multiplexing tasks.

You are suggesting that Sony's way is the worst, yet offering no technical information or reputable source with specific experience in networking and video streaming algorithms IQ and PSNR trade offs, etc to support such a statement, and probably just repeating a DF opinion of what they "think" is better.

But even if that is the case, Sony's previous efforts aren't necessarily indicative of what they will do with this new device for easiest use, lowest latency, best IQ and audio. I love my WiiU, but even with dedicated silicon a proper solution using the PS5 hardware and this new tablet controller would best that easily. It is a network software and streaming software problem running on hardware 20x more powerful and using the latest advancements in Wifi spec hardware that is lightyears ahead of the non-standard 802.11b connection the WiiU tablet uses to connect to the WiiU IIRC.

if the PS5 can do better then Sony is holding back that ability to sell their own device, which woild be a dick move as there's no reason to not have that speed and quality on the mobile app.

and Sony's is consistently the worst remote play and cloud experience whenever tested. xcloud was worse in the past, but that changed when Microsoft changed how their severs send out frames, they skip the vsync and associated buffering + the frame scaling the I/O block usually does, which hilariously can now mean that Xbox cloud streaming has less latency than Xbox remote play, because their remote play doesn't skip those steps since it has to output a normal video signal to the tv still.
for remote play, the PS4 consistently added 100ms of latency when using remote play. that was tested by digital foundry and others multiple times and in multiple scenarios. wired, wifi, PC, Vita, PSTV ect.
on PS5 this is now down to about 40ms maybe 30ms at best.

Xbox, Steam and Nvidia are more in the region between 5ms and 10ms of additional latency, depending on game (more moving fine detail will be worse than simple shapes of course because compression times changing)


Maybe Sony will improve remote play for this thing, but if they do it would be kinda bullshit not to also do it for their remote play apps on PC and Mobile.
we see with the other remote play apps by other companies that even throug a router the results can be away better than what Sony currently does
 
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Markio128

Gold Member
The only reason why the Switch works as a handheld is because the games are held on the device and are not streamed. I just can’t see the point in this at all. If it had storage for games, then I could be interested - but this? Nah.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member


https://insider-gaming.com/project-q-battery-life/

If you’re unaware, Insider Gaming exclusively reported in early April details on the new handheld, in which came all the details came to fruition. Well, one detail that was left out from that report was the handheld’s battery life.

Prepare yourselves, because Insider Gaming understands that the Project Q battery life will be around 3-4 hours. Yup, you read that right. At least Project Q is on brand with the DualSense having a short battery life, I guess.

If the retail version of Project Q does indeed have a 3-4 hour battery life, then the handheld might be a hard sell for Sony. Already people are skeptical of its success, with the handheld only being used with Remote Play.

Ultimately though, I think the success of Project Q will depend on its price. A $200 or less price tag could see the accessory sell in strong numbers, but PlayStation has been notorious for having high price tags on its products.

Whatever the case may be, we should hear more about Project Q soon. “We look forward to sharing more information in the near future”, said CEO Jim Ryan. The release is slated for “later this year”, said Jim Ryan, which Insider Gaming understands to be mid-late November 2023.
 
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PaintTinJr

Member


https://insider-gaming.com/project-q-battery-life/

If you’re unaware, Insider Gaming exclusively reported in early April details on the new handheld, in which came all the details came to fruition. Well, one detail that was left out from that report was the handheld’s battery life.

Prepare yourselves, because Insider Gaming understands that the Project Q battery life will be around 3-4 hours. Yup, you read that right. At least Project Q is on brand with the DualSense having a short battery life, I guess.

If the retail version of Project Q does indeed have a 3-4 hour battery life, then the handheld might be a hard sell for Sony. Already people are skeptical of its success, with the handheld only being used with Remote Play.

Ultimately though, I think the success of Project Q will depend on its price. A $200 or less price tag could see the accessory sell in strong numbers, but PlayStation has been notorious for having high price tags on its products.

Whatever the case may be, we should hear more about Project Q soon. “We look forward to sharing more information in the near future”, said CEO Jim Ryan. The release is slated for “later this year”, said Jim Ryan, which Insider Gaming understands to be mid-late November 2023.

Well that's a bit more than I've ever had out of the WiiU tablet controller even after upgrading to the bigger battery, sounds completely acceptable for normal use case of stealing more gaming time adhoc when the TV is in use.

The question is why would anyone need more than 3-4hrs in a session without being able to use the PS5 with the TV or take a break while it recharged?
 

Geruda065

Member
The Q has me interested in Backbone One - anyone has any feedback on it? I understand I can set up remote play and turn the PS5 remotely?

Also, does anyone know if the buttons on the PS edition will be remapped when playing Apple Arcade games?
Backbone analog sticks are realy bad. Sold mine. You are better of with controller + phone for now :)
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
This is a peripheral, not a console.
The DualSense Edge isn't meant to be a mass market peripheral, which is why its cost is ridiculous.
If Project Q isn't meant as a mass market peripheral, then it's going to be $250 or more. A couple thousand whales will buy it and that's it.

If Project Q is meant to be mass market, then it might actually be pretty cheap. Looking at a bill of materials for something like this:

- 8" 1080p60 IPS screen: $35
- Batteries: $10
- low-end SoC for decoding: $10
- WiFi chip: $5
- Rest (DualSense buttons, PCB, enclosure, manufacturing): $25


They could sell this for $120 with a healthy 40% markup and make it a nearly mass market peripheral.
But again, I don't know if Sony prefers to make this for niche whales.

No way the cost to make it is only $85. I'd believe the raw cost is almost double that. Closer to $150.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
This is a peripheral, not a console.
The DualSense Edge isn't meant to be a mass market peripheral, which is why its cost is ridiculous.
If Project Q isn't meant as a mass market peripheral, then it's going to be $250 or more. A couple thousand whales will buy it and that's it.

If Project Q is meant to be mass market, then it might actually be pretty cheap. Looking at a bill of materials for something like this:

- 8" 1080p60 IPS screen: $35
- Batteries: $10
- low-end SoC for decoding: $10
- WiFi chip: $5
- Rest (DualSense buttons, PCB, enclosure, manufacturing): $25


They could sell this for $120 with a healthy 40% markup and make it a nearly mass market peripheral.
But again, I don't know if Sony prefers to make this for niche whales.
I'm pretty sure the Project Q will use a microOLED screen used in the Vision and PSVR2 to drive down that component cost quickly by adding millions of units, and my hunch is that the Q is going to be a pack-in controller for the Japanese market PS5 slim, too so demand for that microOLED could be very high.

Sony aim is probably to do an amazing Switch style portable, but are trying to get component screen costs down by the PSVR2 and Project Q first.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Project Q factory leaked images.

Looks like it's running on Android, not a proprietary OS.



DkmzRuD.jpeg


9tasmRe.jpeg


zICAWVI.jpeg
 
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Kilau

Member
My experience with android has been meh, hitches and glitches. Still not sure why I would ever buy this thing over just using my tablet and paired controller if I’m that desperate to play and can’t use my tv.
 
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