Sony made big mistakes, but it was also forced to release PS3 earlier than it wished. Now it got things quite straight, the Cell is well scalable up, BD won the format war, so the investments made this gen will pay nicely next gen helping Sony to make a PS4 powerful enough without costing too much.

Sony has screwed themselves.

Last generation they were a supermajority of the gaming market, with many, many 3rd party games as "Sony exclusives."

Then they launched late, refused to pay 3rd parties for exclusivity, make their console in such a way that it was unaffordable to the vast majority of consumers, and a few other dumbass business moves.

The key thing that screwed them from supermajority to dead last this generation was launching late. Ironically, that also caused them to "profit late" in that they are just now starting to recoup some of the losses from the PS3. They are not in a good position to launch a new console right now, but MS and Nintendo are.

Sony themselves said they are probably going to be launching late again this generation. Somebody help me out with a link. I predict they will launch even later than last gen.

So, let's recap. From supermajority market dominance last gen, to last place in every console race in which they are competing this gen. From tons of great 3rd party exclusives, to almost no 3rd party exclusives. From a dominant brand position to an average brand position, and from launching late to launching later.

The next thing I want to analize is the power of "the cell." The cell really doesn't matter. It's a processor, it's not a GPU. Who gives a shit if it's tapped. The best looking games on the Xbox, with its standard and much easier to program for cpu, don't look that much worse than any PS3 game. Especially when Crysis 2 comes out. The PS3 is not some supermachine. It is not much more practically powerful than the Xbox 360, and if the next gen consoles don't blow it away I'll be fucking astonished, and I won't buy them because they will be shit. I'll just buy a PC, which is already vastly more powerful than the Playstation 3 ever could be in every aspect. The CPU is important, but it is only one part, and it certainly can't open up other bottlenecks. Especially when its more trouble than its worth to develop for, and a half of a gen's worth of multiplats ended up looking like shit because of it. Had Sony launched with a standard cpu, there would be a shit-ton of multiplats out there with better graphics on the PS3, including some big hitters, like Fallout 3, The Orange Box, and Red Dead Revolver. Games that are arguably better than most exclusives on any console.

A much bigger boon and the only good think for the Playstation brand this generation is the extra storage capacity Blu-Ray provides. It has the potential to make future games much better. However, if games are tending towards installation, and/or direct download next gen, then the BR becomes less of a necessity. This is compouned if you compare the read/write speeds of a standard laptop Hard-Disc or even a SDD to a high speed blu-ray drive. However, Blu-Ray has marketability, and thus it is a good thing for Sony. I'm much rather launch early or have some sort of brand handicap though, were I in competition, because I highly doubt the next Xbox launches with just a DVD drive on it.

They're not in a great position, compared to say, the Xbox or the Wii, both coming off their most successful generations ever, red hot, and ready to launch new hardware ahead of the Playstation. This is compounded by the fact that the US, which is dominated by Wii and 360, is quickly becoming the most influential, profitable, and dominant videogame market worldwide, thanks in great part to the decline of the core obscure gaming culture in Japan this generation(Playstation's lifeblood).

Let's talk graphics and games.

We often talk about the Xbox 360 as a console with few relevant exclusives. However, the Xbox is competing with the PS3, much more than the PC in this regard, so it doesn't really need them. All that matters is the console has tentpole multiplats the the PS3 doesn't have. This will stay the same next generation. For fanboy arguments, we can make "exclusive" lists, but that doesn't give a real idea of library quality. As long as the Playstation can't play games like Fable III, Gears III, and Halo, it doesn't matter if PC gamers can. Those games increase the quality of the Xbox 360 library comparitively to the PS3. So, talking about exclusives really isn't giving a clear picture, and in fact, it is giving a purposefully cloudy picture full of bias. The Xbox 360's library is strong because of multiplats. Not only does it get all of the PS360 multiplats, it's also gets all of the PC360 multiplats, as the PC and PS3 rarely share games the Xbox 360 lacks. The vast majority of games, AAA or otherwise this generation are multiplats available on the 360.

My point is, game quality is subjective, and there is an argument that it is also moot from a  marketing perspective. In other words, it doesn't matter than you like Playstation 3 exclusives. They won't drive sales for Sony next gen anymore than they did this gen. Last gen, Sony had tons of 3rd party exclusives, which are now multiplat, and that advantage is now lost forever.

Graphics. They're great this gen. Honest, there isn't a huge difference between top end graphics on the games available on the consoles. It comes more down to artstyle. Given the graphics we've seen in games like Uncharted 2, Gears 3, and Farcry 2, while the PS3 does have a graphical advantage, it is vastly overstated. Imagine this is a highway. The Wii is running about 50 MPH. The Xbox 360 is running about 300 MPH. The PS3 is running about 320 MPH. That difference isn't significant as a marketing tool. It's just not. Now maybe the PS3 will increase in speed, BUT, last generation, the Xbox was arguably much more powerful compared to the PS2, than the PS3 is to the 360. I'd guess it was at about 40 percent more powerful than the PS2, and it had an internal Hard-Drive. Were those things important to Playstation fanboys at that time? Who is to say Sony will continue to have the most powerful console next gen? They probably will since the only way they will have the more powerful console is if they launch later than the competition. It's a double-edged sword.

Just some food for thought. Is Sony really in a better position than Nintendo or Xbox next gen? Think about it. If worst position is defined as screwed, then they are.

ZenfolderVGI, did VGChartz pay you to be the joke poster of this site?  Because if they did, they sure aren't getting their money's worth...

I have to laugh at people who say that ps4 will not be that much more powerful if they release it at $399.  First off, while they probably don't want to lose $200 per console like last time, it is reasonable for all consoles (except the Wii was different I believe) to lose some money upon release per console.  Lets just say $50 per console.

When the ps3 was first released, Intel was just releasing their first dual core computers.  On top of that, graphics were absolutely nothing compared to now, and they still cost a lot of money.  What did we get in the ps3?  A single core with 8 SPUs running at 3.2 GHz and an amazing graphics card.  It was considered a very cheap alternative to a super computer if you linked a # of them together.

Nowadays, for essentially the same exact price that you could possibly get one of the first dual core laptops in the era of the release of the ps3, you can get a core i7 processor (quad core, dual threaded (essentially 8 core)) along with a graphics card that has 1GB of independent memory and 6gb of RAM on the cpu.  If you don't believe me, I've been looking at laptops a lot lately, and yes, you can have this computer for ~$1000.

What I'm getting at is the ps3 absolutely blew away everything from its time and cost $600 ($800 to produce).  If they were to release a console that cost $400 ($450 to produce), rather than completely blow the competition away, it would probably be similar to the top competition of the time.  I'm guessing it will have the Cell infastructure, but it could probably be compared to really high end i7 processors, if not even a little more than that.  On top of that, while the graphics don't need tons of improvement, they would be able to insert a much better graphics card for a relatively cheap price.  The system would also have more RAM.

Basically what I am getting at is that if/when the ps4 comes out, it will have a processor that absolutely woops the Cell, considerably more memory, and a much better graphics card for a cheaper release price.  Now my thoughts are: in the last 10 years, games continued to make leaps and bounds of improvement, leading to the necessity of a lot better compueters.  Obviously, the graphics and whatnot are still making improvements in games, but I feel like it is much slower than it used to be.  What I'm getting at is hopefully this will mean that consoles (and cpus) will have much faster loading times, etc. in the future.  I know it is just 1 stupid little part, but sometimes I get irritated when I'm waiting for my game to load for 10 seconds instead of 1.

If I remember correctly, I think all Nintendo platforms have been sold at a profit at launch.  So I don't think it's just the Wii.

depends how closely SONY tries to keep to the PS3, if they keep the cell etc and just bump SPE's and ram GPU etc they may end up with effectively the weakest console next gen and also one that is still hard to develop for meaning most devs will just use PS3 tech limiting games meaning only first party titles will use it's power. This is unless they put a lot of work into creating a software development environment like Microsoft has with the 360. Because if they rely on the raw power of the Cell again without the high level environment in place APIs etc developers will have to go in and hand code the engine again (or recycle) which most devs are just not willing to do. I mean outside of device drivers and embedded devices very few people program in machine code any more. Tho that situation would have the benifit of probably leading to having the best looking exclusives again because low level coding leads to much more efficient programs. 

But if they do Microsoft and Nintendo could easily build consoles that produce graphics much better and easier by using more traditional tech and good API support. Meaning most multiplats would look better on those consoles with the PS4 getting inferior ports. 

And for all you people that think the Cell is gods gift to computing it's not that design was abandoned by everyone other than SONY for a reason, it just isn't that good for most types of code that CPUs handle (is very good at video encoding tho, but that is what it was partly designed for so...) And most of the stuff it's good at is mostly handled by GPUs today anyway. Add in the fact that it requires low level coding to get decent performance out of it...

actually if I remember correctly both the N64 and GCN were sold at a small loss at launch, not more than $10-20
 and within a few months they were selling at a profit. In other words by the time they launched in the USA etc they were sold at a profit.

yeah, that's probably it

Thanks for the  clarification

I'd say the OP's more an issue for PSP2 than it is PS4.

<table style="width: 90%;" border="0"><tr><td><strong>chocoloco said:</strong><br /><p>Someone likes to overanalyze what we can not really know. Just a fantasy in your mind bro.</p></td></tr></table><br /><br />

WTF, does VGchartz hate me????