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kitler53 on 01 April 2016
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DM235 said:
kitler53 said:

i fail to see the relavance.  why would MSony need to sell hardware via a monthly contract in order to implement forward/backwards hardware compatibility with smaller but more frequency hardware revision.  the ability to have a ps4k release is like the entire reason the ps4 (and xbox one) moved to x86 architecture in the first place.  no one should be surprised by this.  no one should fear this either.

They moved to x86 architecture because it was cheaper, not because it was better.

And monthly contracts make upgrades bearable.  The costs are spread out over 2 years (for most phone contracts anyway), so most people are perfectly happy to upgrade to better hardware when their contract is up.  I don't think the mass market is ready to buy new consoles every 2 years.  If they don't, then deveoplers will not have any incentive to spend the effort to make games take advantage of the new hardware (and worry about supporting multiple platforms).  If the games aren't any better, then there is even less incentive to upgrade.  People are perfectly happy with upgrading once every 5 or so years.

Also, Sony and Microsoft don't make their money from the hardware.  They make their money from the software.  Their goal is make the hardware as cheap as possible, to sell to as many people as possible.  I just don't see them spending money on R&D to develop something slightly better (and more expensive).  If anything, they'll spend it to develop the same features for less money (such as a slim model).  I am not even convinced that they would add in a UHD Bluray drive because of the extra cost.

no one is asking you to upgrade every 2 years. 

both the ps4 and the ps4k will play the same games.  the ps4k will probably play games at that only run at 30fps on ps4 at 60fps.  some people care a lot about that and will upgrade.  some people won't give a shit and won't upgrade.  because games will be forward/backward compatible you can litterally wait as long as you want to upgrade.  older hardware versions will run a bit worse than newer hardware versions.  as a consumer you can decide what kind of performance you want.  if you are real graphics whore you can upgrade ever 2 years.  if you don't care that a game runs at 30fps and maybe 900p instead of 1080p than you can probably wait 12 years.  there will always be a higher end model to buy (~$400) but there will always be a lower end model to buy too (~$200 or $300) if you can't afford to spend a lot of money.  your library lasts "forever" instead of being abandon each generation. 

developers can and will optimize for each hardware.  they already do it on pc and that enviornment is far more complex because instead of having 2-4 hardware versions to target there are literally thousands of variants to consider on pc.  it won't be "free" for them to do this kind of development but i think developers will prefer this kind of problem to the alternative problem of starting a project 3-4 years prior to knowing what the specs of the machine the game will run on will actually be.  business love predictability.  it helps them plan which is crucial when starting a project that lasts several years.