Curious to see how this one plays out, not that it's going to alter any buying plans I currently have.
The only reason I can see SCE releasing a $599 console (again) is out of a simple matchmanship play to stay competitive with Scorpio, which I'm still not even clear if it's an all new platform, a Win10 platform (both?) or a just high end XBO.
The advantage SCE has is that they are releasing Neo in 2016, a full year before Scorpio, meaning even if Scorpio looks better on paper by specs, SCE will still have beaten MS to the punch with a console that is comparable, assuming price/performance ratios are comparable.
But at $599, I have a really hard time seeing a big market for this unless this is the only real way to experience PS VR properly and without compromise. Even then, we're looking at a $1000 total package, which is a pretty big limitation on the size of the market, particularly if it doesn't measure up to the best VR experience on PC, whichever system that may be.
Originally, I was regarding Neo as a direct price replacement ($399) for existing PS4s that I would buy if I liked the new packaging, my existing PS4 was ready for retirement, or I felt a big push for 4K Blu-Ray, which is becoming a much lesser reason to buy given the small handful of movies I would actually end up buying on the new format. I can wait for standardization, and if that never happens and prerecorded media truly is at the end of its line, the only incentive is for installer/disk keys that can hold more data for ever expanding game sizes, which really isn't a concern of mine as 90% of my games are bought digitally.
But again, we'll see. I'm still filing this one under speculation, but speculation based upon an understandable strategy for SCE.
