Sony has surreptitiously made the PS4 more powerful for game creators.
Some inside digging into a recent update to the software development kit has revealed that the Japanese company unlocked the 7th CPU core in the PS4, and developers now have access to utilizing it. The note that was found by Beyond3d Developer forum in the update reads as follows:Â “PS4–Added FMOD_THREAD_CORE6 to allow access to the newly unlocked 7th core.”
What does this mean? Not much right now, but in the future, we’ll see the results of developers utilizing more of those 8 cores built into the PS4. Obviously, this is a good way of giving developers some extra juice to make grander games, without needing to actually change the hardware platform itself.
Microsoft took a similar approach last year, and so far it seems to have worked. There’s more graphical parity seen in games available on both the Xbox One and PS4. I would imagine that even if we don’t see a jump in graphical fidelity on PS4 games, we will at least get smoother experiences if developers choose to utilize the new core.
Home consoles are quite underpowered right now in comparison to PCs, so squeezing every bit of extra power is pretty necessary. As of now, the PC platform is looking like the more appealing place to play.
What do you think about Sony taking the same approach as their competitors? Is this a smart move? Do you think it will make much of a difference? Let us know in the comments below.
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