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EricHiggin on 05 August 2020
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Intrinsic said:
EricHiggin said:

Could also be part of the reason for the rumors of a 'short' PS5 life cycle of maybe 5 years and potentially no Pro this time around. Maybe SNY see's PS5 as a transitional console gen perhaps? They could potentially focus PS6 hardware on the APU, RAM, and SSD speed, while mostly ignoring the ODD and SSD storage quantity because you won't sell many discs and won't need to store too many games, since by then most users may have worthy speeds and data caps, if any. This wouldn't be the worst way to kick off another gen for SNY, if that's the way the industry ends up by then.

If SNY goes this route, it would look to me as if they are more worried about locking down the install base instead of growing the brand. There's going to be a lot of potential consumers who won't have good enough internet in 5 to 10 years still, and they would be forced to spend more on the ODD SKU, and large expandable storage. Potentially more on data overage charges as well for day one downloads, updates, DLC, etc. Unless SNY can somewhat turn a blind to them, and open the entry streaming market to those with worthy internet by selling them a cheap streaming only console, I don't see the brand growing much in terms of install base. Profits however..

I'm not buying into those 5-year rumors. Well, at least not in the way it's being presented.

I believe we will see a PS6 in 5 years or so, but as you said this gen would be Transitional. I believe what would happen is that thePS6 would basically be like a glorified PS5pro. And all its games would also work on the PS5albeit at lower rez. The PS6 4K games would simply just be PS5 1080p games.

I believe the primary reason for that is partly due to what we are already seeing right now, diminishing returns. Its already getting hard to spot generational leaps between the 7-year-old PS4 and the upcoming PS5/XSX. And it would b even harder differentiating the PS5/XSX from the PS6. And if it can be avoided, I doubt sony would want to reset their generations ever again.

So I see both the PS5 and PS6 being supported, then 5 years after the PS6 is released, the PS7 comes along with support for the PS6, and at that point, the PS5 gets discontinued. They would more or less adopt a model where they are supporting two consoles at once with each console receiving active full support for up to 10 years. This way they can grow their overall install base more quickly and keep it. Because we aren't just talking about new buyers, we are talking about people that bought a PS5, want to upgrade to the PS6, and selling their still active and relevant PS5 used at a price lower than what a new PS5 would cost at the time.

I don't completely buy them either, though it depends a lot on where the world and console gaming, or gaming in general is at in 5 years time. Some newly found patents give the impression that a Pro could easily be introduced if it takes longer than they may anticipate, so SNY could then take however long they want to transition. PS5 being much stronger than PS4 at launch, should mean SNY can introduce Pro around 2024/2025 and stretch the gen to around a decade if the transition takes longer than anticipated.

It's really too far off for me to say, especially with unforeseen elections, illnesses, and everything else that many didn't see coming in advance. Though going back, your assumptions about PS5 certainly weren't out to left field, so who knows, maybe you've got SNY all figured out.