VGChartz Gap Charts July 2020 Discussion Thread

[PAOerfulone]

curl-6 said:

PAOerfulone said:
The other thing Sony could do is try their hand at a hybrid console, but that won’t happen without some major sacrifices in some areas.

The PS4/Vita situation kinda showed that even Sony can't provide an adequate stream of software to two different devices at once now that games are as advanced as they are currently. I can't see them trying a hybrid, they'll probably just concede Japan and settle for being a minor player there.

I was thinking more along the lines of Sony trying to make their next console (PS6) a hybrid and they take their crack at it. But in order for them to have any reasonable shot at making a hybrid that could compete with Switch 2 or 3 depending on the timetable, they have to make a lot of sacrifices in one of two areas: Price or hardware.

1) Sacrificing Price: To have a PS6 that has the graphical/generational leap that one would expect from a next generation console ON TOP of being a hybrid, would require A LOT of manufacturing costs and resources that will jack up the price to absurd degrees. I'm talking $799-899 US retail price, minimum. And a hybrid that powerful would drain the battery like a MF'er, so it would just be used as a console anyways since noone would want to take it out of the dock. Unless Sony felt like losing hundreds of dollars on manufacturing like they did with the PS3, there's no way they would be able to compete at that price. And this is all assuming it'll even be possible by 2027 or whenever PS6 launches. 

2) Sacrificing Power: The more reasonable route would be to sacrifice graphical capabilities and scale back so that they could keep manufacturing costs, and be extension, the retail price, reasonable. But then that would eliminate the biggest advantage they have over Nintendo; Graphics. But then, they'd be losing THAT crowd to Microsoft, so Sony would be at a disadvantage on both sides. Losing the console/graphics battle to Microsoft and losing the handheld battle to Nintendo.

It'd basically be the DS vs PSP, 3DS vs Vita all over again.