PlayStation 4 The Real Reason Why Sony Didn’t Announce A 4K Console

GamerFitNation's Gregory Laporte writes about the PlayStation 4 and the real reason he believes why Sony didn't announce a 4K console.

[Dylila]

its because a lot of people will feel like theyll get left out because they cant take advantage of 4k resolution. less than 1 percent of people have 4k telis so its not really something to push right now until summer time when theyll be selling the cheaper consumer friendly 4k tvs. some people will continue to bad mouth 4k telis because they wont be able to upgade to them anytime soon but i cant wait to be able to buy one.

some say they are content with 1080p so 4k will be a massive upgrade and i cant wait to be able to have a teli that can do 4k with a massive screen

[Ares84HU]

Only 4K TVs I see right now are at $25K. I doubt that it will be consumer friendly by the summer. But in about a year or so I expect to see some 40"-55" models to be around $5k-$10K.

I have a feeling that the PS4 will support 4K with Blu-ray movies and possibly some games as well. But that remains to be seen. They didn't actually say much about the resolution of the PS4 yet.

[Reverent]

To think, I could buy multiple cheap cars for the price of one of those T.V's.

[dcbronco]

Or you could buy two quality used cars, a nice new car or a home in a terrible Detroit neighborhood.

[ThanatosDMC]

1080p is fine. I dont want to have to buy a new expensive tv.

[khowat]

There is some obscure chinese brand that sells 4k tvs at 1500, not sure about the quality or durability of these products, but just a comparison

http://www.reduser.net/foru...

[TheGamerDood]

1% of gamers are only capable of playing 4K games at this point. It requires a 7970 or 680 to run and even then it's taxing on the FPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Autodidactdystopia]

because its too expensive atm.

nothing secretive about it.

[nveenio]

It won't support 4k games because such a rig would require a couple of NVidia Titan GPUs.

[MariaHelFutura]

The reason. 0.02 percent of the population have a 4k tv.

[HammadTheBeast]

Much less tbh. I'd say max, 1 million people with these 4k TV's.

[joab777]

I read that it will support 4k resolution concerning videos but not games. This does make sense as the ps3 plays videos in glorius 1080p but not many games in 1080p because it doesnt have the computing power without losing something somewhere. The ps4 will support 4k video because it helps drive the tech and TV sales. But the ps4 may have a hard time running games at 4k and 30 fps much less 60 fps. And its much different because with games sometimes higher resolution isnt always the best thing. I know david cage thinks that polygons are where gaming is at, but it takes alot of power to produce the pixels needed for 4k, and upscaling would not look so great.

[dumahim]

I seem to remember someone saying it'd support 4k only from 4k sources. There would be no upscale to 4k. It'd likely have to be a streaming 4k service, unless Sony surprises everyone and includes a BD drive capable of more than 2 layers.

I think the 4k thing is a bit of a fad. Many digital movie theater projectors are only 2k. These screens are huge. Why would someone need double that for a TV? With no solid physical media to support it right now, that leave streaming where bandwidth is a concern, which will probably lead to more compression than people would like. I'd rather use extra bandwidth for lower compression 1080p.

[iGAM3R-VIII]

or maybe because 4K HDTV's are way to expensive

[sourav93]

Off topic:

Wow...you're always first on anything PS4. True dedication I guess ;)

On topic:

Even though it won't play 4K games at launch, I wouldn't be surprised if a future software update allows some form of 4K games rendering, akin to what happened with 3D on the PS3. Keep in mind, 3D was supposed to work only on HDMI 1.4 and above, but they made it work with HDMI 1.3 on the PS3.

[ALLWRONG]

The 4k hype train left so fast Sony forgot to jump on. All that talk about 4k and it ended up where most people thought it would, on the chopping block.

[morkendo23]

I SAY OL CHAP YOU GOT A TELLI??? smashing remarable pip'pip

[NYC_Gamer]

It's too expensive right now to offer hardware that plays 4K content at decent frames per second

[NJShadow]

And yet the PS4 does. ;) More than likely the reason it isn't supported for GAMES is because of the borderline ridiculous amount of detail, but that's just a guess.

[NYC_Gamer]

I'm talking about running games in 4K...That is real damn expensive and requires real high end hardware to get decent frames per second...

[Ares84HU]

PS4 is able to do that with the hardware it has without a problem.

[yewles1]

PS4 can do 4K videos and pics, it might also be possible to upscale games to 4K if coincided with a 4K set.

[NJShadow]

Yeah, Sony did confirm that the PS4 will have 4K support, just not for games (which is understandable).

[Moonman]

I love PS4 already. 4K for video is awesome!

[Megaton]

Because it would have to retail at $3000 to play 4K games?

[BitbyDeath]

I think the real reason is it will require too much effort to be placed on 4K which will make the games worse for little extra gain as efforts would be better placed on gameplay and better framerates.

[NateCole]

Its too soon for 4K games. We still don't have 1K (1080) games standard.

1. Too expensive
2. Very little number of devs would ever developed games in 4K.

The result would be a very expensive piece of hardware without content.

[vZeppelin]

1K lol

[CommonSenseGamer]

Did people really expect Sony to announce a console capable of pushing 4k resolutions for gaming at 30 or 60 fps?

Honestly, that was never going to happen given they don't want to price themselves out of the market.

[battlegrog]

First off its not reliant

Second we dont know for sure if the ps4 doesn't do 4k. I mean they still have plenty of new stuff to announce and inform us at E3. This is just the surface.

[Roper316]

less than a year ago I bought a 55" 3d smart tv and have no desire to upgrade. I don't want to worry about getting another tv for about 10 years or so.

[RandomDude655]

Yeah, they should have just thrown a nvidia titan and core i7 in....
...
..
.

oh wait that would be like 2000 bucks.

[GABRIEL1030]

A good thing, I will not expend 20.000 on a TV for play in PS4 in 4K. I can play with my actual HD 40" 1080 TV 3D, great decision Sony, we don't need make the gaming more expensive, only more versatile and fun.

[Qrphe]

Because the the level of graphical fidelity they will be shooting won't allow such resolutions. It's one thing to run 7th gen games at 4k and another to run 8th gen games at 4k.

Plus TVs

[KillrateOmega]

Because less than 1% of the world population actually owns a 4K TV :P

[Kevlar009]

Does the majority of people really care about 4k? Enough for the investment anyway? Seems a bit excessive for most people

[GUYwhoPLAYSvideoGAME]

it will play 4k video and pictures, just not games

[fullmetal297]

Playing games at that resolution will too taxing on the hardware. The most expensive video card in a muti-card configuration can barely at 30 frames at that resolution.

[PAYNEinc85]

We'll probably get 4k next gen. I don't believe next gen will go on for 8 years like this one. Maybe 5-6.

[Double_O_Revan]

Because it probably can't handle games 4k @ 30fps. Showing pictures and even playing a movie is 1 thing, but playing a game at that resolution is a pretty hefty feat.

Are there even any computers out there that can handle 4k? Ones that Don't cost me a kidney.

[DivineAssault]

Having 4K is a luxury only the wealthy can have at this point in time.. In the next 3-5 yrs it may be affordable to middle class & 5-10 for the poor (MAYBE) so putting out a 4k game running console would be a huge waste of R&D budgets.. Now i dont see why they cant upscale games later on (especially w gaikai) but thats going to require a major advancement in our internet services.. Its said to have 4K picture/video play back so thats way more than enough for the time being.. xbox 360 didnt have HDMI & was only 720p/1080i initially & now its 1080p upscaled.. I dont see why PS4 cant do the same with 2k4k upscaling in the future..

[Chard]

I can just imagine Digital Foundry in a 4K generation;
"Our pixel count has found that the ps4 version of GTA6 runs in 3986p while the xbox 720 version is only 3972p"

[josephayal]

Coz we can't afford a $6,000 console

[Tzuno]

4k of what? of false advertising? :)

[UnholyLight]

I didn't read all the comments so I am not sure if anyone mentioned it already but it's worth noting:

Can't 4k resolution support be added to the console down the line once the install base of 4k grows substantially as the price drops? Sort of like how when the "Xbox 360 Elite" came around it added HDMI support? I could see that as being plausible.