Sony: "New IP is the lifeblood of the industry"

[Mr Khan]

There is certainly a benefit to pushing out new IPs at the end of the generation: by then you can do things with the hardware that are more ambitious, yet at the same time cheaper due to the degree to which the hardware has been mastered. If you get a superhit, great, then you have something new and strong with which to lead into the next generation (which could work out well for Sony with Last of Us), if not, then it's less likely to be as damning as a Lair or a Haze, run early in the gen when (especially for PS3) development costs were higher.