It’s well over a week now since
Some of this chatter is down to the unspecific nature of the information revealed about the PS4 Pro so far. Will it do genuine native 4K gaming? How good is its proprietary new 4K upscaling? What improvements exactly will a non-4K TV owner see? However, for me and an eye-catching amount of other people on social media and tech forums, the PS4 Pro’s most debate-worthy feature is one it actually doesn’t have: a built-in Ultra HD Blu-ray drive.
To seemingly many AV and gaming fans, Sony’s failure to support the latest and greatest disc-based video format in what is otherwise the most advanced gaming console ever just doesn’t make sense. Especially when
Sony has had to come up with its own official ‘reasons’ for not including the UHD BD drive in the PS4 Pro, and I’ve seen countless other (sometimes rather desperate, to be honest) attempts by PS4 fans to justify Sony’s decision. I’ve even seen excruciatingly optimistic suggestions from some quarters that the PS4 Pro may be able to add Ultra HD Blu-ray support via a firmware update (trust me: it won’t).
The bottom line, though, is that not putting an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive in the PS4 Pro is a mistake - but one which, as I’ll explain at the end, Sony’s console division sadly seemingly had no choice but to make.
Before explaining why it’s a mistake, though, let me stress that this article is not intended to be a sustained assault on the PS4 Pro. Some things about Sony’s new console make it potentially an exceptionally serious machine; in particular its potential for true 4K gaming, its enhanced VR capabilities, its intriguing new upscaling system, and the fact that unlike the Xbox One S it delivers a significant gaming performance upgrade to people who don’t yet own 4K TVs.
A great console, but...
None of this alters the fact, though, that the PS4 Pro should have (and I believe would have, if certain circumstances had been slightly different) carried an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive.
First and foremost, omitting a UHD BD drive gives people an easy to explain and demonstrate reason to buy an Xbox One S instead of a PS4 Pro.
Some, even many gamers may roll their eyes at this idea - especially if they’re already firmly in the Sony camp. But as I explained in 6 Reasons Why The Xbox One S Is More Important Than Even Microsoft Seems To Think It Is, there’s a large market of people whose love of gaming intersects with a love of AV. And for this market the fact that the Xbox One S combines a more than credible gaming platform with support for the unprecedented picture quality delivered by Ultra HD Blu-ray will make it the console they go for now that the PS4 Pro can’t cater for their UHD BD needs.
In fact, given that the new entry-level Xbox One S somehow sells for substantially less than any of the current stand-alone Ultra HD Blu-ray players out there, I know personally a number of people who are buying Xbox One S consoles purely as Ultra HD Blu-ray players, with their gaming abilities simply seen as a handy bonus!
Sony itself used to understand this gaming/AV crossover, of course. The way the PS3 provided a Trojan Horse for getting Blu-ray players into living rooms undoubtedly played a huge role in the success of the Blu-ray format (don’t forget that Sony has an active financial interest in all forms of Blu-ray).
Two things for the price of one
Even more importantly, from a consumer’s point of view it was just so much easier to justify the cost of a PS3 when you knew you were getting a decent Blu-ray player as well as a gaming machine. This same logic would surely have made it easier for many consumers to justify the purchase of a PS4 Pro with an Ultra HD Blu-ray Player in it.
The sheer volume of
This would be bad enough for Sony even if these disappointed customers were just not buying a PS4 Pro. But the problem is magnified if, as seems likely, at least some of these disgruntled UHD BD fans now go and buy an Xbox One S.
If handing back a clear feature and sales advantage to your arch rival just when you had them on the ropes isn’t a mistake, then I don’t know what is.
Sony could always, I guess, launch yet another PS4 iteration somewhere down the line that does include an Ultra HD Blu-ray deck. Maybe it could even rush one out to coincide with the launch of Microsoft’s Project Scorpio next year. But even for someone like me who’s fully on board with the idea of mid-generation console hardware refreshes, there surely has to be a limit to how many refreshes the gaming community will be willing to tolerate before they start to get seriously hacked off.
Yet if Sony does no more PS4 upgrades before eventually launching the PS5, then the last word in the current console generation will go to Microsoft’s Project Scorpio - a console that will surely boast a built-in Ultra HD Blu-ray player to go with its potentially heavy gaming grunt.
In other words, Sony suddenly finds its latest console hardware sandwiched awkwardly between an already-launched Xbox One S that cunningly raised expectations that the PS4 Pro must surely offer an Ultra HD Blu-ray player too, and an already-announced Scorpio that will surely partner an Ultra HD Blu-ray player with even more gaming horsepower than the PS4 Pro.
Including an Ultra HD Blu-ray player in the PS4 Pro would at least have taken the Xbox One S out of the equation and, depending on the eventual price of the Scorpio, would have mitigated the threat of Microsoft’s next console too.
But what about cost, I hear you cry. Surely putting an Ultra HD Blu-ray player in the PS4 Pro would have forced its price beyond the important $399 barrier, making it a more difficult purchase for gamers who just want a more powerful gaming machine?
I have to be honest here and say I’m no expert on the costs of manufacturing processes and optical drives. However, a break down of Xbox One S manufacturing costs produced by industry analysis firm IHS Markit suggests that its UHD BD drive likely costs around $40. A not insignificant sum, but arguably not enough to warrant Sony deciding to leave such an important feature out?
Naughty Microsoft
Also, the plain fact of the matter is that Microsoft has managed to include an Ultra HD Blu-ray player in a console that can be had for just $299 - and to some extent that’s all certain customers will need to know.
The most common argument I’ve seen to excuse the PS4 Pro’s missing Ultra HD Blu-ray support is that physical media is going the way of the dodo, pushed into extinction by a world where everyone would rather stream all their movies and TV shows than clutter up their homes with racks of disc boxes. This, in fact, is Sony’s own main argument for why it apparently didn’t deem UHD BD in the PS4 Pro necessary.
The thing is, though, that while it is true that streaming occupies more and more of an average household’s video viewing time, a Variety report shows that the early sales figures for Ultra HD Blu-ray are comfortably exceeding those recorded for the original Blu-ray format over the same launch period. So far from receding, it actually looks as if interest in physical media for home entertainment may actually be increasing.
At the very least there’s enough evidence from Ultra HD Blu-ray - and, actually, ongoing Blu-ray - sales to suggest that Sony really isn’t going to help sales of the the PS4 Pro by essentially telling fans of physical media that they’re no longer cared about.
Let’s not forget, either, that Sony had great fun at Microsoft’s expense in the lead up to the launch of the original Xbox One and PS4 consoles when Microsoft dared to suggest that it wanted to get rid of physical media from the gaming world…
Sony’s argument that streaming is somehow all you need for your video needs isn’t just undermined by some people’s continued desire to physically own media, either. First, there’s also the very real situation faced by millions and millions of potential console owners across the world whereby they just don’t have fast enough broadband to achieve anything but the poorest quality video streams.
The numbers of people affected by this are reducing, of course, as fast broadband infrastructure expands. However, even the most optimistic predictions show that we’re looking at a time frame far beyond the lifespan of the PS4 Pro before the number of people who don’t have broadband fast enough to receive a decent standard 4K picture becomes statistically insignificant.
You don't have good broadband? Tough.
You could understand, too, how people living in areas with poor broadband coverage could feel pretty affronted at Sony supposedly deciding to deprive them of a premium AV experience because it thinks streaming has already rendered physical media irrelevant.
Another reason why Sony is just wrong to ignore Ultra HD Blu-ray is simply that the format delivers comfortably the best AV experience. I’ve seen 4K HDR video streams running from the likes of Amazon and Netflix at all kinds of different broadband speeds, including speeds way higher than the basic 20-25Mbps the services recommend for 4K streaming. Yet never has even the fastest connection I’ve seen delivered a picture quality performance to rival what the best Ultra HD Blu-ray discs - such as The Revenant, reviewed here - can do.
Top quality UHD BDs like The Revenant show why physical media still has a place. (Pic: 20th Century... [+]
Let’s not forget, either, that when you start talking about the sort of vast broadband speeds necessary to get the best quality 4K visuals, you’re further limiting the number of ‘qualifying’ households.
Some people have tried to explain Sony’s sudden supposed love for streaming by pointing out that it has a vested interest in pushing streaming following the launch of its high-quality - but expensive - ULTRA streaming service. But Sony’s movie wing also sells Ultra HD Blu-ray discs - and from what I’ve seen so far, it cares more about the video quality of the UHD BD discs it puts out than arguably any other brand!
The fact that Sony’s console division is just part of a wider and very diverse company has also led some to speculate that Sony left an Ultra HD Blu-ray deck out of the PS4 Pro so as not to interfere future sales of stand-alone Sony Ultra HD Blu-ray decks. But of course, Sony didn’t apply this thinking when it put a Blu-ray player - to great success and acclaim - into the PS3.
What’s more, fascinating though such ‘company strategy’ arguments might be, if you believe them they all ultimately boil down to the same end result: that Sony willfully chose to deny PS4 Pro buyers a key feature because it wanted to boost the profits of other parts of its business. Even to the point of expecting Sony fans to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a future stand-alone Sony UHD BD player when you can get one and a games console in the Xbox One S for $299.
Personally, I just don’t buy this. Sony might be going through tough times, but such deliberate and cynical exploitation of its diverse operations just doesn’t feel right. Especially in the context of its console business, where part of the PS4’s success has been built on Sony building a reputation for openness, listening to gamers, and giving them what they want.
Bad timing
So let’s now get to what I believe is the real and rather sad reason there’s no Ultra HD Blu-ray drive in the PS4 Pro: Sony as a company just didn't have one ready to use in time.
The thing is, Sony has been surprisingly, almost bizarrely slow at getting its Ultra HD Blu-ray player operation off the ground. Samsung and Panasonic both launched players to coincide with the arrival of the first Ultra HD Blu-ray discs way back in April, and these debut decks have been joined since by a US stand-alone player from Philips plus, of course, the August-launched Xbox One S.
The first time we got even a sniff of any Ultra HD Blu-ray action from Sony, however, was at the recent IFA technology show in Berlin, where Sony was exhibiting a player that turned out to be nothing more than a dummy, early prototype box.
Sony has recently confirmed that its first player, the UBP-X1000ES, will go on sale next March - still six months away, and a year after the first UHD BD players went on sale. What’s more, even when it appears, Sony’s debut stand-alone Ultra HD Blu-ray deck will not be a mass market proposition but rather - as I reported in an earlier story - a massively high-end affair aimed at the custom installation market.
Late to the UHD BD party
In other words, Sony is, on a company wide basis, comfortably more than a year off the mass market Ultra HD Blu-ray player pace. Couple this fact with the length of time the PS4 Pro has presumably been in development and the need to get it out comfortably ahead of Project Scorpio, and it would surely have been essentially impossible for the PS4 Pro to include a UHD BD player without sourcing one almost wholesale from an external OEM like Microsoft did for the Xbox One S.
And while being part of a large, multi-faceted company like Sony doubtless has its advantages, buying in an Ultra HD Blu-ray player from a non-Sony source would presumably have been untenable given the brand's - usually admirable - desire to add its own special processing sauce and product eco-system to any core component.
All of which brings me, finally, to the question of exactly why Sony as a company has been so slow to adopt Ultra HD Blu-ray. I actually asked this exact question to Sony’s consumer electronics (rather than gaming) division, and the reply I got was essentially the reason I wrote this article.
Far from backing up the suggestion by Sony’s gaming division that the PS4 Pro didn’t need an Ultra HD Blu-ray player because streaming was taking over, Sony’s CE division states that it’s been waiting to launch an Ultra HD Blu-ray player until 4K distribution via disc becomes ‘common’ - something it seems to anticipate happening as early as next year.
Here's the full Sony CE statement: “4K is becoming mainstream first through streaming, and then through broadcasts. Only after this will 4K content start to become commonly distributed on discs, and we are anticipating more of this going forward. Sony will thus bring a distinctly “Sony,” high-quality 4K Blu-ray disc player equipped with Sony’s latest technologies to market at the appropriate time, in a way that is consistent with market demand for 4K discs. Sony hopes to invigorate the 4K market in this way.”
You can’t help but think that a more confident Sony CE division might have sought to ‘invigorate the 4K market’ by introducing an Ultra HD Blu-ray player into a massively popular product like the PS4 Pro, just as it did with Blu-ray in the PS3.
The simple and slightly sad reality, though, is that this time round Sony has chosen a different path for its handling of the next-gen disc format. And the unfortunate victim of this choice is the PS4 Pro.
We will, of course, have to wait for hard sales data before we can get a feel for just how costly the PS4 Pro’s lack of Ultra HD Blu-ray support may prove to be. And let me reiterate the point that the PS4 Pro is certainly not short of other attractions to keep cash registers ringing.
I’m confident, though, that having no UHD BD support will cost Sony's gaming division SOMETHING over the coming months. Furthermore, knowing that the likely real reasons for the PS4 Pro not having a UHD BD deck were to some extent outside the control of Sony’s PS4 division is hardly going to make punters feel any better about it.
