Evolution of the PlayStation 4 Pro

Many of the differences may seem obvious, particularly as it relates to the specs and graphics of the two systems. But truly gaming has come a long way in the past 20 years.

The original PlayStation console was released in September of 1995 in North America and Europe. With processing power at only 33mhz, it really seems insane stocking up to the PS4 Pro’s 64 bit-AMD based Jaguar, rocking 8 cores at 2.1ghz.

You’re going to want to laugh at this, but the original Playstation had only 2mb of System RAM, and the video RAM was at 1mb. Compare this to the PlayStation 4 Pro with a system RAM of 8gb of GDDR5 RAM. The original PlayStation ran on CD-ROM, while the Playstation 4 relies on a Blu-Ray disc drive. Twenty years ago, we couldn’t even fathom the amount of storage space available on a Blu-ray disc. A Blu-ray disc could hold up to 50gb of data, whereas an original PlayStation’s CD could only hold 700mb of data… which admittedly was considered impressive at the time. While developers were cramming more and more into their game discs at the time, particularly with games such as Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid, these games clearly pale in comparison to the open game worlds, branching story paths, and insanely deep gameplay packed into contemporary games.

With the original Crash Bandicoot coming in at only 500mb, imagine how many copies of that game can be stored on a single Blu-ray disc today. For game saves, we relied on memory cards that were 1mb each. 1mb! The original PlayStation had output of 640 x 480 pixels, that’s technically a 480i resolution, and it boasted of 16.7 million colors. Today, the PS4 Pro is capable of 3840 x 2160. That’s 4K resolutions, and it’s boasted a bleeding edge color gamut with HDR technology. PS4 has 3 USB-3.0 ports; USB didn’t even find itself in mainstream production and integration until 1996. All we had were proprietary ports that we plugged the controllers into. Do you remember pulling them out and blowing on them if the controllers didn’t work?

Speaking of the controller, the original PlayStation controller had dual analog sticks added not long after its release in 1997. By 1998, the controllers were rebranded as Dual Shock controllers. Now in 2017, we have the Dual Shock 4 Controller, a completely wireless, with 6-axis motion sensing, an LED light bar that changes colors, and a touchpad.

However it is also worth noting that today’s PlayStation 4 Pro is clustered with wonderful things like downloads, software updates, having to be connected to the Internet, DLC, and season passes. The PlayStation 4 is similar to a lot of other examples of modern technology. The more complicated it becomes with moving parts, the more issues and complications it will get. That’s just how things work now… but of course it’s nice to reminisce about just siting down, popping in a new game and not having to wait to play it. You didn’t have to worry about any bug fixes or patches. Games just came the way they were, and often yes that included some minor bugs. Myself, and many other people playing the original PlayStation couldn’t even fathom playing online with other people. But here we are today, playing online more often than we used to sit on the couch and play split-screen with friends.

Obviously the today’s consoles are far from the modest hardware offerings we had in 1997. But it should also be noted how different the way we play and share our experiences has become.

Do you like modern gaming? Are you ok with all the patches, updates, downloads, internet connection issues and complications to get better games? Or are you a bigger fan of the simplicity of games 20 years ago? Because there are a lot of caveats today, games have never been technically crazier, more awesome or ambitious.

If you are younger, and didn’t experience games before the modern era, would you ever go back and experience games from the 90s?