potato_hamster said:
teigaga said:
-Sony want to rejouvenate their hardware market so they can delay the introduction of the PS5 til after 2020. Introducing a new SKU is 100x cheaper then introducing a new console.
-Sony want to deter PS4 users from moving to PC later in the generation? I remember when PS3/360 really started showing its age, thats when I really considered getting into PC gaming.
-Sony protecting themselves against the NX and an early Xbox 2 arrival (2018?)
-Sony testing the waters for what is likely the future of the industry, upgradable SKUs |
There is so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to begin. All you've demonstrated here is that you have absolutely no idea why video game consoles are made the way they are.
If there is a PS4K, It'll be a minimum spec bump at a minimum cost with a 4K bluray drive and an improved HDMI port to do 4K video output, and that is it. You will not see a easily noticable improvement to performance in video games, if any. There are many reasons for this:
- These are the most profitable years of a console. This is the point in the life where you introduce a cheaper sku at a cheaper consumer price with a higher margin. You do this because it's at this point in a console's life where the price gets below that pain threshold where you get most of your lifetime sales and thus most of your profits. Introducing a new higher spec console throws a monkey wrench into all of that.
- While it is true that introding a console with higher specs is cheaper than releasing a new console, it is still far far more expensive than producing an even cheaper version of your existing console. Not to mention you'll need to develop and create new developer kits, test kits, and new developer tools to allow developers to take advantage of these new specs. This is one of the most expensive parts of console development.
- Video game developers, unless they are forced to, will most likely not support the additional specs because there the additional time and money associated with buying new dev kits and developer tools, and all of the additional QA work (which would be practically doubled to support it), not to mention engine development and dealing with specification-specific bugs is a handful. All for what? There is absolutely zero reason to expect supporting the improved spec will lead to additional video game sales. So at the end of the day, the vast majority of games will not take advatage of the additional specifications, which has happened every single time a company has offered a console or add-on with a specification improvement mid-generation.
- If developers are forced to support all specs then those costs will be passed on to consumers. I'm sure PS4 owners won't be happy to pay $5-$10 more than Xbox One owners for the same game, especially if they don't own a PS4K.
- If they don't force developers to support all previous versions of the PS4, the new console will start to get some exlusive games, older PS4 owners will feel robbed because they bought the PS4 expecting it to play all modern PS4 games up until the PS5 came out (just ask owners of the non-new 3DS how much they enjoy playing Xenoblade Chronicles). This will piss off millions of people if they bought a console for christmas 2015 and now new games are coming out christmas 2017 (for example) that do not run on their PS4. This is the kind of anti-consumer decision that made many people buy a PS4 over an Xbox One.
- With a small existing consumer base (less than 10% of HDTV owners own 4KTVs, and a small percentage of those are gamers) and little games that will actually support the additional specifications, there's little reason to expect this will garner the tens of millions in sales that the high margin sku would otherwise generate
The idea might look good from a purely theoretically "best gaming experience" possible, but it falls far short when injected with reality.
Upgradable consoles are not the future of the console industry. All that does is confusion and frustrate the userbase. The reason consoles sell the way they do is because a PS4 owner can walk into the store, pick up any game with a PS4 logo on it, and know it will play in their console. It doesn't matter if they bought their PS4 in 2013, 2016, or 2018. They know that game will work. They never have to worry about compatibility. They never have to worry if their PS4 is going to run the game at a reasonable frame rate. They never have to worry if the game on their PS4 is going to be buggier than their friends. They never have to worry if their friend with a new PS4 has a competive advantage in online games compared to them. You know, all of the things you need to worry about if you own a PC.
See here's the thing. PC gaming is arguably cheaper if you're smart about it. People buy consoles not because they're cheaper initially, but mostly out of the convenience over PCs they offer. If you want a "better gaming experience" in terms of graphics and framerate? Buy a PC. Consoles have never been that solution. There's no reason to expect them to now.
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