Bofferbrauer said:
You need to brush up your tech knowledge, otherwise you knew the bolded parts are not viable. They are possible, but require heavy subventionning, which is not what you want to do if your console is nearing EoL. Prices for RAM Chips have basically doubled since summer last year, with no sign of slowing down or even getting cheaper again. Additionally, GDDR5 is based on DDR3, and the latter is already slowly getting phased out. This eliminates production capacities, risking to drive the price for it's RAM even higher. The RAM alone probably ain't too far of an 80$ pricetag righ now and it's rise is certainly in the way of any price reduction wishes from the console manufacturers to some degree. The APU Chip in the PS4 ain't too small either, reducing the amount of Chips per wafer (microprocessing chips get purchased on a per wafer basis, so the more fit on one, the cheaper they are) and thus keeping it's price relatively high, though not near Cell regions. but tht one had the advantage of regular die shrinks, which the PS4 chip doesn't have. Die Shrinks also reduce the power consumption, which allow for a smaller casing if the drop is substancial enough. It was from 28nm to 14nm for the Slim, but the Pro is already produced in 14 nm, and even Intel is having huge problems with their 10nm process, so this rules out a PS4 Pro slim or a PS4 Superslim for a forseeable future All other parts don't change much in pricing, so they won't get much cheaper either. All in all, I don't see the PS4 dropping below 199$ anytime soon unless they want to subvention the console more strongly again. |
Some of that makes no sense. Just because one tech is based on another does not mean that a manufacturer will stop making the newer tech when they stop production of the old. As for RAM, we are just at a point when demand is outpacing supply, hence the increasing prices. It happens in all markets from time to to time. It's not something that is going to last forever. And we'll see how AMD fares with its drop to 7nm in 2018/19.
Sony will always find a way to decrease the price of their systems. They may even choose to make only a slight profit on the HW or, at worst, break even. They'll easily make up for it with game purchases. Even the PS3 eventually got down to $149 late in its life. The PS4 will get there sooner. So, see you in 2019 when we have a $149 PS4.
Johnw1104 said:
That seems very possible, but it does introduce a couple of complications. I think they'd, at the very least, need to allow for the PS4 Pro to receive scaled down PS5 games for the first year or two as is often typical over the last few years for a couple of reasons: 1.) Making PS4 Pro owners feel they got their money's worth 2.) (This one is quite important) Making 3rd party devs and such willing to provide games for the PS5 that take at least some advantage of the upgraded hardware while being able to tap into that enormous PS4 market, as 3rd party devs are always more interested in the previous gen than the new one for the first year or two (more potential for sales) The scenario we're describing here could make it more difficult for 3rd party devs to develop games which both take advantage of the new hardware but also can meet their profit potential by porting to the PS4, the original being far less powerful at that point. The solution (in my mind) would be to focus on the ports of the first couple years being compatible only with the PS4 Pro. This would allow them to be more ambitious with their PS5 versions while still profiting from what should be a huge number of (by then) PS4 Pro players, all the while simultaneously allowing PS4 Pro owners to feel they got their money's worth by providing an additional year or two of support. I can say personally that, as a person with an OG PS4, I would feel satisfied with what I received by 2019, but as someone who is planning to get the Pro this holiday season I'd like to see support for more than a couple years (the hardware is strong enough to justify it). That's how it would ideally work out for me, anyway. Outside of that, I'd like to see the Switch offer an upgrade in a couple of years in which only the tablet itself is swapped (allowing for a much lower price without the joycons/dock/adaptor/memory stick etc), which could allow it to keep pace without requiring a huge consumer investment over the next six or so years. As opposed to this recent launch, it appears they'll probably have the luxury to time their next release better with the development of improved processors and batteries, so it should be capable of more bang for the buck as well. Finally, as for how to count mid gen tiers, I don't have much problem with combining the sales of original models and later upgrades, as it's something we've been doing with Nintendo's handhelds for years now. I think it'd be pretty awesome if the PS4 winds up with enormous sales and the Switch/Xbox1 both clear 50 million or more, as it'd be pretty funny to post those final numbers from what was supposed to be the last legit console gen to some of those "Consoles are doomed" threads lol |
Well, there are going to be a lot of cross gen games for the first couple of years of the PS5's life, so I think Pro owners will get their money's worth. Also, most devs either have smaller teams that work on ports for the older consoles or they outsource the ports to other studios, which means the the main dev teams shouldn't have any problem pushing the new systems.
It will be interesting to see how Nintendo handles their mid-gen refresh, something they have always done with their HH consoles. Will they choose to do a slight upgrade, like the DSi and N3DS, or do a larger one, more in line with the Pro and Scorpio. Either way, I hope they adopt what Sony and MS are doing and allow all games to work with both systems, just with fewer graphical bells and whistles on the base Switch. I know the DSi and N3DS only have a few games that work only on them, but it still sucks.
