Tweet
With the full hardware specification for the PlayStation Neo out in the open, several questions spring to mind, principally - why now: as the impending arrival of the Nintendo NX caused a rethink at Sony headquarters? And perhaps more curiously, how is Microsoft going to respond? The way things look right now, it seems that the biggest winner of the upcoming console three-way is AMD. After all, the chances are that the technology of each new piece of hardware features the same core CPU and GPU components produced by the same engineers. Which begs the question - at the technological nuts and bolts level, are we going to end up with three almost identical new consoles? And is that such a bad thing?
Nintendo, Microsoft and indeed Sony itself will be looking at the phenomenon that is PlayStation 4, wondering why it was so successful. Part of the formula is undoubtedly the strength of the core technology. Looking back, Nielsen polling data suggested that "better resolution" was the number one reason buyers purchased PlayStation 4 over its competition. On the one hand, that nugget of data may seem quite unbelievable but on the other, consider this - given two extremely similar pieces of hardware sold at similar price-points with much the same library of software, which would you buy? "Better resolution" may well be the closest the survey had to a response highlighting the spec differential.
Read more…
More...