Why PS4 won't be cutting edge, and neither will Xbox3 - or Why Nintendo might win next gen

[DanneSandin]

Tachikoma said:

DanneSandin said:

I would think that the profits made by every sold game would go directly Sony's "gaming department", no? I would think that the gaming department would be made up of both HW and SW, and if that's the case, Sony still lost shit loads of money in the early days of PS3, and if that's the case I would like to re-post this:

http://i.imgur.com/S6asr.png

It's focusing on Sony's Gaming Business. Now, I don't know if SW profits goes here, or if it goes elsewhere, but I would imagine that Sony would like to make money from the PS-brand (I'm including HW and SW in this definition right now), so PS3 breaking even shouldn't be too pleasing for them. I assume they want to make money from the PS-brand, and that that's what they're aiming at with PS4.

And I'd also just like to ask that having superior specs doesn't mean you'll sell shit ton of consoles. PS1 wasn't the most powerful of it's gen, and neither were PS2. N64 WERE the most powerful in its day, as was xbox - and neither won the generation (and xbox lost hellalot of money as well). And take a look at the Vita; a more recent example. It ass fucks the 3DS specs wise, but it's a whole different story when we're looking at profits, and systems sales and game sales. More muscles don't automatically mean more sales. So far, it's quite the opposite. And we have to remember that PS4 has to be affordable by the consumers. If it costs too much, no one will buy it.

Here's the thing, right? and it' what number crunchers always fail to factor in.

Accessories, headsets, controllers, cables and so on - including but not limited to stuff like playstation move - that's all profits for Sony, and since the sixaxis to ds3 dabacle, i'm going to assume an awful lot of controllers have been sold. these figures are never included with 'hardware' calculations despite being hardware because of the headache behind tracking so many individual products - but consider the following, the PlayStation Move wasn't immensely successful but unlike controllers and so on, its sale path could be tracked.. now also consider this.. hardware suddenly spiked from loss to profits in 2010... when did the trackable PS move release again? thats right, 2010.

If you factor in the additional hardware, the PS3 is probably in the profitiable zone quite comfortably.

none of this means however that a consoles success is down to it's power, but theres not two consoles on the market, theres three, if sony dont push the hardware enough they'll be in direct competition with WiiU, and will definitely lose, if they push the hardware enough they can compete with Microsoft - The PS3 has, if you consider the year less on sale, more or less outsold the 360 by quite a bit despite it's poor start but if it were more on par and easier to develop for like the 360 it wouldnt have had a rough start, in releasing a console with as similar architecture and spec to the competitior as possible, multiplatform titles become a none issue and the race for success is down to platform exclusives alone, something Sony can out-trump Microsoft in.

As i said though, performance isn't related to sales, as the Wii showed, but this thread isn't about that, it's about which consoles will be the most powerful.

As I said in my previous post, I would of thought that SW sales and accessories would have been included in the overall numbers of Sony's Gaming Business, so until we know that (or you maybe can tell me straight out how it is?) there's really no point in arguing over that topic. I must confess that I don't have a clue if those numbers (sw and accessories) are included, so I can't add anything further to that part of the discussion.

Yes, I must agree that in this day and age when few titles, except 1st party, is exclusive, PS wouldn't stand a chance against Wii U if it had similar specs. And since the faulty launch and over all design of the PS3 has let Xbox to get a foot hold in gaming and get established as a brand, it'll be VERY interesting to see how the PS4 will do against x3ox. I would think that whom ever has the best/most interesting USP will win that battle. Now when they seem to have about the same specs and architecture, they will need something to differentiate themselves...

In your opinion, which system will pack the most punch??