Is the PlayStation 4.5 real? Could it someday be real? We don’t know the answer to either of these questions, but the shocking rumor that Sony is developing an incremental hardware upgrade to the PlayStation 4 set the gaming media on fire this past weekend. Here’s the gist, if you missed it: according to rather nebulous rumors, Sony may be working on a PS4.5 that supports 4K resolution and more advanced VR tech out of the box. If it exists, the device would upend the traditional console race. But I’m a Nintendo reporter, so I have to wonder—if the PS4.5 is real, what does that mean for the Nintendo NX?
Sony PlayStation 4.5: Who One-Ups The One-Ups-Men?
If Sony does introduce a mid-cycle console upgrade, it would disrupt the console cycle, which has yet to reach its midpoint this generation. Trouble is, Nintendo already has plans to disrupt that cycle with the release of the Nintendo NX, heavily rumored to be debuting later this year. Nintendo’s hardware has been substantially behind its competitors, by choice, since the beginning of the Wii era. The Nintendo NX would bring it back to parity, a few years late, with the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.
Nintendo has suffered greatly from not having a console with similar power to its competitors. It has lost out on a great deal of third-party support, since converting games to the Wii and later the Wii U wasn’t an easy feat. The Wii U in particular has increasingly become something of a tied house—it has tons of great Nintendo games, but not much else, especially cross-platform titles. The Nintendo NX is rumored to change all that, through accessible architecture and similar power.
But the PlayStation 4.5 would put Nintendo’s competitors—one of them, anyway—ahead again. All the leaked rumors about the Nintendo NX point to a system that’s roughly at parity with the PS4, by no means worlds ahead of its competition. It probably won’t have 4K support and certainly won’t push VR.
In short, the PlayStation 4.5 could really steal Nintendo’s thunder, cut the wind out from under the Nintendo NX, and commit other weather-related metaphors (rain on its parade, even?). That’s if the PS4.5 is actually real, comes in at a competitive price point, offers software that encourages gamers to upgrade to new hardware early in a cycle and actually manages to catch on. Those are a lot of big “if’s,” particularly the question of whether the rumor has any real basis in fact or not. But if it is real—it could spell a certain amount of trouble for the Nintendo NX, which could be—and really kind of needs to be—Nintendo’s salvation.
