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EdHieron on 09 January 2013
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Aielyn said:
EdHieron said:
Well, Sony may have lost billions of dollars this gen like you say.  However, the sheer number of consoles sold indicates that at some level Sony has been successful this gen.  90 Million consoles sold would probably put PS3 in the Top 10 Consoles saleswise of all time.  And for the most part those sales have been based upon giving gamers experiences like they've never had before this gen whether that be in their amazing exclusives like Uncharted and Heavy Rain or in the third party games they shared with the 360.

If you're going to try to predict what Sony is going to do with the next generation, you need to think in terms of business, not like a gamer.

Sony could manage to ship 2 billion consoles, if they made the system cheap enough. That wouldn't be a success, though. They're a business, success is defined by profits, not by consoles sold.

Also, how the hell do you think that Sony would manage to put out a $500 system that is far more powerful than the Wii U without being far more expensive to manufacture? The Wii U is currently being sold at a loss at $300. The PS3, as far as just about every rumour and insider tip has said, cost somewhere in the vicinity of $800-$900 to manufacture, and it produced graphics not far beyond what the Xbox 360 could make, despite it being significantly cheaper to manufacture (as far as rumours go). So if we suppose that Sony wanted to limit the loss per console to, say, $50 (which is still a significant loss, by the way), they'd need to make a console that might be 2-3x the power of the Wii U. Maybe 4x if they skimp on other things like the controllers, etc.

I just can't see the business logic behind going for a high-powered system.


The Playstation 3 has a sizeable audience that likes a certain type of game.  Do you see that audience sticking around for PS4 if it's not capable of delivering that type of game and some other console is?  I really don't see fans of Uncharted, The Last of Us, etc. being very interested in PS4 if its all Wii Sports clones and Party games.