PS4 PRO

Introduction

Gaming is a very fast developing industry, the quality and requirements of games are growing, as well as the demand for new technology to run these games showing the best performance. Playstation 4 Pro is a current generation video game platform, which meets the demand for high quality performance technology, that was released in the end of 2016 as an upgraded version of the original PS4. It allows the user to run and play all kinds of games. The console comes with a controller called Dualshock 4, a device that is primarily used to navigate in PS4’s interface and play games. A player is provided with an impressive and huge collection of games. On top of that, there are many games that are either completely exclusive to PS4 or eventually get released to other platforms in a few years. It is very much considered that PS4 Pro is one of the best gaming consoles up to this point, even after a few years of its release. It is capable of providing 4K resolution and premium quality.

Technical components

There is a whole lot of components that the PS4 Pro consists of. The PS4 Pro features a 4.20 Teraflop AMD Radeon graphics card and an 8-core AMD x86-64 Jaguar processor with the clock speed of 2.1GHz. It provides 8GB of DDR5 RAM for running games or doing other activities, as well as an extra GB of DDR3 RAM aimed to work with save data, active apps and games. PS4 Pro operates with 36 Graphics Core Next Computer Units at 911MHz, which drastically improves graphics performance up to 4.2 teraflops.

Nonetheless, there are a few downsides of the PS4 Pro. Despite being a very powerful console on its own, it may not be quite as powerful to run all games at 4K resolution, whilst providing smooth 30 or 60 fps. In order to do so it would require a more powerful GPU, of course. This leads to a point, that these games will be run at a custom resolution: 1080p or 1440p, however, the image is upscaled and run through a checkerboard rendering algorithm to display an image that is very close to 4K. However, a player may choose to prioritize the frame rate or clarity and resolution by choosing the respecting option in the menu. That will offer either a 4K resolution or a smoother experience with more frames per second and extra visual effects at 1080p.

The Genesis of PlayStation consoles

Although, the PS4 Pro is very powerful and innovative of its time, the roots of this console go all way back to the 1990s. The first Sony console was launched back in 1994 and since then four major consoles were released, all with unique designs and different hardware. At the present time, Sony are working on a next generation console – the Playstation 5, which is currently in development but is scheduled to release in quarter 4 of 2020.

As it was stated earlier, the original PlayStation console was released in 1994 and it played a crucial role in progression of the gaming industry to 3D rendering, leaving 2D in the past. It accepted compact discs, allowing for higher full-motion video, which was an ongoing problem with space-limited cartridges that were not capable of that. Up to this day, this console is Sony’s 3rd best-selling machine.

In about 6 years, on March 4, 2000, Sony has released the best-selling console of all time, Playstation 2. It featured a one-core processor, clocked at ~295 MHz. Moreover, PS2 was the first console that supported DVDs, which expanded on the features that the console provided: gaming, as well as playing DVD movies. Not to mention, DVD also enabled games with larger assets.

Moving on to the third major console, which was released in another 5 years on November 11, 2006. Playstation 3 was innovative overall, especially in having a Blu-ray drive, which was never been a thing on console. Compared to PS2, this console’s CPU was clocked at 3.2 GHz. Development allowed this for Playstation 3 to incorporate a much more powerful graphics card (Nvidia’s RSX Reality Synthesizer GPU with 256MB or VRAM, clocked at 550MHz) into the system, which allowed for a 1080p resolution output for the first time.

And the final major console up to this date is Playstation 4, of course, not including the PS4 Pro upgrade to it, which was released November 15, 2013. PS4 is a little less powerful than its the PS4 Pro. It only had 18 GPU cores and 1.8 TGLOPS or Peak Shader Throughput in comparison to 36 GPU cores and 4.2 Teraflops in Pro.

Overall, all these four major Playstation consoles, including their local upgraded versions, for example, PS4 slim or PS2 slimline, have been pursuing the same idea of entertainment. It has grown from a small and very limited machine back in the time to a powerful machine, capable of displaying image in a high resolution and obviously running very resource consuming and beautiful games, that require lots of power.

Social Impact on its audience

As a gaming machine, Playstation 4’s purpose is quite narrow in terms of its use and it is popular for its entertainment value. It has a huge impact on society. People from around the world may play games together, make new connections and experience titles that are not available on alternatives. Its compact size even allows one to travel with it around the world if they decide to do so. It is mostly significant to younger people, that are interested in playing games either because they have more time and want to have fun with friends or for those who are making money by doing so (youtubers or streamers are an example). It would be less valuable to people that casually play games to relax in the end of a day for an hour or two. Playstation 4 Pro is very much an emerging technology, that includes the original PS4, simply because Pro is an upgrade, that is slightly more powerful than its predecessor. The reason behind this being that PS4 is one of the most powerful consoles nowadays and it is very demanded: Sony has sold 102.8 million PS4 consoles (2^nd best-selling console of all time, after PS2!), including PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim, despite having to compete with other consoles like Xbox One. Playstation series, as a whole has become a revolution to gaming. It was made simple, accessible and fun to use.

References:

(2018) Sony Playstation 4 Pro Review and Specifications [online], Geekyviews website blog, https://www.geekyviews.com/reviews/sony-playstation-4-pro/ retrieved on 30/04/2020PS4

Pro Tech specs, [online]. Official playstation website, https://www.playstation.com/en-au/explore/ps4/tech-specs/ retrieved on 30/04/2020

Smith R. (2016), Analysing Sony’s Playstation 4 Pro Hardware Reveal: What Lies Beneath [online], https://www.anandtech.com/show/10663/analyzing-sonys-playstation-4-pro-announcement retrieved on 30/04/2020

Figure 1 source: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayStation+4+Pro+Teardown/72946

Figure 2 source: https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-evolution-of-playstation-consoles/2900-899/2/

Thang J., (2016) The Evolution of PlayStation Consoles [online], https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-evolution-of-playstation-consoles/2900-899/ retrieved on 30/04/2020

Dent S. (2019) Sony’s PS4 is the second best-selling console of all time [online]. https://www.engadget.com/2019-10-30-sony-earnings-ps4-console-sales.html retrieved on 30/04/2020

By Boris Zinchenko