Expanding on one of my earlier threads...

PS3 was off to a rocky start. The incredibly high loss on each system was devastating, as was the billions in R&D costs. The launch line-up was lackluster and the $600 “get a second job” price was ludicrous. SONY endured through the billions in losses caused by initial PS3 madness and has managed to take the brand back to profitability, but in the state they’re in now they need to of learned from their mistakes. The PS4 needs to be success. We have a few ideas regarding how:

1) Massive launch window titles, including 2 big system sellers. I would suggest:

• Gran Turismo 6: This is a worldwide seller, and will almost guaruntee Sony’s dominance in Europe over Microsoft, and maybe over Nintendo. GT is also a popular franchise in the other 2 major regions, and will definitely see great success there. I can see this title alone selling millions of PS4s.
• Uncharted 4: Naughty Dog now has 2 teams, one is tied down and hard at work on The Last of Us for PS3, so what’s the other team working on? Probably Uncharted 4. The Uncharted PS3 trilogy is approaching the 15m sales mark and PS3 receives a sizeable boost in sales with each release. Uncharted is now one of Playstation’s biggest assets, and Uncharted 4 would be a compelling launch title on the PS4. Assuming PS4 releases in late 2013, the UC team would have been working on their game for 2 years, which may just be enough development time considering the other team could lend a hand in the second year when TLOU is complete.
• A new SONY IP: Guerilla Games and Sucker Punch are the most notable first party developers known to be working on new IPs, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they were PS4 games, especially in Guerilla’s case as a job listing revealed they were prepping for development on a next-gen platform.
• Major third party titles: I’m sure plenty of these will be available at launch, most notably Battlefield 4, which is due to release next year and could be fantastic game to showcase what the PS4 is capable of along with UC4 and GT6. If DICE get there way, it’ll for sure be a next gen title, and they have a pretty big development team, so a launch window release date is feasible.

2) A good balance between price and power – $399: Sony could without a doubt take a $50-100 loss on hardware, anything above that would be a little risky considering their financial situation and anything close to the spastically high loss PS3 took at launch would be suicide. $450-500 hardware in 2013/14 would provide a very significant jump over current-gen consoles in visuals, physics and multitasking and probably a significant jump over the Wii U’s technical capabilities, and a $399 price at retail would be an attractive price-point for consumers, especially if bundled with a game suggested in 1.

3) An online service on-par with XBL and Steam: PSN has made great strides over the last few years, but it’s still not quite up to standard yet, the launch of a new console is the best oppurtunity to revamp the online service and give competitors a run for their money.

4) A brilliant marketing campaign: Show us how amazing the games look, show us the new features, show us why this is a superior system to PS3 and next-gen competitors (even if it isn’t, just make it seem that way!). You know those awesome montages you make with the cool indie music and the epic dubstep and rock all the time? Cut them down to 30 seconds and put them everywhere! This is probably asking a lot from Sony, they’ve been arguably (definitely) the worst out of the big 3 when it comes to marketing for the last 6 years… PS1 and PS2 had some excellent ads, so maybe just rehire those guys?

5) Take advantage of the Gaikai acquisition: Streaming is the future. It may be that streaming becomes the most popular form of distribution for publishers, or it may be that it becomes a mostly optional service, used to a lesser extent than physical copies or digital downloads but still a major feature of next gen systems; either way, it’s inevitably going to be a big part of gaming’s future. Sony need to integrate the cloud with Playstation, and with the acquisition of Gaikai they have the infrastructure to do just that, and do it effectively.

Source: my brain/http://www.gamingcapacity.com/5-things-ps4-needs-to-win-next-gen/

1: Sony to do everything Right

2: Nintendo to do everything Wrong

3: Microsoft to do everything Wrong

4: No one else Enters market

5: FF7 Remake.

Thanks. I put it here for the discussion. N4G/Twitter is for views, N4G comments are for the most part annoying.

I'm actually reading this because it's one of our members who wrote it, right? Did you write this Andrepetmonkey?

Articles very similar to the OP are constantly being linked to here from N4G, originally posted on more or less unknown video game sites, don't you guys too just think they are boring?

Basically price it right first time. If they do that they have half a chance of winning.

I believe it need to do eerrrrythang.

1. A good balance between price and power.
2. Massive launch window titles.
3. Fire the current marketing guys.

While Sony should indeed do all of that, I don't think even those 5 things (or added grilling power) will be enough to make it truly successful.

The market is changing. iOS/Android/F2P gaming has changed the paradigm and Sony would be foolish to ignore that. Very soon you'll have multiple Android devices with controllers, and if that should prove successful (and I strongly suspect it will) much more advanced games will pour onto Android and soon after Apple devices.

Home consoles must offer an experience that those systems cannot, which appeals - TO THE MASS MARKET and justifies paying the cost of a console plus console games (not that hard, we were spending insane amounts for Rock Band not long ago).

The core market is incredibly expensive to develop for on this gen's tech, let alone next gen's. It's becoming harder and harder to make money off them (look at THQ) and all indicators are the 'middle' of the market IE: the soft-core are drifting to tablets and F2P. Casuals are there already in spades. If Sony tries to live off the hard core gamers alone, they will be a trouble. Even if PS4 is THE core system, it'll be in a shrinking market that will be very hard to profit from.

Sony needs to win the masses back with something revolutionary. Nintendo is trying with their gamepad (I think this is a stupid mistake, it makes WiiU look like a poor man's Apple to the casual observer), MS will try with a much refined Kinect and maybe some sort of virtual reality. Sony must introduce some tech that must be experienced on a propritory home console (not just on TV) that grabs peoples imagination like Wii and Kinect did.

Move could be that tech but they'd need to do a MUCH better job with it than they have on PS3.