Again, Sony managed to get the OS on the PS3 down to 50MB from 120MB at launch, they're not using college interns here, they have skilled software engineers working on this stuff, both companies will squeeze as much as they can out of system resources over the life of the consoles.

The Apocalypse is cancelled.

@krakn3dfx: we aren't gaf. We don't flip out over this stuff. And I think both systems will cut down the OS footprint before release.

someone's gotta spin this stuff positively for sony.

@syed117: you mean that Sony needs space for their OS system? How is that bad? It means hopefully it won't be crap.

@mcfart: I think this is absurd. Sony has primarily been an electronics company in the past, but that doesn't mean they don't have experience developing software. They didn't just take the guy who designs TVs and told him to program the OS for PS4. Any company can hire skilled software engineers.

Yes, but when it comes to developing for X86, nobody can deny that MS probably has the best people out there. Plus, MS is making the OS similier to Windows. I just can't see Sony winning this RAM battle.

I think sony will be fine. Look what they did this gen with only 256 ram. Uncharted and the last of us. Sony still has the more processing power but since it is both x86 things should be even except the DX11 hurdle that sony will need to face.

No no. I dont think this is a big deal We never knew how much ram the PS4 OS was going to use. People assumed that it would only take 1gb and leave 7gb for games. No one knows where that came from.

It's just the internet being the internet. This kind of stuff really doesn't matter. Especially since the XB1 is only using a little less according to what has gotten out there.

You're going to have people trashing the PS4 because of this and you'll have the sony defense force jumping in to defend their lord and savior Sony at any cost. Both groups are foolish.

We've already see which giantbomb members are on which side. I'll give you a hint, the sony ones usually win out because they constantly go to the xbox forum and create topics just to explain how terrible the xbox one and microsoft are. The microsoft guys tend to stay on their own side.

The only real fact to take away from this seems to be that the PS4 has baseline ram allotment of 4.5GB that developers can use. That flexible 1gb nonsense seems like nothing but that, nonsense. Saying that the OS will have to allow the extra ram to be used is a bit ridiculous. How exactly do you force the OS to give up extra ram? I guess that's why the article clearly says that it will be difficult to use. I wouldn't expect third parties to make use of it. First parties absolutely.

I think it's safe to assume that this won't be the last bombshell to rattle the internet babies cages. Oh well, can't wait for gamescom and then November

Games on PC dont even use 4GB of RAM half the time, I dont get why people are getting soo jumpy.

I have faith in our Lord and Savior Mark Cerny, that he will fix this issue and add more RAM in the later times of the Ps4's life cycle.

Ps4 Launch Console is not equal to the rest of Ps4's life cycle. As previous console's have shown, is that console's evolve over time and improve more and more. This problem will barely be remembered 6 months to a year after launch I bet.

@lord_xp: you can't just "Add more ram" to a console

That's called a PC

That's probably because they were developed with consoles in mind. I think even when they are PC exclusive games they have to keep the ram need low for more coverage of computer specs.

@syed117: You could make it possible to make the OS use less ram and giving that ram to the game. That's later on though.

I apologize by saying "Add more RAM" Not what I meant.

I can deny that. There are a lot of great developers who don't work for Microsoft. That doesn't mean that they don't have great software engineers also, but I would never say they have the best. If they did, we wouldn't have gone through generations of blue screens. Heck, even current Windows has its issues, even if you don't see those blue screens anymore.

Considering nothing has been confirmed regarding this rumor yet, having proven better RAM, I can easily see Sony still having the edge in terms of RAM.

@scampbell: streaming games/video as well as redcording. Id say it only uses that much doing something like remote play on a vita across wifi.

GDDR5 is suppose to be way better or something than DDR3 from what I gather, that's one of the reasons of the uproar over MS using that much.

While that may be a possibility, DVRs already do this with hard drives. A TiVo keeps a 30-minute buffer of live programming per tuner. My TiVo Premier has 4 tuners, so it's constantly buffering at least 2 hours of programming, with the capability of playing back a previously recorded program at the same time.

This is not a big deal.

@tourgen: I was thinking Unix, but I guess by that context OS X is just as close as Linux.

That's not really a valid metric to work from. Each game is different and on top of that most games in the PC space up until now have been 32bit applications which limits them to 4GB's of addressable memory.

PC devs would kill to be able to have a guaranteed 4.5 to 5.5 gig minimum of RAM and VRAM to work with.

Remember, 3,5 GB is reserved for everything except gaming.

The operating system isn't using 3,5 GB constantly, it is just keeping it reserved for that time a fool wants to use facebook, and stuff.

what games though, crysis 4 or pong?

in all seriousness, i think 8 GB's for games is a lot.
Most games on pc are still 32 bit, ( even fucking BF3! ) and cant eat more than 2 GB by themselves.

i'm not sure these console have the horsepower to render out a scene with 8 GB's worth of assets anyway.
They should know what they are doing by this point, i doubt, and really hope that they haven't under dimensioned the ram this time around.

I will link this again for emphasis and you are correct in saying 6-7g of rams is unneeded, at least for the next 4 years at the very lease. Just so people can get some perspective, the last of us's Joel model are made to work with only 5m of ram! Fucking incredible those guys at naughty dogs.

I feel like social media will someday destroy us all. After E3 and this pre-console launch thing, I finally understand why the governing bodies of the world keep as much secret as they do. A singular human is smart but human as a race is incredibly stupid.

There is a update on Eurogamer saying the Flex ram is 512 Mb.

Since last gen consoles were able to run Crysis 4 I assume next gen ones will too, although I know you were joking.

The whole issue is that people are getting really riled about about how much ram, how many cycles, how much memory, how many transistors these things might have but it's a console so it really doesn't matter. If I was buying a new PC I'd be really specific about what parts I'd purchase because I know PC games continue evolving and the system I buy today might not run games very well in 5 years. When I buy a PS4 today, not only will it always run games games that come out for it, but it will probably run games even better in 5 years than it does now as developers get familiar with the system architecture. Essentially I don't have to care what is inside of it - and since it will never evolve on a hardware level, dissecting what hardware is inside it and comparing it to PC's is pointless.

Next gen systems have SO much more ram anyways. This again is mostly about the " Ha ha PS4 has so much more ram" thing being smacked down a bit. Nothing more.

@the_laughing_man: Well at this point a very clear line has been drawn where if the XBO has less ram then it's "haha it's so much weaker GG Micro$oft c u next generation" but when it happens to the PS4 then it's "well you don't REALLY even need all that ram anyway!"

Console launches bring out the worst in people.

Unfortunately.

But it makes twitter awesome.

@humanity: what? crysis 4 has been released? i must have missed that.

The amount of ram a ps3 has compared to a ps2 is about 12 x, and ps3 to ps4 it's 14x.
Although, its been a longer wait, so its pretty much on track.

If we take whats available to games, which is 462 MB vs 4,5 GB , its about 10x, so not to shabby, especially depending on what games will actually use, 4.5 , 5 or 5.5.
And taking into account that the ps3 initially only had 392 MB available for games at launch, hopefully sony will be able to make some adjustments on the ps4 as well.

comparing specs vs pc's isnt totally pointless, better is always better.
The difference is that the games will be tailored around the ps4 no matter what it is, as opposed to people tailoring pc's around the games.

I'd rather have 5 years of nice looking games than 5 years of okay looking games.

The XBOX ONE uses 3 GB of ist 8 GB of DDR3. Sony gives you 4.5 GB of faster RAM and XB gives you 5 GB of slower RAM. It all comes out in the wash because 4 or 5 GB of RAM is fine for a console. Those folks blowing up over this obviously don't realize that the OS of a system take up 'some' room and has done so since the 32 bit era.

Also, keep in mind that the amount the OS uses can change. Sony or MS might find that it can slim down it OS, or they might find efficiencies so the OS does more but does not require more RAM.

@the_laughing_man: It's decent of ram now, but these consoles will be around for nearly a decade. 7 was more future-proof than 4.5.

Sony were playing up that 'we're all about the gamer' garbage, while nearly half of the memory your paying for is being used up for OS and not games. Microsoft were using 3 gigs for their multi OS and people were wondering if they had forgotten that they were a games console first. Sony seemed like they were doing it the right way, and now -- nope.

What happened to that stuff about developers telling them that they needed 8gb when they weren't sure if they were going to go with 4 or 8?

There is no way those developers saw an OS eating 3.5 gigs of 4 total, so an OS of that size couldn't have been a factor when they were requesting 8.

So all that listening Sony did lasted about 6 months until they decided the front-end was more important than the games?

It seems like they saw MS using 5 and said, 'We only need to match that. It's more important to future-proof the OS than the games so we can match whatever MS do there.'

Which is the opposite of what I want and is the opposite of the image they tried to portray.

In truth out of the 140 million people who bought current gen care about ram and specifics ?

Apparently all of Neogaf.

@jimmyfenix: I'm not talking about other people or whether it's the right move. Honestly future-proofing your OS is probably really smart and more people seem to care about that than I do. I'm only talking about me.

I guess it's just because all Crysis games look the same that I forgot 3 was the last one.

Seeing as a lot of PS3/360 games looked pretty damn good for their specs, I think the next generation will look more than O-K. Although at this point I'm so exhausted by this current generation that I'm leaning more towards better gameplay than flashy graphics. Killzone might look nice but it looks like any other game from this generation, just more flash on the screen, and that is not doing it for me anymore.

Sony issued a statement. which is stated in my original post.

It proves none of us know what the hell we are talking about!

@jimmyfenix: Well I was going to get a PS4 but now that I know it's such a festering, slow, piece of trash I guess I'll wait for the inevitable Phantom release instead.

Both systems have a Atari JAGUAR processor which means it will suck! im waiting for the sega pluto myself.

Or you could always be a PC holdout

November can't come soon enough. Just want those two black boxes under my TV so the speculation can end and the next generation can begin.

Hopefully we will get some interesting news from gamescom.

I think Sony might release it in October i just have that feeling. Its going to be a great couple of months!

Interesting that they never answered the how much ram question but according to some gaf specialistsit is 6 GB for ram + the 512 extra one. This sounds also way more plausible^^

I will say this, tune in for Gamescom. Heard a lot of exciting thing about that, from both sides. If they are going to announce ram usage or whatever. The info will come out then.

I hope you people dont think you use 100% of your 8gb just for games on your pc? Steam uses at least 1.5 gbs and i bet you run that when you are playing games.

Play...the...game...

Reigi was right. Console OS doesn't mean a thing.

I just hope we get dates for both consoles at gamescom. Too many weird rumors flying around. Microsoft has said November, but Sony has only said "holiday." I don't think October really classifies as holiday. They might drop a huge bomb at gamescom with an early release, but I don't see it happening.

remember that time when they were only putting 6 gigs of ram in...