Will the PS4 and Xbox One receive 4K support this year?

Will the PS4 and Xbox One receive 4K support this year?

Consumer electronics companies have begun the 4K push, and now it seems everyone is scrambling to get their houses in order. The PS4 and Xbox One are already technically capable of outputting 4K video, but considering how much these consoles struggle to reach 1080p, is 4K really feasible with the existing hardware? Netflix seems to think we’re in for PS4 and Xbox One hardware revisions this year, but are Sony and Microsoft willing to burn their early adopters?

Back in January, Netflix’s Neil Hunt said publicly that Sony had supposedly promised a PS4 hardware revision with improved 4K support in mind. Earlier this week, Forbes followed up with Hunt, and he maintains that both the Xbox One and PS4 will see hardware refreshes at around the two-year mark. Specifically, he believes that they’ll include updated internals aimed at supporting 4K video playback.

The Forbes article posits that the console makers could move to HDMI 2.0, include a dedicated H.265 decoder, and implement HDCP 2.2 support. I asked ExtremeTech’s resident hardware expert Joel Hruska for his thoughts, and while he agrees that the updated hardware is within the realm of possibility, there are other solutions available. Specifically, Joel believes that Sony and Microsoft could work with AMD to implement functional software-based H.265 decoders using either the CPU or the GPU on the existing hardware. Truth be told, a hardware refresh isn’t necessarily required for 4K video support.

More importantly, native 4K gaming is never going to happen in a meaningful capacity with this generation’s CPUs and GPUs, so the 2160p30 limitation of HDMI 1.4 isn’t a major factor. After all, the vast majority of video is still being produced at 24 or 30 frames per second. Without 60fps games to play at 4K, why should they even bother moving to HDMI 2.0 for the current generation?

The PS4 and Xbox One will most certainly be redesigned at some point, but I’m skeptical that either console maker is willing to implement major new features. For example, the PS3 Slim was released three years after the initial PS3 launch, but it was largely a cost-cutting measure. While it became slimmer and more power efficient, it actually lost some features from the previous models. Considering how sensitive these companies are to consumer backlash, I find it hard to believe that either one will attempt to screw over the early adopters — especially since we’re not even at the two-year anniversary yet.