Sony Won't Release PS4 until 2014 and It Won't Be a Gimped Console.

[platformmaster918]

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.

they can sell at a small loss at $400 and $450 for 2 different SKUs.  They can do this and achieve 1080p 60fps with the necessary RAM for a very smooth interface and multitasking.  It will have been 7 years since PS3 was released and most of that cost was Blu-ray.  They don't have to spend over $100 of the system cost on a tablet with a bunch of peripherals on it so they can focus on internals and sell the system based on A. Improved graphics B. Better multitasking and UI C. PS+ which will most likely have some Gaikai integration with classics and D. Awesome library of AAA development studios and IPs.  That should be enough to get a lot of people on board considering they are going to sell 90 million PS3s starting at $600 with no system sellers in the first 2 years and starting significantly later than their main rival.