Here is a way for Microsoft and Sony to sell gazillion next gen consoles and come out at affordable price point and still satisfy the power/performance hungry users.

Launch Xbox 720/PS4 with lower tier hardware and 299 price point. All current gen and next gen games are compatible with it, with next gen games running 30 fps and 720p.

However allow enthusiasts to SLI/Crossfire 2 their consoles together for hefty performance boost. Making next gen games 1080p and up to 60 FPS with other goodies like dual screen support.

You want power, fork out 600 bucks and buy 2 consoles. Problem solved.

Sounds great! Can't wait! I just hope the next gen has more RPGs on the home consoles...

Not sure why people complain about backwards compatibility or the price. If you care about PS3 games you probably have a PS3. And if you're worried about playing PS3 games in 4-5 years.. PS3 will be $100 with games at around $20.

Also, new PS4 @ $400 isn't that much. Especially with Smart phones and Ipads at $600+.

$400 = saving $34 a month for a year.

If you intend on using a PS4 for 4 years, then it's equivalent to paying $8 a month.... about the same price as Netflix here in Canada.

At this point I really don't care.

playstation 1 releae price was 306€ (599DM) and playstation 2 release price was 445€ (869DM) so with inflation in germany since 2000 i would like to see a release price of 560€ lol

no i don't like to see that but i would be ok with 499€ which would be less than ps2 price with inflation.

i know nobody wants to pay that even when they had to pay more for the playstation 2, the most succesful console of all time, but i would love to see that to get nice power.

Because these things are planned WAY, WAY in advance. They have to guarantee supply, compatibility, QA testing (want another RROD?), build a devkit so performance is tuned to the device instead of inefficient catch-all PC programming, and also financial/legal reasons (when someone is selling you fifty million units, you want to negotiate a good deal right?)

Also, the GTX 680 uses far too much power to be in a console. When scaled down to the appropriate wattage, it won't perform like any high-end PC today. Think more... GT 65x.

Not a personal attack to you, but can people stop this, "higher priced consoles won´t sell, and the PS3 proved it and Sony didn´t learn" BS

If someone comes out tomorrow, with a $600 machine, with brand new IPs with solid gameplay, 20 hour long games, addicting MP and Samaritan level graphics, that machine would sell like crazy from the get go.

The reason PS3 didn´t sell in the beginning was not THE PRICE, it was the fact that it had NO GAME that made consumers go, "I don´t mind the extra investment over the 360"

This is why a dev friendly machine with more horsepower then the competition is not the same situation it happened with the PS3. The PS3 theoretically was more powerful then the 360, but there was no games showing it, because devs were new to the Cell architecture. And even now, only first party studios are crushing Cells potential, but even they can´t mack up for the PS3s GPU shortcomings

As for the no BC problem, I mean it is not a surprise. Sony had to make this decision sooner or later, they can go Cell 2.0 and prolong "Dev nightmare machine", or go Dev friendly sooner so that they have full 3rd party support, and more important let 1st party go ham and cheese on the machine since day one instead of learning the system 5 years into the cycle.

As for used games, I mean If sony does it MS does it and vise versa. Not good for consumers but good for them, If I am a 3rd party dev and I have a used game friendly machine and a non used game friendly one, I will give 100% support to the later one. Both companies will go with this leaving Nintendo behind just when they though that 3rd party support was coming full force.

Instead of bashing possible price based on this and lack of BC, people should be concerned about the 2 biggest flaws PS3 had, Ram and going cheap on the GPU (mainly because they had to rush it because of the NVIDIA fiasco), and one of them (according to this) is being addressed accordingly.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. The Vita and the PS3, are the only two consoles that don't have b/c. That's pretty deplorable. The whole "Ninty is doing it to a lesser extent" doesn't help you at all. If there wasn't two other variations of the DS out without GBA b/c then it might be comparable, but there are, so it isn't 

Hey, the Vita does have backwards compatibility, that's the reason why I'm buying it!

So does the PS3 (I believe), and I'm not talking about the 60gb models, I'm talking about EVERY model. I'm surprised SONY hasn't been ripped apart because of this, I haven't even seen a thread on it.

PS2 backwards compatibility snuck its way in 5 months ago, you just can't use it.

I can play my old PSP games on my new Vita? Where do I put them? ;_; 

Southern Islands is from the 7000-generation of AMD GPUs, while the rumored one for the Nextbox is from the 6000-generation.

That makes it inarguably "a generation ahead".

You're thinking of a videogame generation ahead. This article, though, is talking about a graphics chipset generation. Graphics chipsets go through generations MUCH more quickly than consoles. The 7000 series of AMD chipsets is the 11th generation since 2000.