CheddarPlease said:
I made a post about this in another forum a few days ago, but I'll reiterate what I said here b/c I think it's pretty relevant:
Honestly, I feel like the PS5 is in an interesting situation right now. It's arguably Sony's most successful console to date, at least in terms of raw revenue and profits, but I feel similarly to it as I do the Wii, in that it has clearly exposed a lot of vulnerabilities in Sony's business model that could very much come back to bite then in the next generation, as Nintendo learned with the Wii.
Firstly, one very clear issue with the PS5 that has been somewhat masked by the high per-unit sales and consistent sales pace is that sales in Europe and Japan are very noticeably beginning to lag behind the PS4, likely due to growing competition from the PC space and economic woes. This has been compensated for by increased sales in NA, almost certainly due to Playstation continuing to steal console players from Xbox. If not for that, its sales trajectory would not look nearly as rosy.
Another issue is that Sony has arguably reached the limit of their current business model. AAA games are harder to produce than ever with diminishing returns. Hardware has also gotten way more pricey lately, with the loss-leader model of console sales collapsing. I wouldn't be surprised if the next-gen PS6 costs $700, and for what? Even cutting-edge PCs nowadays don't offer a significant bump in graphical fidelity over the PS5, unless ur way up the Nvidia pipeline, which given the costs of their GPUs will likely prevent them from making any significant headway into the console market. The final straw has to be if Switch 2 is capable of running current-gen multi-plats, which would render the current status quo of market segmentation between the two companies practically null and void.
What we can say for sure is that Sony's back does seem to be against a wall in a shrinking market sector. With Nintendo utterly dominant in the handheld market and Microsoft and Steam encroaching with PC and PC handhelds, Sony's best bet at this point is hoping that they can consolidate what remains of the home console market by forcing Xbox out of it. Only time will tell if that will work out for them...
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This is why Sony is diverting their interest to strengthening IP. The singularity with gaming devices is inevitable but with their own multimedia IP sony can always pave way for their own stores, their own subscription services and at the very least their own software revenue
As far as hardware goes, I think they will bite the bullet and go with a dual system with PS6. That in my opinion is where these early reports of a portable PS5 will eventually lead to.
https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-reportedly-prepping-playstation-5-portable-plans-to-battle-nintendos-handheld-dominance
A powerful home console and a cutting-edge portable. Essentially their equivalent of Series X & S. I just don't think there is appetite/budget for developers to truly go above the level of graphical fidelity we're about to be seeing in the next few years on PS5/Series X... The below are all games due this year, so we'll see how close the PS5 versions get to these "in-engine" trailers/demos, but whats certain is that they represents a plateau where we won't see huge leaps beyond this, just more performant versions on later hardware (More/better raytraycing, more frames, higher resolution, more foliage, particles etc etc.... but ultimately the base assets will not undergo some meaningful generational change.
So I think tying developers down to a PS5 spec portable device (but more advance at ML etc) at the end of this decade will actually be pretty well accepted and understood.
I think the Switch 2 will still be a step removed from receiving all multiplatform games for the remainder of the gen, sony is still safe there. It'll be a hogwarts legacy type situation (8-12month late ports) for most titles but it will mean playstation looses some of its more casual users
Last edited by Otter - on 14 January 2025
