Soundwave said:
It's not like that is any new type of product category, Sony/MS basically still adhere to the same business model (1st party games + royalty licensed third party games) established by the NES even in inflationary terms $200 for an NES in 1985 would be close to the PS4s price today. They just took the concept and today market it to adults/teenagers first and foremost, but even that was simply a natural evolution of the NES formula. |
Well, somewhat. Playstation 4 still suffers some issues of this focus on multitasking. It has a bloated PC-esque OS that takes up 3.5 gigs of it's RAM; if it took up, say 1 gig similar to Wii U's, it would give them 7 gigs of GDDR5 to use for games rather than 4.5 gigs (yes, the 3.5 are reserved). The PS4 and Xbox One also use what are not so far from off the shelf parts rather than more custom made hardware designed for maximum gaming efficiency. Compare this to PS3, Xbox 360 and of course the GameCube in the sixth and seventh gen where all of those used proprietary, unique hardware with every aspect focused on gaming to allow for devs to get right down to the metal and get the absolute max out of the hardware in question. That's at least a part of what I am saying. Interface and input methods are also other areas where you can look into providing a console-only experience, but developing these can bloat costs. See Wii and Wii U for that :P