With a report earlier this year claiming that all PlayStation 4 games running in ‘Neo Mode’ on the new hardware must play at 1080p or higher,
Speaking with Time, Layden explained that PS4 games will continue to work on both models, but games on Neo will look better:
With this move towards a high-end PS4, it’s not to bifurcate the market. We’re not creating haves and have-nots. There’s only going to be one game on sale, and it will play on both [consoles]. You’ll have the same experience, but one will be delivered at a higher resolution, with an enhanced graphical experience, but everything else is going to be exactly as you’d expect.
With the announcement of Microsoft’s Project Scorpio at E3 2016, Layden said these mid-generation hardware revisions are good for gaming, but they’re both in uncharted territory:
What’s good for video gaming is good for PlayStation. We’re seeing apparently Microsoft taking a similar course to ours, which is to innovate within the life cycle of the console. It’s nothing that’s ever been done before, so there is no road map to how to do that. Both companies are trying to find the right way to bring that to developers, to bring it to market, to talk about it. But seemingly they’re doing similar things to what we want to do, which is to bring more power to developers, to bring more weapons for them to create games with, to create an enhanced experience. Again I think it’s good for gaming, so it’s good for us.
Layden also agreed with Xbox’s Phil Spencer that these new machines don’t mean we’ll be getting a new console every two years.
Mentioning that they aren’t “trying to incite any fanboy wars around this,” Layden said he and Spencer are good friends. “I think the relationship right now between PlayStation and Xbox is very respectful, very civil. Phil Spencer, I like to say he’s a good friend of mine, we both talk a lot. He’s been very supportive of the things we’re doing here, and we return the same respect,” he said.
According to a previous comment from Sony’s Andrew House, games developed for PS4 Neo will require a small but manageable extra amount of work.
[Source: Time via Games Industry]
