47.4M PS4s shipped as of end of September. Financial report

[KBG29]

Intrinsic said:

KBG29 said:

Completely agreed. PS4 Pro Plus should bring solid 4K and support a 1440P PSVR with HDR, and have all PSVR tech built in for easier set up. I also think a PS4 handheld is an absolute must, along with PS Phone finally happening. With only 17 million Xperias forcasted this year, with 5 million in profits, it is time to hand the mobile division over to a branch that can actually make it profitable. Even if Sony only sold 10 Million PS Phones and Handhelds per year, the profits would be 10 times that of the Xperias.

If I ran things at Sony, I would have a three year cycle starting right now.  

2016 = PS4 Pro & PSVR

2017 = PS4 Laptop/Tablet

 2018 = PS4 Handheld, PS4 Handheld/Phone & PS4 Phone

2019 = PS4 Super Slim/PS4 Pro Slim/PS4 Pro+/PSVR Pro

2020 = PS4 Laptop/Tablet Slim & PS4 Laptop Pro

2021 = PS4 Mobile Line Revisions

2022 = PS5 and PSVR2

Super simple, Home and VR, Office, and Mobile. Every year a platform is improved to meet a lower entry point, and maintain a flagship product. This gives them a massive reach appeasing to many different kinds of consumers, and allows them to take full advantage of the PS4 OS and PlayStation Network. This gives them constant improvement, constant revenue and profit streams, and allows them time to build PS5 into something truly worthy of a next gen console.

For consumers, this means more choices, more options to upgrade, greater value from products, and much longer life cycles. Hopefully, the future of PlayStation looks something like above. It's better for Sony, it's better for consumers, and it is better for innovation. 

Lol..... and you would cripple the playstation. Good thing you aren't the one running things.

I think its easy to lose sight of what console gaming is really about. Ideally, a platform holder wants to spend as little as possible on not just hardware, but the hundreds of millions that go into R&D for said hardware.

Its abiut software and services. What works best for sony and playstation is to make hardware that they can sell en masse, so they can sell software to all those people and services like PS+ and PSvue. 

And the mobile thing is a complete waste of time and resources. What will the Playstation phone/tablet run on? Android? will you be able to play PS4 games on it? or will they make games specifically for it? 

The days of PlayStation being a single hardware platform for 5 - 7 years at a time are done. There are to many competitors to stand still in the market now, and because of that competition we will never see software optimized like we did during the PS2 and before era. PlayStation has to evolve to survive. By utilizing the chipset of the PS4 across a wide range of devices they massivly expand their market while keeping the simiplist development enviorment possible. This is absolutly vital as they have to offer a way to locally access your games from as many devices as possible, to maintane a parity in value with the competition.

If you can't see that every Sony TV, Blu-ray Player, Smart Phone, Tablet, Handheld, and Console should be running on One company wide OS and Hardware platform, then I am not sure what to tell you. This has been the idea behind PlayStation from the onset. Ken Kutaragi wanted to use PlayStation tech and software in all Sony devices. PS3 was his crown jewl, and Cell and XMB where supposed to unifiy Sony, but when PS3 was botched, the company parted ways with him, and it set Sony back nearly a decade. Now we are back at ground zero, and Sir Howard Stringer, and Kaz Hirai have finally got the company back to a point of unification. The PS4 tech and the PlayStation Network are the foundation for the unity and growth of the entire company.

As for the PlayStation Phone and Tablet, they would run on the same chipset found in the PS4, and they would run on a modified version of the PS4 OS. They would run all PS4 games, as they would be identical to PS4. A tablet/Laptop will be more than possible on 10nm tech next year, and a Handheld/Phone will be possible on 7nm tech in the next two years. If they want to speed things up for a handheld and phone they can cut out a few GPU cores, lower the clock speed, run games at 540p, and checkerboard up res them to 1080p. 

All PlayStation games going forward are going to be built on scalable engines. As Sony releases more PS4 hardware with more or less GPU cores, different clock speeds, and more RAM, developers will be required to make games run across the entire PlayStation ecosystem. Thanks to the unity across devices, developing games across all PlayStation hardware will be extreamly easy, and add very little development to games, with some instances not requiring any additional work.