| forevercloud3000 said: What a silly Question... Of course there will be a PS4.......many many years in the future. As of right not wht PS3 is here to stay. The system is not doing nearly as bad as many would have you believe. So what if it is in 3rd place. So was gamecube, Nintendo survived. Plus the idea of scrapping the PS3 now for another high tech system is stupid. What, is Sony suppose to make a weaker system then the PS3 for the PS4? I think not. A new system would have to be an upgrade, not downgrade, meaning the sytem would be even more exspensive. Now that just doesn't make sense. |
Definitely, but not everyone who has an opinion on this seems to be operating on logic.
Back to back platform commercial failures are what dropped Sega from the hardware business. And those two also ran platforms were actually preceded by two other half step platform upgrades that were not fully supported (Sega CD, 32X), losing name brand loyalty each step along the way.
If the PS3 was Sony's Saturn (overly expensive, complicated architecture, hard to develop for, no real benefits over the competition in the games themselves), then a Dreamcast-like PS4 could conceivably pull SCE from the hardware business unless they decided to keep the MS approach of continually throwing money into a division until it can float on its own.
But, keep in mind that what trumped the DC, was the imminent release of the PS2 and the overwhelming third party support it had gathered on board. Different situation entirely unless Sony manages to lose most of its third party support completely.
However, most third party developers don't have the luxury of sticking with one platform only under the current conditions of higher development costs, etc.
What Sony needs to work on is not rushing another console out the door ahead of the competition (Dreamcast), but sticking to the same game plan used over the last two generations: reduce costs, achieve profitability, reduce developer costs, reduce retail prices, increase user base/marketshare.
In otherwords, just make the PS3 cheaper and easier to develop for from both a technical and financial standpoint.
A new platform obviously isn't going to accomplish that.
Not to mention the next Sony console will almost certainly continue use of the CBE architecture, potentially with more CPUs as was the original design of the PS3 (nixed due to costs and replaced with the RSX). It seems unlikely that they'll attempt another launch above $299 next time around if they want to see strong sales off the starting line.
