What would have made the PS4 a failure?

[torok]

Keep mandatory PS+ to play online but price it at US$ 100 monthly.

Now, seriously:
- DRM: if the One never had it, PS4 and X1 would probably swap sales. If X1 did it and PS4 did it too, both would still have it and consumers would be buying anyway.
- Tablet controller: would raise the price and don't add anything significant to gameplay. It would make it a failure. Making the Vita a mandatory controller is on this same category. These issue is less about the controller and more about how expensive it is without massive advantages.
- PS3-like price.
- Ridiculous architecture making it as hard to program as the PS3 and all multiplat games would run worse on it (significantly worse at the first 3 years).
- Underpowered console. Make it as weak as a Wii U (minor upgrade to PS360) even with a good price or make it weaker than X1 with equal/higher price.
- Manage to damage 3rd party relations.
- Do something super stupid like making PS4 a cloud game streaming box. It will be the future, but not right now. This gen and maybe the other will make a slow transition, but doing it too early means failure.