Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition Trailer

[EricHiggin]

DonFerrari said:

h2ohno said:

So we're arguing past each other. Your point is that it is physically possible for them to do it, which I agree with, and my point is that they have substantial business reasons not to do it which is why they are in fact not doing it. They have to decide that the potential gain is worth the investment. If they sell 100 million units of one console, they will make more money than if they sell 100 million of 2 consoles combined. That's one of the reasons Nintendo went the route it did. If they spend $10 million to develop the new system and $10 million to market it, it has to sell $20 million above above whatever sales it takes from the older system just to break even, plus above the cost of producing each and every unit.

That would mean there is 0 addition of sales with the new form factor which we know isn't even possible. Even when they make a slim version people double dip =p

DonFerrari said:

h2ohno said:

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.

Again you are really not getting the point.

Where did I say there is no R&D expenses?

Who said lower price for the games? It is the same shared library, you buy physical you can play only on console, you buy digital you can play on both.

In what world would having a PS5 portable at the same time as PS5 console would sell less than PS5 console alone? Some people would sure prefer to buy a weaker PS5 for portability and save some money on the HW as well, others preffer to have the as strong as possible version and don`t care about portability they don`t canibalize as you think, or do you think AMD and NVidia should stop making GPU versions for notebook?

Sony doesn't even make money from the HW, so as long as their additional SW sales and royalties increase more than it would cost the R&D of a portable version of the PS5 architecture there would be no detriment to it.

And again I didn't even say they will do it or should do it. I'm just pointing it is feasible.

Yup. Not saying it's a done deal, but SNY and/or MS could totally make 'cross device' games happen if third parties can so easily for Switch.

Have they? Not yet, but the mobile market is huge and growing, and if Switch sales continue as they are, they'd be crazy not to take a slice soon enough. Both SNY and MS (laptops/tablets) have made mobile devices before, so they're far from starting from scratch. More time and money would need to be spent however, correct, in which both SNY and MS clearly have plenty of and are looking to spend in many different ways.

As for optics, a SNY or MS handheld would hardly be seen as negative anymore, as long as it doesn't clearly hinder their top tier first party AAA exclusives for console. MS and PS AAA first party is ending up on XB1S and PS4 still and big AAA third party is ending up on Switch. GOWR, HFW, Halo. Not exactly poor titles by the looks of it. MS already has the XBSS, which is basically an XB1X, an 8th gen console, though upgraded arch for the 9th gen. Comparing XBSS to XBSX should mean horribly poor sales for MS due to optics. That's not the case though. PS5 sales should also be tanking due to PC cross platform ports, but that's not happening either. A handheld won't change that trend either, assuming it's worthy.

A new mobile device will almost certainly increase sales, again, assuming it's worthy. Reasonable performance at a reasonable mobile price. That's not to say some console fans won't... switch, or brand fans won't... switch, but overall it would add more hardware sales. The question really is would the handheld sell more or less games and/or media, because that's where the money is. If the handheld didn't sell anywhere near Switch numbers, but sells way more games than their consoles do per unit, then it would be worth it as an addition to the ecosystem.