How will Sony fans react if PS4 is not the most powerful Next Gen console?

[novasonic]

BlueFalcon said:

novasonic said:

Actually, the PS2 was stronger than the Dreamcast. The PS1 was more powerful than the Amiga CD32, 3DO, and Atari Jaguar.

PS1's main competitor was N64 not the consoles you listed. N64 was much more powerful graphically and even had an expansion pack that allowed it to have higher resolution in certain games - well beyond PS1's graphical capability of the time. PS2's main competitors were Xbox 1 and Gamecube, not Dreamcast (which was discontinued just a year later afer PS2's release). Both Gamecube and Xbox 1 were more powerful than PS2 was.

Also, while the overall processing power of PS3 is arguably superior to Xbox 360 once all the CPU units are utilized effectively, the actual graphics card in PS3 is inferior to Xbox 360 not only in performance but in technology. Xbox 360, despite being a 1 year older console, uses a unified shader graphics architecture (which is the industry standard today), while PS3 uses a fixed pixel/vertex shader pipeline design of the past. That means even this generation PS3 wasn't the hands down graphical power house either, as most cross-platform games run and look better on Xbox 360. Without very serious code optimizations, i.e., offloading certain effects to the Cell, PS3 is actually a less powerful console than 360 is graphically.

Yes, the N64 was the PS1's MAIN competition, but all those other consoles were also part of the 32/64bit generation. They were compitition to some degree. As far as 32bit consoles go, the PS1 was actually the second in line behind the Sega Saturn. The Sega Saturn was hard to develope for though, and a lot of PS1 games ended up looking better than Saturn games. With the Saturns expansion pack installed and a good developement team, the Saturn was actually capable of 60fps 640x480 just like the N64 could do.

Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, and the various 3DOs were all 32bit consoles in dirrect compitition with Sony, Sega, and Nintendo. A handfull of the multiplatform games from the generation made it onto these platforms at some point. Off the top of my head, Alone in the Dark and Star Command were available on the 3DO.

The Dreamcast was a part of the 6th generation. I think a better argument would be to say the first two Playstations weren't the strongest of their generation. Saying they're the weekest just is not true.

Edited for spelling mistakes. Also there was one more 32bit console, but I can't think of it off hand.