Sony couldn't help but to do a product placement in Chappie for Ps4 given the target audience.
It can be argued that it was the best kind of product placement.
Funny that this should be the case because the director claimed that the movie was too expensive to make more of them. If they are at least intelligent enough to have all of these great product placements, think of them as mini ads inside the movie, then that revenue alone should be somewhat substantial for more movies in a series. Cars, energy drinks, guns, music, TVs and computers etc.
The movie shows how you could network several PS4 units together to harness their processing power which is something that Sony doesn't support for gaming.
This would be much more useful for some users versus spending the money to create a cluster using PC components but in terms of the movie and the product placement I find it bizarre. Clustering up a few Ps4 Pro units should make 4K possible and PSVR more powerful (and more competitive than it currently is).
But how do you sell 2 (or more) PS4 Pros to regular people?
And why would Sony not show PS4 with a game? As far as the story goes the criminals didn't have time to sit down and actually play. Ninja didn't have any real reason to want them.
The console was new, I guess, when the movie was made so it makes more sense to have a use case for the console that would outlive any of the launch titles was necessary but that use case of clustering the consoles serves the movie's plot more than to drive sales of the console. Since it was Sony's product it makes sense that they would decide it made more sense to use it in a way some people knew it actually served a greater purpose than just playing games or to push a particular game.
I don't know though that running Linux (OS of choice for running computing clusters using PlayStations) on the new console (at the time) to harness the power of their processors and memory was even possible or condoned by Sony Computer Entertainment.
It sucks that their project Morpheus wasn't ready either or applicable as a base for their neural interface helmet. Given what PSVR is now and that it does need more killer apps, being that it comes off as underpowered compared to other solutions (Facebook's Oculus Rift, HTC's Vive etc).. Sony could use a sequel to Chappie which can push more PSVR advertising. Who knows.
But aside from hackers.. what about consumers? Why can't we cluster our consoles for better gaming?
Could consumers, or a tiny subset of them, benefit from clustering up multiple PS4 units? Like what would be the point?
Microsoft used to promote using multiple copies of the same game, Forza Motorsport, and multiple consoles to run the console game on multiple screen. The game didn't benefit at all from the extra processing power and memory (not that there's much to work with), but Chappie's half dozen PS4s would be a significant boon for running games at high resolution.
They don't do that as much anymore because the concept, though cheap compared to buying a PC, didn't take off. Their current strategy involves PC and a new console with significantly more power than older consoles. At what cost? If it is too expensive no one will buy it. They might as well just buy a gaming PC.
And I doubt that Microsoft will go that extra mile to make sure that their new Scorpio console will work in a network should that subset of gamers and hackers, researchers etc, decide that their is value in networking several of them together (versus building a PC or a cluster of cheap PCs).
The issue has always been that the networking parts needed to make those clusters really valuable weren't cheap enough to add to individual consoles. There wasn't enough bandwidth to allow the consoles to send enough data around to split up intensive tasks like running high resolution games.
In the next couple of months Microsoft will let the world know what the hardware plan for their new console is beyond just it's raw performance target. That hasn't been much to go on because we don't know what they intend for customers to use it for other than to run some 4K games. Looking back, all of the Xbox consoles have been underpowered by the time they launched. Xbox didn't run 720p games very well. Xbox 360 didn't run 1080p games very well. Some will argue that Xbox One doesn't run 1080p very well still.. and Xbox One S barely does 4K.
Sony's consoles have been equally underpowered but at least they've been cost effective (maybe not so much the PS3) but they've been adequate.
Looking forward though.. after the example in Chappie, and what was managed unofficially using the older Sony consoles.. Why wouldn't Scorpio and Ps5 support clustering from the get go?
Microsoft probably wouldn't want you running Linux on your shiny new Scorpio.. but there's something to be said about them still not jumping to ARM for an even cheaper console that could run Windows 10 and Android. That would be a much easier sell anyway for game and app developers that already know how to program great software for ARM so they wouldn't have to choose to switch to Windows 10 support. Their apps would already get ported over.
But if Scorpio could be sold at first to people that could afford more than one, and there were games and applications designed to support such clusters.. for VR and even more immersive 4K experiences.. I'd ask how many of them would I need to run 8K games at 120hz?
Isn't it overkill? PCs run 4K games just fine and consoles can't so why not just buy a PC. The setup process is daunting but manageable. Actually the point I'm trying to make is that it might be much easier to have multiple consoles with multiple displays to get 4K and 8K on the cheap considering the nonsense cost of that 8K PC setup.
(Literally me back in 1996 or 1998 when I read about NHKs 1080p plans, and then later on when bought a 2048x1536 CRT monitor. I was like why is it possible to have such a high dpi on a small 21" screen, although it wasn't small at the time, but people would still want 40 to 60 inch screens doing 720p or 1080p. It felt like wasted screen space.)
I doubt you phone has a smaller screen than 1080p today yet.. that's the best a console can do (even though the console is half the price of the phone).
There's a 4K phone for gosh sakes but consoles barely manage 4K for gaming? Should we just pay twice as much for consoles? Or jump to PC? PCs are a hassle.
That setup process sometimes needs to be redone when Windows decides to update itself or the graphics driver is updated and it is always a pain.
And so is it overkill? Well that depends. The argument is that you can't benefit from 4K resolution while playing most games because you just can't see the whole picture all at the same time. But doesn't that justify it because any small part you're focused on is that much higher resolution anyway? Though the parts of the screen you aren't focused on aren't perceived in high resolution the fact of the matter is there's more detail there.
The issue for some players is the bezel and unfortunately bezel correction in this day and age with computer vision isn't automatic. Like why can't you take a picture of some computer vision readable codes on each screen with your cell phone and feed that the display driver software so it can automatically correct for bezel gaps and color.
Few gamers have had access to real 4K screens as they are expensive and impractical. I mean if you're willing to deal with 1 big screen versus a few smaller ones. If that large screens breaks you're SOL where as in a multiple display set up you've got a few to play with and usually they are cheap at only 100$ or less if you know where to look than trying to use one big screen.
The ones that are best suited for multiple display setups though are usually expensive, which kind of sucks. Why can't I have 2 Xbox Ones or PS4 Pros for streaming 4K to my computer and its mulptiple screens? It isn't the usual setup for living room gaming but the benefit is it being cheaper than buying multiple GPUs for my PC. 2 GPUs for $1200 each? 128 gigs of ram? NO WAY! I'll buy 4 consoles and still have money left over.
Short of using a computer and some method of viewing the game from the computer, you can't use multiple displays with one console. But the point is we've been doing it for years now and both Microsoft and Sony have offered us software to do so. You can game stream from both Xbox One and Xbox One S and Ps4 Pro (only) at 1080p.
The picture quality is gross due to extra compression compared to native 4K the PC is capable of by itself but at least it's something.
So why not 4K and 8K streaming? No idea. Or using the local processing power of the PC when game streaming? Pointless? Yeah.. But.. until they put console games on PC, it's the only way to use multiple monitors. Would that need better consoles or just better networking? or are both Microsoft and Sony holding game streaming back intentionally? Sony I could understand because they have 4K TVs to sell. Microsoft though? No idea. And then the game developers. Some have issues making games that run well on just one console with multiple processors in it. Asking them to make games that also run well on distributed consoles? Shrugs.
Scorpio I would presume should be able to do game streaming at 4K should the user have a fast enough network at home.
If it is supported then the next question is 8K streaming. Because as far as I'm concerned once 4K streaming is supported that's already overkill for what a single console would be good for. I'd be willing to consider 2 or 3 Scorpios if necessary and they could be networked together. Though buying several copies of the same game is out of the question. I'm tired of doing that.
8K at 60hz has been a target for NHK for over a decade and they have managed to make the hardware needed to both capture and display it live.. both at 60hz (good for TV shows and movies) and 120hz (good for sports and video games). They've been pushing hard since the 90s to reach that goal of 8K for consumer goods by 2020. But gaming at 8K @ 120hz is nowhere near possible.
No one though is talking about 8K in the home just yet because although it exists.. it's too expensive. Right now it's all about 4K. 4K Tvs, phones, consoles and VR.
Even then 4K is expensive. Makes more sense to focus on Virtual Reality with 4K panels for each eye. But that much data would mean wearing a wired display. I'm fine with that since I'm not entirely willing to stand up while playing games or using VR apps.
So gaming at 8K is possible on PC.. it is expensive and overkill. It could possible using consoles but Microsoft and Sony aren't biting while they have this 4K milestone to conquer with just 1 console. Only 3 years left to see if Sony can manage an 8K console in time.