| NeoRatt said: PS3 and 360 are so close that it doesn't matter who is second or third. Statistically these two consoles are tied this generation. I don't know how you can say long term support is a key to break a tie. How are you going to measure long term support if the next gen xbox is fully backwards compatible and the PS4 isn't? or vice versa? Wouldn't most potential owners buy the new console rather than the old console so they can play both sets of games? It is highly likely that MS will have backwards compatibility because of their architecture. Sony is shifting architectures drastically next gen which makes backwards compatibility less likely. This is an victory for both Microsoft and Nintendo, because last gen, the PS2 was well over a 150,000,000 consoles. This gen Sony will probably barely clear half of that. Whereas Microsoft and Nintendo over doubled their sales. The momentum is clearly not with Sony this generation. |
That's pretty much the way it is although the hardcore brand fan would be loath to admit it.
The issue of BC does raise somewhat of an interesting issue when it comes to residual sales of 7th gen consoles though. It's already a given that any PS3 retail BD games won't play on the PS4 due to the shift to PPC architecture and that software emulation of CBE is out of the question under current hardware restraints. This is not to say that many PS3 games won't be available on PSN, but that's not really the same to the PS3 owner with a shelf full of BD retail games.
I bought a $199 PS3 as my extra given the number of BD games I've accumulated over the last 6 years. I should probably buy an extra PS2 when they announce production will end given that my BC PS3 is broken and I still have over 50 PS2 games on DVD. Legacy gaming can be a pain.
I'm not ruling out BC for the Xbox 3 yet since it appears to be keeping the same basic CPU/GPU, PPC/AMD architecture as a custom spec low cost gaming PC using updated hardware components. Whether that would influence residual sales of the 360 or result in MS pulling the plug on production earlier is open to debate. Personally, I think MS will leave the 360 on the market as a low cost option, given that hardware design and production have been so streamlined after 7 years that they can sell every unit for a fraction of the cost of their next gen system and still pull a decent profit on every unit sold.
But Sony will easily clear half of 150m units. In fact it pretty much already has with over 71m sold to consumers. The 75 millionth unit should be rolling off factory production lines if not by the end of 2012, then some time in Q1 2013.
