I made a thread sometime last year saying we may soon see the end of console "generations" as we know them and how the PS4 will still play games that the PS6 plays. Admittedly I didn't expect Sony to go all in and so early on my theory but they did. And there has been a lot of anger about this. But I feel that not only is this anger unfounded but that italso stems from a lack of understanding of what is happening and why it needs to happen. I wanna use this thread and try and explain a few things. after which I will link to an artcile where someone else have spoken about this too and shared most of my views.
So I'll be basically stating the pros, if any here wants to dispute my analysis I welcome it. But pls, speak constructively. So we can all have a candid discussion about this and we hopefully all will leave with a better understanding of all of this. So here goes.
- Hardware innovation has slowed to a crawl. It took 8 YEARS for us to go from PS360 to the PS41, and even after all that time practically every game made for the new gen could be made to run on previous gen consoles. Even if they may look like crap, but they will run and be playable. If we want anything close to a true generational leap over the current PS41 to whatever is next, we will be waiting till 2022 before we can put something that can handle true 4k gaming at 30fps along with all the developments that would naturally find their way into modern game engines. And have all that fit into a $399 box.
- It's makes little sense hitting the reset button every 5-7yrs. Every couple of years a gen ends and a new one begins. But to do so platform holders usually kiss all their hard work over the past 4-8yrs good bye and start all over again. Start from customer 1. making a console that gets constantly upgraded over the life of the platform and not just the box changes all that. Right now the PS4 has around 40M users. The PS4k will also have 40M users on day one. And when it gets replaced with the PS4K2 around 3yrs and another 40M+ users later that console will have 80M users day one.
- This system makes it flexible for everyone. Gamers, developers, platform holders....everyone. A platform holder won't have to worry about being tied down to whatever mistakes they make at the start. They won't have to wait 6yrs to put in that new hardware feature that everyone is using right now. Devs womt have to worry about a consoles lifespan when going into developing their games. And the end user will always get the best most affordable gaming system whenever they choose to jump in or jump in "again". Best part yet, you are at least guaranteed support of your games for as long as PlayStation is still called PlayStation. 3yrs ago or even 20yrs from now.
