Pretty much made it on par with the Wii then? Dominance in the casual market may never be quite achieved like the Wii and PS2 did.

While I agree it won't match the PS2. Sony has done a couple of smart things to help its legs. For one, by using less custom chips, the price of the PS4 will be able to drop more in line with the PS2. The PS3 didn't drop to $249 til it's 5th year on the market. PS4 will hit that this year, its 4th. He'll, it may even see a cut to $199.  A cut that happened so late in the PS3's lifespan, it made little difference.  That $199 price came along with the launch of the PS4. When the PS5 comes, the PS4 will most likely be $149, with an actual chance Sony can get it down to $99-$129.  That'll do wonders for its legs.

Then, you have the Pro, which uses the same chips as the PS4, only overclocked and doubled up on the GPU. It's going to be enhancing PS4 games til they stop making them and will make it cheaper to make for Sony, allowing for faster price cuts. This year it will definitely be dropping to $349, but there is a possibility Sony gets aggressive and launches a Pro Slim for $299. If so, we're going to see a nice boost in its sales for the coming months.  And I imagine once that thing hits $199, it will be making up ~40% of the PS4's sales.

Like I said, I don't expect the PS4 to beat the PS2, but I don't think we need to worry about its legs. Even after the arrival of the PS5. There's going to be a $250-$300 price gap between the two.  And probably a $150-$200 gap between it and the Pro.

You need to brush up your tech knowledge, otherwise you knew the bolded parts are not viable. They are possible, but require heavy subventionning, which is not what you want to do if your console is nearing EoL.

Prices for RAM Chips have basically doubled since summer last year, with no sign of slowing down or even getting cheaper again. Additionally, GDDR5 is based on DDR3, and the latter is already slowly getting phased out. This eliminates production capacities, risking to drive the price for it's RAM even higher. The RAM alone probably ain't too far of an 80$ pricetag righ now and it's rise is certainly in the way of any price reduction wishes from the console manufacturers to some degree.

The APU Chip in the PS4 ain't too small either, reducing the amount of Chips per wafer (microprocessing chips get purchased on a per wafer basis, so the more fit on one, the cheaper they are) and thus keeping it's price relatively high, though not near Cell regions. but tht one had the advantage of regular die shrinks, which the PS4 chip doesn't have.

Die Shrinks also reduce the power consumption, which allow for a smaller casing if the drop is substancial enough. It was from 28nm to 14nm for the Slim, but the Pro is already produced in 14 nm, and even Intel is having huge problems with their 10nm process, so this rules out a PS4 Pro slim or a PS4 Superslim for a forseeable future

All other parts don't change much in pricing, so they won't get much cheaper either. All in all, I don't see the PS4 dropping below 199$ anytime soon unless they want to subvention the console more strongly again.

That seems very possible, but it does introduce a couple of complications. I think they'd, at the very least, need to allow for the PS4 Pro to receive scaled down PS5 games for the first year or two as is often typical over the last few years for a couple of reasons:

1.) Making PS4 Pro owners feel they got their money's worth

2.) (This one is quite important) Making 3rd party devs and such willing to provide games for the PS5 that take at least some advantage of the upgraded hardware while being able to tap into that enormous PS4 market, as 3rd party devs are always more interested in the previous gen than the new one for the first year or two (more potential for sales)

The scenario we're describing here could make it more difficult for 3rd party devs to develop games which both take advantage of the new hardware but also can meet their profit potential by porting to the PS4, the original being far less powerful at that point.

The solution (in my mind) would be to focus on the ports of the first couple years being compatible only with the PS4 Pro. This would allow them to be more ambitious with their PS5 versions while still profiting from what should be a huge number of (by then) PS4 Pro players, all the while simultaneously allowing PS4 Pro owners to feel they got their money's worth by providing an additional year or two of support. I can say personally that, as a person with an OG PS4, I would feel satisfied with what I received by 2019, but as someone who is planning to get the Pro this holiday season I'd like to see support for more than a couple years (the hardware is strong enough to justify it).

That's how it would ideally work out for me, anyway. Outside of that, I'd like to see the Switch offer an upgrade in a couple of years in which only the tablet itself is swapped (allowing for a much lower price without the joycons/dock/adaptor/memory stick etc), which could allow it to keep pace without requiring a huge consumer investment over the next six or so years. As opposed to this recent launch, it appears they'll probably have the luxury to time their next release better with the development of improved processors and batteries, so it should be capable of more bang for the buck as well.

Finally, as for how to count mid gen tiers, I don't have much problem with combining the sales of original models and later upgrades, as it's something we've been doing with Nintendo's handhelds for years now. I think it'd be pretty awesome if the PS4 winds up with enormous sales and the Switch/Xbox1 both clear 50 million or more, as it'd be pretty funny to post those final numbers from what was supposed to be the last legit console gen to some of those "Consoles are doomed" threads lol

PS2 didnt get to 157M because people wanted a cheap dvd player back in 2000, it kept on selling after PS3 because it was so cheap and affordable enough to continue selling in emerging markets. Launch aligned PS4 is beating PS2. Also VHS was still king in 2000, in 2002 I bought a dvd player for 50 euro or so.

PS4 is well on its way to do ~100M in just 6 years, it wont have PS2 legs but it also wont collapse like the PS3 did.

I think aligned next year is when Wii loses steam, not sure if it was 2010 or 2011 when it collapsed.

PS2 didnt get to 157M because people wanted a cheap dvd player back in 2000, it kept on selling after PS3 because it was so cheap and affordable enough to continue selling in emerging markets. Launch aligned PS4 is beating PS2. Also VHS was still king in 2000, in 2002 I bought a dvd player for 50 euro or so.

PS4 is well on its way to do ~100M in just 6 years, it wont have PS2 legs but it also wont collapse like the PS3 did.