| Dodece said: I think it is quite apparent given Sony's recent acquisitions. That they have no intention of ever releasing another console into the market. Firstly they don't have the capitol to launch another console. Conservatively speaking it would cost the company upwards of a billion dollars up front for just the initial run. Even if they could muster the cash to make a go of it. They couldn't afford the losses on their quarterly statements. Investors won't care why Sony is in the red. They will just care that it is still in the red. Which will lead to a massive devaluation on the stocks as investors try to get out. Secondly Sony acquired a cloud gaming service, and there is no reason to be buying a competing product. Unless that is the model they intend to go with for gaming. Whether it would work or not is somewhat immaterial. What matters is the overhead on such a strategy is lower then consoles. With far less associated risk. If it fails Sony can just sell off the servers, and port their software to other platforms. They would lose some money, but not as much as they would if a new console venture failed. Which might not just lose them money, but actually speed the demise of the company. Thirdly Sony is upping its investment in mobile devices. Hey cloud gaming and mobile devices kind of go together. Is anyone seeing a trend here. I am not saying its all brilliant, but at least there is a coherent train of thought here. Once again mobile devices have a lower overhead then consoles. Fourthly Sony is liquidating game studios like it is going out of style, and they aren't replacing them. They aren't buying new studios, building new studios, or expanding existing studios. While Microsoft is doing the exact opposite. You have to see that doesn't make any sense. Unless they aren't going to be responsible for balancing out a library, or attracting new customers with exclusives. Which they wouldn't have to do with mobile gaming or cloud gaming. I mean everything points to no new console coming. |
1. The aquisition of Gaikai cost $380. Sony sold $1.9 billion of convertable bonds to fund this and OTHER expansions. I think they've already found the capital.
2. Simply because they aquired a cloud gaming service, it does not mean that they plan on going 100% cloud in the next few years, the infastrature is not readily available for even the vast majority of the rich, western population to be have this content work in a way which replaces console gaming.
3. Of course they have been investing more into mobile, so has every other eletronics company in the world. Cloud will provide some very cool opportunities for mobile devices and especially any dedicated Handhelds, but popular mobile device don't have any buttons, so this doesn't need be discussed any further.
4. They're removing all of the companies who haven't produced successfull games in a while, whilst they're core teams (there are still a lot) are expanding (Naughty Dog is now 2 teams). We also do not know that they are not working with even more developers. Sony do not necessarily own the developers who make exclusives with for them (quantum dreams, insomniac).
5. By "everything" are you opting to ignore hundreds upon hundreds of articles reporting new versions of Orbis Dev kits, game development and leaked concept documents.
