Devs Answer: How will the PlayStation 4 Pro impact your business?

This week’s announcement of the PlayStation 4 Pro finally ended the months-long speculation regarding Sony’s plans for a mid-generation console upgrade. 

Its somewhat understated revelation mostly focused on how the more powerful PS4 would handle 4K and HDR resolutions, and while it made for an impressive tech display, we wanted to know how devs thought it would affect their work.

So for this week’s #DevsAnswer column, we decided to run a simple poll. How did our developer readership, which has seen multiple kinds of console upgrades come and go, think this would affect their business?

The answer was surprisingly mild, given the previously divisive discussions about the console. 

Remember, if you're interested in participating in these conversations in the future, make sure to follow @Gamasutra on Twitter. The questions usually go out on Fridays in the late morning, Pacific time, alongside tweets of our regular news, blogs, and original writing.

Dev responses to the PlayStation 4 Pro turned out to be surprisingly even-handed. Nearly half who responded said it didn’t affect their work, which at first makes sense because a plurality of developers likely wouldn’t be working on PlayStation 4 games, but given how popular the platform is for indies and AAA games these days, it’s interesting to see how many respondents are essentially not interested in developing for 4K gaming. 

That said, along with the reasonably normal amount of doom and gloom that shows up when developers discuss these new mid-generation update consoles, a fair amount of respondents were optimistic about how it could affect VR. In fact, it’s the same percentage of respondents who were optimistic in our first poll about the PS4 Neo. 

As previously discussed, developers have also expressed a concern that both Sony and Microsoft need to improve their communication with developers when it comes to these new platforms. Hopefully this week’s reveal means that Sony representatives will be able to talk to developers at length about the new console, and how it can support their development needs.