It's funny how ppl expect such a huge leap from X720 and PS4, when there is ZERO, confirmed information about them!!!  It's nice to speculate but wait till there IS an official announcement!!!  The PSV was suppose to be superior to the 3DS (currently the games don't showcase them as obvious as it should); but the 3DS is giving the PSV a thrashing sales wise.

Thank you, it is good looking at the comparission now. AUD has really lifted in vlaue so hope it stays this way for a while haha.

At least on paper it looks respectable compared to LAST gen, DOUBLE the USA price.

So I am very happy with the price considering I paid like $800 for my PS3.

haha yeah I know! Wii U will probably have the worst graphics this gen, but it won't be another PS360 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Wii situation again. Personally, I don't need THE best graphics, as long as it's not a gimped version...

@ OP:

We don't pay with Eurodollars here (it says $299 Euro). Also, the UK price could be listed maybe, it's £249 - £299.

Great job keeping it up to date though!

The ironic thing is, I think there are more graphically good games on 3DS than on Vita currently. I've played the Vita more than a couple of times on demo stations, but it just doesn't seem to be superior. The only thing it really has over the 3DS is the quality of the screen itself, which is undeniably very good.

With the current rumored specs for all 3 console, would this be a similar situation as to PS2, Xbox and GC - graphically? What would be a fair comparison between the consoles?

@Xbicio @BoostFire The Wii U is a custom 45nm #power7 chip. Same SOI design in #ibmwatson

— IBM watsonx (@IBMwatsonx) September 16, 2012

Sony can't make a heavy loss leading powerhouse next generation.

Now I know the big costs with the PS3 were CELL and Blu-ray which will no longer be a factor with PS4. But there is a new factor in play these days that Sony doesn't control. The foreign exchange rate. The Wii launched in Japan for ¥25,000 which was ~$205 at the time. It launched in the US for $250 (keep in mind that Japan didn't pack in Wii Sports with it). But the Wii U is launching in Japan for ¥26,250 (not much more Yen than the Wii) which is $335.32 today. It has a US launch price of $299 (no bundled game for either territory).

See how huge that difference is? ¥25,000 is $319.36 right now. It was $205.00 back in 2006.

The high end PS3 launched in Japan for ¥59,980 which was $558 in 2006 but is $766 today. So even if they dropped the PS4 launch price to, say, ¥39,980, that still makes it $510 today. So no matter what, provided the exchange doesn't rapidly move to weaken the Yen in the next year, Sony will either have to launch with a very large loss or reduce the capabilities of the system to launch at a more market friendly price. This is one of the reasons the 3DS launched at such a high price compared to the DS several years before. To hold the same margin of profit or loss, now requires a far higher foreign price than it did before.

And a $100 loss per console is far too much for them as a company now than it was back in 2006. In 2006, they were a financially sound comapny. That is not the case today. If they sold 10 million units at a $100 loss, that's a $1 billion loss to a company that can't handle taking on another billion dollar loss.

And keep in mind that ¥59,980 was with a huge loss (Cell and Blu-ray) meaning that a ¥59,980 price would likely break even now but again that pushes the US price to $766. But they can't sell the PS4 at $766 in the US so they'll have to take would could be as high as a $266 hit per US PS4 if they were to sell it for as low as $500. Dropping the Japanese price to ¥39,980 would give it a global price that's attractive but again would cost them ~$250 in losses per unit.

The strengthening of the Yen and the weakening of the US dollar, Euro and Pound will have the single largest impact on the capabilities and prices of the consoles from Nintendo and Sony. We've already seen this with the 3DS and Wii U. We'll see it with Sony as well.

thanks for an updated confirmation, even though I never doubted your original info.

hopefully others accept it now.

@Viper1: I forgot about exchange rates when talking about Sony's ability to launch hardware at a loss. And that makes their situation even worse than I thought.

And maybe that's why the rumors about the PS4 talk about an AMD APU paired with a "low end" 6 or 7xxx card, to keep the costs lower than it would be with a customized CPU and GPU, while still being a good improvement over the PS3.

It looks like Microsoft is the only one that can go the powerhouse route again given their low sales in Japan (so a minimal lose) and that using the $1 = 1€ exchange will make them gain more money from Europe.

You know what, I'm still looking for that "like"-button without finding it....

This is something every Sony fanboy should read when saying PS4 will blow the WiiU out of the sky! (or is it out of the waters?!)