If Sony makes a "Playstation Switch" could it succeed?

[EricHiggin]

HoangNhatAnh said:

EricHiggin said:

Price could be $300 or less without much trouble at all with 4-6 hour battery life late 2019-2020. You could also see a Switch 2 by then potentially, but the Tegra SOC it will use will be a few years old just like in Switch, so Switch 2 would have similar performance, battery life, and price to the PS portable. The games, software, and marketing would be the deciding factors. The PS portable might even be slightly weaker than Switch 2 in terms of performance and battery life, but PS wouldn't really care as long as it's close enough, because they would also have PS4 SS at $199 and Pro S at $299. Having the portable at $250 would be the perfect price point right between PS4 and Pro. This would also help to extend the life span since the 100mil+ PS4 ecosystem would continue to grow steadily with a $199 console and brand new handheld/hybrid.

Proof it will happen? And Microsoft will release next Xbox with 4k/30fps at that time 

Proof it won't happen? XB1X already does 4k/30 and sometimes 4k/60, so your saying that time is now, or XB is going to launch another console in 3-4 years that's not much more capable than XB1X?

KBG29 said: 

HoangNhatAnh said: 

And the price? PS4 Pro games run on a $250 system which last 4 - 5 hours? LOL, when? Also, don't you think New Switch with new Tegra chip will come out in 2020? Also, no Sony game can drive the sales of handheld like Pokemon, even the spin off sold gangbuster compare to Sony franchises both mainline and spin off. PS3 came out in 2006, vita is only a small fraction of ps3 power in 2011 with $250 price. Switch is 3.5 times stronger than ps3 with $300 price in 2017. In 2020, there will be PS4 Pro portable cost $250?

We are definitly not on the same page.

First I see absolutely no reason for a PS4 Portable to aim for PS4 Pro levels of power. Base PS4 games at 1080p on a 5 - 6" display would look incredible already. I can see a $300 - $400 device based on the same chip as the PS4 Super Slim as I have been saying.  Most likely 3 -5 hours gameplay.

I fully expect a new Switch based on Xavier by 2019.

Sony does not have one franchise that sells on the level of Pokemon, but it does have dozens of franchises which sell very well, and nearly every 3rd party game.

You keep compairing the PS3 to the Vita. The PS3 cost $800 to manufacture in 2006, with the most advanced CPU on the market, and one of the highest end GPU's available at the time. PS Vita cost roughly $300 to manufacture at the time it was released. They were 5 years apart. The PS4 had a weak mobile CPU, and a Midrange+ GPU, and cost ~$400 to manufacture when it was released. The PS4 portable in question would be launching 6 years after PS4, using the same chipset as the PS4 Super Slim, which will be very cheap at that point.

As I said above, I do not see a PS4 Portable aiming at PS4 Pro specs. There will be mobile devices with more CPU and GPU power than PS4 and close to PS4 Pro by 2020. They will probably be around $300 to manufacture, and sell for $1,200.

PS portable at Pro specs is out of the question around 2020. Switch 2 around 2020 will just be hitting the PS4 spec area. Something between XB1 and PS4 specs would be more likely for the PS portable between 2018 and 2020, which is good enough. The PS handheld hybrid doesn't need to be the XB1X of it's genre, PS4 and Pro have proven that.

KBG29 said: 

EricHiggin said: 

Price could be $300 or less without much trouble at all with 4-6 hour battery life late 2019-2020. You could also see a Switch 2 by then potentially, but the Tegra SOC it will use will be a few years old just like in Switch, so Switch 2 would have similar performance, battery life, and price to the PS portable. The games, software, and marketing would be the deciding factors. The PS portable might even be slightly weaker than Switch 2 in terms of performance and battery life, but PS wouldn't really care as long as it's close enough, because they would also have PS4 SS at $199 and Pro S at $299. Having the portable at $250 would be the perfect price point right between PS4 and Pro. This would also help to extend the life span since the 100mil+ PS4 ecosystem would continue to grow steadily with a $199 console and brand new handheld/hybrid.

The only thing that pushes me a little higher on price is the cost of Solid State Memory. 

I have no doubt Nintendo will release a Switch based on the Xavier chip by 2019. If they launch in March 2019 the chip will be over a year old. Xavier should be very competitive with PS4 power wise, probably better in some places and worse in others. It should aso offer a massive boost to battery life on the portable unit. The Tegra X2 is already supposed to be able to offer twice the battery life of the Tegra X1 in the current Switch.

As for the rest, it comes down to what we have talked about. Do they want to hit rest with a PS5 line of devices, or do they want to continue with PS4 a couple more years. If they stick with PS4, I think we will see a PS4 Premium that offers 4K in all titles along with the PS4 Super Slim, and the potentially a Portable. Not sure if they keep the Pro in this scenario, or just replace it with the Premium. On the other hand they could launch PS5 and PS5 Portable offering 4K at home and 1080p on the go. That would probably be easier to do, and make for a bit more powerful and effecient handheld, but then you loose the 100M strong userbase. 

However, it goes down, I am very interested in watching it unfold. I really hope they are planning to give us an option to take our PlayStation library on the go.

The memory would probably add some cost, but if the device uses existing PS4 tech, than those costs should be super cheap, so it should balance out. There is the question of a dock and would it have a BD disc drive and/or hdd in it to transfer games to and from the handheld? HDD could always be an external plug in to the dock. This would all add cost.

2019 seems too soon. I would say at least 3 years gap, minimum. Nin doesn't like to upgrade their consoles any sooner than every 5 years, and only upgrades sooner if they really really need to. Even if Tegra X2 may be able to offer twice the battery life, will Nin take advantage of that, or will they use a smaller cheaper battery and just give you an extra hour or so?

Extending the PS4 life span could also mean dropping base PS4 and making the hybrid the base system. Pro would most likely remain as the lower priced console, and Premium would become the new flagship. I don't see why they couldn't have all 4 systems still, with PS4 being the base at $199 and Premium at $500, with Portable and Pro in between. In this scenario if one had to be dropped, I would agree, get rid of Pro like you said.

Having a hybrid PS5 as the base system for $300-$400, with standard PS5 (4k) being $500 would also work I think, and should make the overall hardware process much easier and better overall. I like this idea more than having a base PS5 console be $350-$400 and PS5 Pro being $500 at launch. The Pro console could eventually come 3 years later like normal, and possibly a hybrid upgrade as well at the same time maybe.

KBG29 said: 

TheBraveGallade said: 

But would they continue to push the ps4 by then? I know sony systems sell rediculously long (the ps3had one of the best rpgs of this year cone out on it), but still,by 2020 sony will probably go on a new gen.

Now a true 4k ps5 and a 1080 ps5p running the same games can see happening. But no ps4 portable.

Hard to say what they will do. There is definitly a strong case for both options. Stick with the PS4 and you have 100M users, and the Portable just kind of slides in their. Then you are starting to get really weak on the CPU side though. Jump to PS5, and building a Portable and Home duo is super easy, but then you are hitting reset, and as we have seen, you never know how that is going to turn out in this market. 

If you could be absolutely sure there would be no backlash, I think PS4 should go tell 2022, and PS5 should have ~25TFLOPs of GPU power, 128GB of RAM, and a large M.2 NVMe SSD. That would deliver a true next gen home and VR expereince, and push a portable counterpart out of the relm of possibility. However, it seems quite likely that next gen is just going to be a slight nudge regaurdless of this portable thing. I can see a super weak ~12TFLOP, 16 - 24GB RAM, and HDD based device posing as PS5 in 2019 or 2020. If that is the case though, I absolutely hope they intend to do a portable version, because there would be no issue scaling games built for something like that down to a portable unit.

If I were PS and I were going to attempt a Switch like device, if all options we've talked about are possible and none of them are too expense or just to hard to accomplish, I would definitely move on to PS5, have a hybrid and standard console, and make them both BC. The PS5 console should be a shoo-in regardless as long as they don't do anything stupid, but the hybrid may be a tougher sell. If that hybrid can play all if not most of the PS4 games, that will be huge in terms of getting people to buy one asap with a library that large with so many quality titles. With so many of those PS4 titles being so cheap, as well as showing up in PS Plus, as long as the hybrid wasn't too expensive, it should sell well enough to be worthy of producing.

If they can't do BC for whatever reason, then a hybrid base PS5 would still be doable, but probably won't find near the success that Switch has. In this case it's really a toss up whether you dedicate the handheld to PS4 and add a Premium console, or if you dedicate the handheld to PS4 and also drop a PS5 console and try to have your cake and eat it too, or go all in on PS5 and just hope for the best.