PlayStation Neo 'is still PS4,' says Shuhei Yoshida

By Dan Isacsson June 23, 2016

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Ahead of E3, Sony confirmed it was working on a new and more powerful version of the PS4 called PlayStation Neo. But as Microsoft announced its Project Scorpio, gamers worried whether Sony’s upcoming console was an all-new console and not just an improvement on the first model. Now Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, has dismissed such concerns and said that the “new high-end PS4 is still PS4, so the life cycle is not going to be shorter.”

Yoshida is not following Sony’s policy to withhold details on its upcoming console until an official announcement is made. Sony said prior to E3 2016 that it would not be showing its new hardware at the conference, instead opting for a reveal at a later date. However, Microsoft’s reveal of Project Scorpio left Yoshida surprised and may have changed his announcement plans. “I was not expecting them to talk about [Project Scorpio], so it’s very very super interesting what they are doing,” he says.

Both consoles are leading in sales of the current generation, but Sony has a massive lead over Microsoft. In May of this year, the PS4 was reported to have sold 40 million units, whereas the Xbox One had sold just below 20 million by January (Sony had sold 36 million at the time). It’s unclear whether the PS4 has sold double the amount that the Xbox One has, but Microsoft needs to do something about the sales gap.

It’s possible that Project Scorpio is the software giant’s attempt to recapture gamers who have adapted to the mobile industry’s yearly cycles, and the Microsoft is trying to one-up Sony by adopting this new approach. If Microsoft is successful it would likely lead to a strategic shift for all parties involved in the console war. But we’ll have to wait for the new consoles to arrive and stay around for a while before drawing any conclusions.

It has been rumored that PlayStation Neo will be released this year, but no official announcement has been made.

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Being a gamer since the age of three, Dan took an interest in mobile gaming back in 2009. Since then he's been digging ever…

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When ILMxLAB learned about the PlayStation VR2, Director Jose Perez III thought it was a "no-brainer" for the studio to bring the Oculus Quest game Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge to the new headset.
"We're always looking at how we can push the fidelity of the work that we're doing," Perez III tells Digital Trends in an interview. "PlayStation VR2 is ridiculously powerful; we got really excited about what we could bring to that. We started talking with our friends at Sony because we had a great relationship with them for Vader Immortal, and it was really a no-brainer. Then, you put the headset on, you start feeling the haptics, and you start seeing what you can do with the visual fidelity and lighting, and it's like, 'Oh, this is awesome!'"
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PlayStation VR2's launch and its first wave of games are nearly upon us, and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge Enhanced Edition is one of those titles. This is a make-or-break time for VR, which is still struggling to move into the mainstream but could become more popular if Sony's headset can offer a compelling and accessible virtual reality experience. Ahead of its release, Digital Trends spoke to Director Jose Perez III and Producer Harvey Whitney from ILMxLAB to learn about the process of crafting one of these critical "no-brainer" launch games and PlayStation VR2 will ultimately stand when it comes to the future of VR gaming.
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Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge was originally released for Meta Quest VR headsets in November 2020. It's set on the planet of Batuu, which people also explore at Dinsey parks, and follows a Droid Technician who gets caught in the middle of a grander fight against the First Order after crash-landing on the planet. At the time, it was meant with decent reviews and only got better as its story was completed and expanded with the Last Call DLC.
After getting the "Enhanced Edition" of the game for PlayStation VR2 greenlit, ILMxLAB actually had to go and make it. As the team was dealing with new hardware for the first time, producer Harvey Whitney thought it was good that the team's first project on PlayStation VR2 was an enhanced version of an existing game.
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PlayStation VR2 supports Roomscale, Sitting, and Standing play styles, which added more complexity as Tales from the Galaxy's Edge supports all three. Thankfully, Perez III that bringing Tales from the Galaxy's Edge to PlayStation VR2 was relatively manageable because of how impressive the system's specs were.
"A lot of the development processes are similar [to other VR platforms]," Perez III says. "We're still working inside of Unreal, and we're doing a lot of those same processes. But we don't have to look at performance quite as much as we do on some of the other devices, so we're able to open up a lot of things or not be as concerned about certain things. That comes with better hardware."
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Looking at the biggest games of the PlayStation VR2 launch window lineup, the visuals of titles like Horizon Call of the Mountain and the VR modes of Resident Evil Village and Gran Turismo 7 are impressive. In our discussion, Whitney also made it quite clear that one of the real advantages of working on this remaster was not having to worry about strict limitations on the visuals or even the audio. "We got lucky in the sense that there's a lot more to PlayStation VR2 that we hadn't had previously," Whitney says. "We could really push the graphics and make it shine. But then there were also some other things that came into play. We totally redid the audio, it sounds amazing."