Sony appears to have learnt absolutely nothing from the PS3 if this console is more powerful then the Nextbox anymore powerful then .5x. Sony does not need a super power console supporting such high resolutions is a future proofing attempt but today how many consumers have these TV's? 1080p was barely supported last generation and that was with 1080p already becoming the standard. Retailers were already selling 1080p TV's as the new standard. The lack of 1080p support didn't adversely effect any of the consoles even towards the end when 1080p is now very common. Do we need such high resolution capabilities? Will consumers in large enough numbers have the TV's to actually play the games in such high resolutions?
The power capabilities are very very impressive. But will developers fork over the needed R&D budget to make state of the art software for the console? How expensive will software have to become to give developers a chance at breaking even let alone turning a profit?
On the flip side I always predicted Sony would slightly beat Microsoft power wise. I expected a nextbox roughly 6x the power of 360 and the PS4 being 8-10x the power. But when I hear Epic stating that the Nextbox is running Samaritan at full power which Epic stated was 10x the power it scares me. Then Epic stated Unreal4 will make Samaritan look like a piece of shit.
How powerful are these new machines going to be? How expensive will the software need to cost?
Then Sony not including backwards compatibility again. How good did that work out with PS3? I remember tons of complaints about the PSOne software not running on PS3's and PS2 software not working well. When backwards compatibility was cancelled millions were royally pissed. I know employees at retailers who began advising people to buy 360's because they had at least some backwards compatibility.
I have no doubt if PS3's backwards compatibility had been fixed and implemented at an affordable price the hardware would have sold better. PS2's would have remained on store shelves far longer and software sales would have been maintained.
Then this whole locking the software crap. I did see this coming I suggested making the software playable on up to five machines but not locking it to a single PSN account. I can see the advantages to linking it with PSN it allows the customer to download the title to the hard drive meaning scratching the disk or losing it won't matter. However what if I want to bring the game to a friends house, I need to put my PSN account on his console? If I chose to lend the game out to other friends they will also need my PSN, like hell I want that. Now the question would be how.many hardware units will it be playable on? One hardware unit with my PSN or five like DLC is allowed.
Either way linking the games play ability to a PSN account is suicide. At least if it was playable on five pieces of hardware not linked at all to PSN at least then consumers could lend out the game and play it on other hardware while also preventing used sales.
But either way its risky. However Microsoft is supposedly implementing similar tech so it would not surprise me.
But if Microsoft and Sony both put an end to used game sales in any fashion it gives Nintendo a massive advantage. To my knowledge Nintendo is not implementing such features. GameStop would promote Nintendo at all costs it would benefit them more. GameStop makes so much money off of used games and they would give Nintendo anything Nintendo wanted to keep up the sales. We'd see retailers that sell used games giving Nintendo twice the shelf space the advertising and the retailers would promote the shit out of Nintendo.
Which would be bad for Sony. Especially if the hardware costs are significantly higher then Nintendo. Then if software costs are driven higher and Nintendo not only has cheaper new software but also used games Sony is screwed.
The economy is not doing well and while their will always be consumers for high end content. That market is far smaller and Nintendo will be able to produce high quality software at affordable prices.
If this is true I deem Sony will have to launch the console at 399.99$-450$ tops. Game prices will have to cost between 69.99$-79.99$ higher will make the software to expensive for the majority of consumers. While real gamers will be willing to part with 100$ a game they are not the average consumer. At 79.99$ game publishers and studios simply won't be able to create state of the art content taking advantage of the hardware. Every single title being released on the PS4 would be a risk. A title would have to sell 2-4 million copies to break even or be a success at the prices of development on a next generation system. That is simply to high for most developers and publishers.
This is bad news for the consumers and developers. I suspect THQ, Atari, Majesco, Sega and many other publishers simply won't be able to take such high risks. Ubisoft, Activision, EAGames and maybe Take-2 will be the only big publishers able to support the new hardware fully out of the gate. Which will be exactly what happened when PS3 launched very few publishers were able to support the hardware and big guns like Midway died trying!
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
