The Console Race: Did Sony Diet Too Early?

[Scoobes]

nightsurge said:

Scoobes said:
I don't think looking at time spans of the previous PS slim releases is the best way to analyse the position of the PS3 slim as this time it came about out of neccessity rather than elongation of product life-span. I wouldn't put it past Sony to have plans already in place to elongate the lifespan of PS3 as a product. They keep touting this 10yr plan so it wouldn't suprise me if they have at least some secret plans ready for execution.

Also, whilst Natal may be getting all the attention, Sony's dildo... ahem... "Wand" will also be releasing, and probably for cheaper than Natal (Natal looks to incoporate more complicated tech than the Wand). I also don't see MS releasing a revised slim version of 360. Partly because their strength isn't in hardware, but software and also because they'd need to design the it around some of the periphals (mainly the HDD).

I briefly mentioned the Natal/Sony Wand tech into it, but didn't expand as I didn't want to make this a giant wall of text.

In my view, Natal and Sony's Motion will likely in the end cost the same, or possibly have the Sony Motion being more expensive.  It all depends on Wand pricing and whether you will need more wands to have the full experience.  If for instance you need 8 wands for 4 person games, that could increase costs quite a bit, where as Natal is and all in one purchase that automatically supports up to 4 players.

As far as the slim/revision to the 360, I feel they would likely focus on making it shorter (vertical stand position).  They could shrink the motherboard quite a bit, especially if they merge the chips in the Valhalla revision.  Then all they need to do is for once make a decent cooling system which would be much smaller and cheaper thanks to chip reductions.  This way so long as they keep the actual width the same it always supports all hard drives.  They could also just redesign it in a way that the HDD fits on top or sides or something, but the way I described would be the easiest for cutting costs and maintaining backwards compatibility with peripherals.

@Smashed:  I was not saying this at all.  In fact I said I expect it to repeat it's 2007/2008 performance to even a higher degree.  I am just saying thinking long term past 2010, have Sony lost one of their biggest moves?

That's a good point on the costs, but I think out of the box the wand thing will cost less than Natal, with the tech and R&D costs for Natal being significantly higher than the Wand as far as I can tell. Also MS definately has a huge 1up on the marketing side so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

I still very much doubt MS doing a hardware revision, they just don't seem to be able to design stable hardware, but with the success Sony's had I suppose its a possibility. As long as they don't screw up on design again and cool it properly as opposed to lazy and passive cooling. Seriously, I think half the PC gamer's on this site could have designed a more stable console.