Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition Trailer

[h2ohno]

DonFerrari said:

h2ohno said:

You're both ignoring the main points and pointing to Switch's success as proof that the other manufacturers could and should make a portable version of their current consoles.

If Sony could make a handheld version of the PS5 then the PS5 loses its relevance as the next generation of home console.  It is no longer the cutting edge of graphics but the cutting edge of handheld graphics, which remain different things.  It means that Sony could have made the PS5 much more powerful than they actually did.  Sony and Microsoft don't want to have the best hardware in a certain category.  They want to have the best hardware period.  There's a reason laptops will always be behind the best desktops and mobile hardware will always be behind dedicated home console hardware.

Could they make a hybrid like Nintendo?  Yes.  But that would require not just a radical shift in their business strategy.  It would require a vast investment as well as a risk on a new product.  It would mean splitting their resources.  It would mean making development of every first party game more expensive and time consuming in order to make the different versions of the same game.  And just because Nintendo succeeds doesn't mean another company will succeed.  The Nes and Gameboy had many competitors but achieved total market dominance.  The Move never caught on and Kinect after initial success played a big part in why the XB1 sold tens of millions of units less than the 360.  The Vita was an unmitigated failure.

With all that in mind, it's easy to see why they are sticking to the dedicated home console market.  Nintendo's market is mostly people who wouldn't get a dedicated home console or people who would get the Switch as a second console.  The number of people who are getting the Switch as their only console and would otherwise get a Playstation or an Xbox is very low.  This means that both have a larger share of the home console pie to go around.  It benefits them to not be in direct competition with a third company.  If they could put out a handheld or hybrid to test the waters with no investment that would be one thing, but in the real world it takes a lot of time and money to create something like that and bring it to market, all of which could go down the drain if it doesn't sell.  If Sony announced a hybrid or handheld device tomorrow, it would have been in development for multiple years and had tens of millions of dollars of R&D put into it at the bare minimum.

No you are the one that doesn't get what we are saying.

Neither of us is saying instead of making PS5 they way it is to make it HH or hybrid. What we are saying is to make a version of the PS5 as handheld (which certainly would be much less powerfull than the PS5) but still able to play the same library, so you would have both the PS5 console and PS5 HH at once in the market with the same library (which removes the problem of supporting 2 platforms at once).

Every 3rd party is capable of making versions not only for PS4, X1, PS5, Series, Switch but also for plethora of PC configurations. So it wouldn't really be traumatic for Sony to make as part of their API and game development (even if very simple to cut resolution and effects by drastic terms, like 4k to 720p because of the screen size, which one simple math accounting would make 9x difference so you could go from PS5 10Tflop architeture to a 1Tflop and everything scalled properly) it is still a fixed system and if 3rd parties can make it for PC variations Sony could do for their game (even more if they go and put that it is digital only because the size for a BD reader would be to much and cost for a card reader and the like would also, and work on the reduction of assets to not need a expensive internal SSD).

So you're saying that technology has reached the point where the way hardware has always been developed no longer applies.  They can just release a new console with no investment, no R&D, no preparation and just have it sell without any negative consequences, and their home consoles won't suffer at all from them offering a product that offers the exact same games at a lower price and on the go.  We don't live in a fantasy world where companies can just put out whatever products we want with no risk and no investment.  Sony would have to be mad to take such an action when the PS5 is all but guaranteed to sell over 100 million units and doing so would only make it less appealing with no guarantee sales of the handheld version would make up for the lost home console sales or the investment.  Their most successful handheld sold around the same as their least successful home console, and their last handheld barely outsold the Wii U.

Microsoft has perhaps a bigger incentive to go this route since they don't sell as many units and they don't care about burning money.  A handheld Xbox Series would still hurt the appeal of the Series X and S, but it's not like sales of those will ever be on fire and they don't have as much to lose, but they were also burned the last time they tried to follow a hardware trend started by Nintendo and will likely never fully recover from that. Sony has no incentive whatsoever to mess with their golden goose.