Kotaku - Sources: Sony Is Working On A ‘PS4.5’

[DivinePaladin]

kurasakiichimaru said:

DivinePaladin said:
If this is real, which it's most likely not, all it's gonna do is divide gamers. It won't be available at a reasonable price (599 US Dollars!), it won't be a significant enough jump visually (due to spiking development costs if nothing else), and it'll only piss off most of the current buyers, ESPECIALLY those few that actually buy PSVR.

Just like how Xbox One fragmented the Kinect base and the post-Kinect removal users for that graphical upgrade?

Closer to, say, mobile development where if your specs aren't up to what the developers are designing for then you're out of luck, or the DSi, or the N3DS. Now, it's not exactly like with mobile because by the time a hypothetical PS4.5 hits the developers would probably only (occasionally) add tiny graphical improvements as a bonus for upgraded users, hence the reference to the DSi and N3DS. At the very best all that can happen here is a marginally improved experience for select first party games. Most of the functionality would hopefully go to making native 60fps on all games instead of going for 4K/30. We're already at the breaking point for game budgets, so going for even more detail will only put further strain on publishers and lead to even more homogenization in our industry. 

 

At worst Sony risks overextending their reach, which is already dangerously thin. They couldn't handle PS Eye along with PS2, nor could they reasonably handle PSP or Vita (with the noteworthy exclusives almost always being outsources to third party studios), or Move, or Wonderbook if we want to take a cheap shot. They won't be able to handle PSVR either because they're simply not big enough to cross develop effectively. Not even Nintendo is anymore. Doing this runs the risk of the bubble bursting on them like it did last time they REALLY tried milking consumer confidence.