There is no doubt that there is a market for 500/600$ consoles, but the better question is, why would any of the big 3 do it?

Nintendo can also release a highly priced console, but it makes no sense for them, because their first party franchises don´t rely on hardware power, and they only need respectable specs for third party support. So go cheap and make profit from day 1.

In my mind, MS would be better served with a 400/450$ console with a more expensive sku available at launch, because they need to upgrade the hardware so Kinect 2.0 can fully utilize it and not be limited by it while making profit at launch with the machine. I think kinect is that big of a phenom for them going forward.

For me it makes more sense for Sony to go hardcore on the specs (if they have the resources to do so), mainly because of what they are good at, 1st party developers taking full advantage of the machine and selling consoles in the process. But even that stance can change if they have something that we don´t know that they thing would sell consoles.

And that is why I said that if MS goes big time I see Sony having trouble, but there is no doubt that if both wan´t powerful machines for the next 10 years they need to make $500+ machines in 2013.

An even better question is, will someone start using the 2-3 year upgradeable models, and stop these 7 year cycles, too many questions at this point.

Yes, you are the proud owner of a steady reliable fast Internet Connection in a densly populated area. You and everyone else... Oh Wait..

Funny I know tons of students/workers who dont have a good Internet access only via Phone with severe datavolume restrictions. My mom lives in a rural area in germany with 50kilobyte/s  she needs every last bit of it for her work. Taking my 720 to her would be pointless and all my friends there have lousy internet connections. My little brothers room has no good internet connection despite the fact my father has a good internet connection because his room is far away from the Wifi source. Lending it to him is pointless then ?

Not everyone  has friends/family in one place not everyone has a good enough internet connection all the time. Some people have more than one family member that uses a lot of speed. In rural areas even in the USA this is a problem. 

The people on this planet are not all like you. A feature like this would definetly kill of a lot of sales 20-25% maybe more. 

MS seeks to become an entertainment hub. Ergo bluray is essential next gen. Its a hell of alot cheaper to implement it then it was in 2006 thats forsure. 

Copied/stole an exclusive. Tomato /To'mato

so if my Internet goes off I won't be able to jerk off or play halo what a shame, also that used game market war will hurt the industry real bad if it keeps going on

1 for the living room and one for the bedroom. I have 2 Xbox 360s right now and that was the first time I ever did this. Best decision ever. Play in the living room, use Zune VoDs in the bedroom.

Me gusta

Do you really think the console quits all running processes when it's lost connection to the net? It will wait for reconnecting for sure and double check to see what has changed since your last login (maybe you're not allowed to switch games). That way you only need a connection when starting a game and it can lose it without any effect unless you are offline for hours.

Whatever a cottege is; if you mean college, who's not able to get a net connection there for like a few cents a day? Hell, you can simply connect it to any device that is able to establish a connection, phone, webstick or whatever which doesn't even have to cost anything. I don't believe there is any college out there in the markets MS is aiming for that doesn't have net for the students.

i think he meant Cottage... a type of rural house... usually in small ville with low broadband coverage...

IMO it will only need net to register the game... its unnecessary to be always on to prevent piracy...

No, it's not the same.

You were praising Microsoft by saying they "Stole one of PS3s exclusives".

Copied is much more accurate term since Sony did it first with PS3. 
Anyway Blu-Ray is so 2006, PS4 will use Green-Ray!

"one of which will be reserved for Kinect"

Why does that make me shudder? Are MS and Sony really going to push their gimmick motion controls as a hardware and software mover next gen and, moreover, make them mandatory? It that's the case, I just might sit this one out, this is getting ridiculous (as in; I don't want to pay for hardware I'm never going to use). I hope they have the sense to at least launch a version without Kinect but that seems unlikely if they're actually planning on dedicating a cpu core solely to that purpose.