Did the Wii U force Sony to cut how much power the PS4 will have?

[Crono141]

VGKing said:

Kenology said:

Wonder what pezus and oniyide have to say about this...

Anyways, as I've been saying for two months now, I always predicted that the PS4 wouldn't be the graphical leap that so many were expecting. Some Sony fans think I'm crazy and proceeded the knock the Wii U for not being the leap over the PS360 that the want and said the PS4 would be just that. I wonder if they change their tune once the PS4 isn't the leap that they expect and suddenly become fine with the PS4 being "underpowered" (the word they used to describe the Wii U) after knocking the Wii U so much for not being a huge leap. Not saying the OP is true. But I don't doubt that it may end up being true.

We shall see!

 

EDIT:  I don't think the WiiU had anything to do with this decision, assuming it's true.  It's moreso Sony learning its lesson that a powerful Godbox that's expensive to develop for and selling at a loss will mean the end of them.

Did you not read these specs? 8-16gigs of RAM(4-8 for retail versions) and one of the newest AMD APUs. 
From the looks of this, this is already a much better console than the PS3. I'd say at the very least, 2 Wii U's taped together.

The thing about the Wii U is that it is a weak console for being next-gen. Especially considering the fact that it is directly competing with 360/PS3 right now. We haven't seen any games that give off that next-gen vibe.(not power-wise). With Wii U its all about the controller. If it wasn't for that controller, the Wii U could be launching in 2 weeks at $250. Compare this to the PS4 which will most likely launch at $400.

Running an x86/x64 instruction set.  Its a non-specialized chip that is a great general purpose chip, but as the brains behind a game console it isn't the best.  Don't expect much more out of it than the Wii U gives us.

I see Sony doing this as part of their plan to avoid import taxes in several regions by claiming the PS4 is actually a home computer.  They tried this with both the PS2 and PS3 by including the option to install another OS (Other OS in PS3, purchased add-on for PS2).  If anything, it looks to me like they WILL launch a home computer in the PS4 with the downside being that it is not well tuned for dedicated gaming.

Who knows, it may run linux out of the box, with a steam-like download service.  With Valve spearheading the gaming market on Linux, I could see Sony trying to capitalize on the expanded Linux gaming possibilities and at the same time attempt to cannabalize PC game sales.

Other than cutting hardware costs, that or a similar strategy is the only reason why I can think sony would go for an x86 chip.  Likewise with Microsoft.