| Squilliam said: If the hardware losses as implied are this low, then they must be losing money on something else. There are only 3 areas where they have big enough expenses to really lose all that money. 1. Advertising? They must be spending a lot here. 2. Game development? Face it, all HD publishers have been making losses and I doubt that Sony is any different. 3. Research and development? If they're spending heavily here, it means Console number 4 is inbound sooner than you think. |
3. It takes some years to develop a new console, not less than 4, most likely 5, and by at least one year (better 1and 1/2 year) before release they must be able to give developers a working development system for launch titles. So if they started development in late 2008-early 2009, just to make a hypothesis, it could mean a 2013-2014 PS4 release, totally coherent with a planned lifecycle of at least 7 years as main console and 2-3 years (even more if it keeps on selling) as entry level console. So yes, I agree. Curiously there are still people that don't understand that a 10 years lifecycle doesn't mean the next system is released after 10 years from the previous, some companies make latest and previous generations of their products overlap for a period, and Sony is amongst these ones (In other markets, like cars, Renault has currently done it with old and new Clio for a period quite long, not only to clear old stocks, FIAT has sold both old and new Punto for years, with the old one catering for a lower segment, just like Renault does, while Citroen and VW do it for shorter periods, in razors and blades market Gillette sells Mach3, Fusion and older models, etc).
