Sony’s in no rush to reveal the specific details surrounding their competitor to Microsoft’s Project Scorpio, PlayStation boss Andrew House has said in an interview with The Guardian (via VideoGamer). Currently going by the name PlayStation 4 Neo, it’s widely expected that, like Scorpio, the former will offer a substantial graphics and performance upgrade over the standard console currently available.
But what’s Sony’s reasoning behind the potentially risky move of releasing a mid-generation update to existing hardware? According to House, the decision largely came down to a desire to retain a larger portion of their “core audience” that “tends to gravitate back to high-end PCs at some point” during the “normal lifecycle.”
He continued to say that:
We did think there was an opportunity to reflect on the traditional lifecycle, and on 4K technology, and say maybe there’s an opportunity, within the course of a normal lifecycle to offer something else, something a little bit better, for a segment of the market that feels that this is important.
We’ve traditionally seen that some of the core audience tends to gravitate back to high-end PCs at some point because these are the people who want the finest graphical performance. So here’s a great opportunity to have them stay within our ecosystem.
It’s certainly no secret that PCs have the advantage over consoles when it comes to upgrading hardware on a regular basis and subsequently leaving the latter behind in terms of raw power, but is a mid-generation console upgrade the right way to bridging the gap? Only time will tell.
There’s still no word on when exactly Sony intends to talk more about the PlayStation 4 Neo, but you can probably expect to hear more later this year.