| Mr Khan said: Playstation's theme has been to follow the trends in general electronics: PS1 looked to standardize away from the Nintendo epoch, which was very closed down and centralized, and make a system with standard media and a more mainstream approach to publisher relations. PS2 followed that trend, taking on the next bit of standard media and more power and staying the course. PS3 was launched in the beginning of the HD craze, and Sony was invested across the board in pushing HD in as many formats as possible, which explains the PS3's overreach: they believed their dominance in the gaming market could force people into Sony's HD marketplace. PS4 comes in now that the standard is all about making things convenient for programmers, standardization and portability in silicon, with the rise of platforms like iOS and Android and game publishers' needs to port everything everywhere (unless it has "Nintendo" on the box.) That's the PlayStation philosophy in a nutshell. |
PS3 strayed far away from the trend of general electronics. Yes, it pushed HD but that was definetly not because there was an HD Craze at the time. At 600$ it was the cheapest blue-ray player avaliable when blu-ray movies were first appearing on scene as well.
Not to mention, Console R&D takes place years before release so following is impractical, they'd have to predict whats going to be the trend in 2006 for a console meant to last 10 years. It was influenced more by the Xbox then current trends. Which is ultimately the problem with all consoles. Current actually means future.
It also doesn't explain both exotic and proprietary hardware in all but the last iteration of the product family, which by definition doesn't follow trends.
Furthermore, I'd wager that the PS4 vs PS3 had completely opposite design focuses in them, at least concerning who were the dev heads (Kutaragi vs Cerny), and their atitudes at their respective launches. No way is "You'll want to get a second job to buy one" following current trends, that is over ambition in a nutshell.
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