Why PS4 won't be cutting edge, and neither will Xbox3 - or Why Nintendo might win next gen

[DanneSandin]

freebs2 said:

DanneSandin said:

The rumor has it that xbox3 will come bundled with Kinect 2.0, so that's gotta be more expansive than the version we got today. As I stated in the OP, I believe 3rd party developers would make games for WiiStation (if they're similar in power) and therefore not utilizing Xbox3's ful capacity.

You could be right but it depends on how much the newest game engines and tools are scalable. Also why should Ps4 and WiiU be similar in power? WiiU it's not a big genertion jump for Ps3 and 360 owners, in terms of graphics at least. I understand Sony can't probably afford to sell on loss anymore but the ps4 needs to be significantly more powerfull than WiiU otherwise, ps3 owners won't see a generation gap to justify the console upgrade.

Imo a possible sceario is Ps4 launching between 399$ and 499$ by the end of 2013 (by that time the WiiU could likely be sold at profit for 249$ and 299$). Supposing the ps4 won't have a tablet-pad but a reagular controller, this should be enough to make the console more powerfull than WiiU by a significant margin and still selling on profit. I think the paragon between Ps4 and WiiU is fair enough since both will have to face the same exchange rates porblem.

Also you're making an assumption when you implicitly say, developers will want to create an equivalent port of their games on every possible platform. This has happened this gen because market shares were more or less equally split. But you can't know if same thing is going to happen next-gen. During Ps2/GC/Xbox days, the ps2 got the most of 3rd party exclusives, and that's obviously not because the games couldn't be ported on GC and Xbox but simply because the Ps2 was a dominant console. Now let's say, to make another assumption, microsoft will go aggressive next-gen and will launch a cutting-edge xbox3 for a similar price to the (not cutting edge but tecnically superior to WiiU) Ps4. In this case the Xbox3 could have tha chance to gather both ex-360 users and ex-ps3 users and become a new dominant console, hence it could give 3rd parties a reason to fully utilize xbox3 capacity.

 

Crono141 is right you know; the economy won't allow a system launching at $499. I'd say that no system will launch above $399.99 and be successful in the coming years.

And if you read the OP you'll see why Sony won't be able to launch a console for more than $399. And regarding your comment on engines and their scaleability; apparently UE4 will be very scaleble; in fact, so much that it'll be supported by smartphones... So, WiiU will probably have that one as well. And yes, PS3 owners are gonna want a generation leap to purchase a new system. But it's not gonna be anything like the leap from PS2 to PS3. Wasn't PS1 to PS2 a generation leap as well? Yes, it was - and that's the kind of leap we'll see nect gen.

I'm assuming that all 3 consoles will get equel 3rd party support because of the costs of developing games nowadays. We all know it cost a shit load making games this past gen for PS360, and it's this reason that's making your "PS2 exclusive 3rd party support" invalid. Back then, having 3rd party exclisives worked - it was of the business had worked for 2 decades. But that business model fell through when development costs rose through the roof this gen. Nowadays there's only a handful of 3rd party games that's exclusive. Tekken, Sonic, Dragons Dogma, Skyrim, Madden, Fifa, Batman - they're all multiplat. That's how things work these days.

But yes, if X3ox is HUGE (in the same way PS2 was huge) then they'll probably get exclusive 3rd party games. But if it's huge like Wii was, they ain't getting shit (just like Wii). If it becomes a media hub for families and only gets 2 games per consoles each year it ain't gonna get 3 party games.