I have to laugh at people who say that ps4 will not be that much more powerful if they release it at $399. First off, while they probably don't want to lose $200 per console like last time, it is reasonable for all consoles (except the Wii was different I believe) to lose some money upon release per console. Lets just say $50 per console.
When the ps3 was first released, Intel was just releasing their first dual core computers. On top of that, graphics were absolutely nothing compared to now, and they still cost a lot of money. What did we get in the ps3? A single core with 8 SPUs running at 3.2 GHz and an amazing graphics card. It was considered a very cheap alternative to a super computer if you linked a # of them together.
Nowadays, for essentially the same exact price that you could possibly get one of the first dual core laptops in the era of the release of the ps3, you can get a core i7 processor (quad core, dual threaded (essentially 8 core)) along with a graphics card that has 1GB of independent memory and 6gb of RAM on the cpu. If you don't believe me, I've been looking at laptops a lot lately, and yes, you can have this computer for ~$1000.
What I'm getting at is the ps3 absolutely blew away everything from its time and cost $600 ($800 to produce). If they were to release a console that cost $400 ($450 to produce), rather than completely blow the competition away, it would probably be similar to the top competition of the time. I'm guessing it will have the Cell infastructure, but it could probably be compared to really high end i7 processors, if not even a little more than that. On top of that, while the graphics don't need tons of improvement, they would be able to insert a much better graphics card for a relatively cheap price. The system would also have more RAM.
Basically what I am getting at is that if/when the ps4 comes out, it will have a processor that absolutely woops the Cell, considerably more memory, and a much better graphics card for a cheaper release price. Now my thoughts are: in the last 10 years, games continued to make leaps and bounds of improvement, leading to the necessity of a lot better compueters. Obviously, the graphics and whatnot are still making improvements in games, but I feel like it is much slower than it used to be. What I'm getting at is hopefully this will mean that consoles (and cpus) will have much faster loading times, etc. in the future. I know it is just 1 stupid little part, but sometimes I get irritated when I'm waiting for my game to load for 10 seconds instead of 1.
Money can't buy happiness. Just video games, which make me happy.
