| potato_hamster said: Just like the PS4 Pro, it doesn't need to exist, it's not going to sell well, and it's not going to make any significant impact in the video game industry. |
I think you're looking it as a short term strategy. It's clear that console gens won't take 5 years anymore. A bunch of games takes 5 years to be developed, gens must become longer to accomodate this development cycle. Reducing the need to adapt to new platforms is also a plus that cuts development costs down. I know we all want the latest and greatest, but we unfortunately have to hold things a bit so studios can actually make money instead of going bankrupt.
While the last gen went for 7 years, it sufffered a lot in the final 2 because the hardware was too outdated. And those were consoles that were pretty powerful when launched. PS4 and X1 never were so powerful and that's reasonable because PS360 needed billions of dollars of losses until they became profitable. They were powerful so they could last but it didn't worked.
The new strategy is to launch moderately powerful units and release a more powerful unit mid-gen. When the gen is close to its end, the more powerful unit will be way cheaper. Maybe even the base model will already be discontinued. Late adopters will buy those. So the problem of extremely dated hardware will be gone, since the new units won't be significantly more dated in 2020 that the base models are now. As for early adopters with the base model, they will jump to the PS5/Xnextgen quick, so nobody will be that outdated anymore.
Imagine how some early current gen ports to PS360 like MGS5, Shadow of Mordor, CoD and BF4 could be way better if we had Pro versions in 2010. They are just trying to make longer gens viable to allow them (and developers) to profit instead of dying off or having to rip us off even more with DLC and microtransactions.
