Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter reckons the much-rumored PlayStation 4.5 will take the form of an update specifically designed to advance its PlayStation VR technology.
Speaking with GamingBolt, the ubiquitous industry mouthpiece feels that PS4.5 isn’t likely to turn out to be what we’ve been lead to believe over the past few days; rather, it’ll be something to allow PS VR to run in 4K.
“The quick answer is that there were 27,000 people at GDC, and apparently only four heard rumblings about the PS4.5, making it hard to believe as a rumor,” commented Pachter. “Given that all four of them work for Kotaku, the coincidence is far more than the norm, and I find it hard to believe.
“It is likely that one or more Kotaku employees heard the same conversation, and they may have heard musings about a 4K PS4. That makes sense, if Sony intends to advance PlayStation VR to the same level as Oculus and Vive, and given that GDC was the coming out party for PlayStation VR, it is believable that Sony personnel would be talking about how they plan to upgrade the graphics of the PS4 to make it competitive with the others.
"That doesn’t mean it’s a new console that will require all PS4 owners to ditch their old ones; rather, it will probably be a VR-specific model that will allow PSVR to run in 4K. I find that a reasonable explanation, but the “rumor” being heard by only four Kotaku employees and nobody else is simply not reasonable.”
While the report initially surfaced on Kotaku, Eurogamer has also weighed in on the subject and confirmed via independent sources that Sony is working on the new hardware update. According to these reports, PS4.5 could potentially deliver twice the performance of the existing model, and is currently being prototyped by Sony’s R&D sector.
PS4 was released in November 2013 alongside the Xbox One and has sold over 35 million units worldwide.