I'm eager for the next gen consoles from MS and Sony to be released - or at least shown!! It'll be interesting to follow PS4 during this gen, because I don't know how they'll tackle Wii U and x3ox... By far the most interesting console this gen, but not because of HW or SW, which is weird ^^

The Xbox360 was launched for $299/$399 and was a beast. Sure they took heavy losses, but they can afford them. What's stopping them to do something similar this time?

About power consumption, many people don't know how much power does their console use, and many more don't even care. The only problem with the power consumption is the related heat, that's the biggest problem .. for the manufacturers.

Oh, and WiiU uses twice as much power as Wii, but it's about the same that the actual Xbox360 and PS3 while being more powerful than those. Msoft and Sony could go with a 200W console and be a lot more powerful than WiiU, if the cooling is enough for that task it shouldn't be a problem.

You do realize that, right now, you can buy $450 PC, with pretty much the same components rumoured PS4 will use, that is around 3x as powerful as WiiU? Those $450 include manufecturer's and retailer's profit. So in a year from now, those $450 should be, I don't know, $350? I really don't see Sony being in trouble by not being able to make decently powerful console, or loosing money on it. Same power as NextBox? I doubt it, but I'm not sure even MS with all their money can afford to go over 1.5x of that.

I dont think sony's financial situation is stopping them from making cell phones that retail off contract for $500+ dollars (including their upcoming 1080p phones) or high end laptops, or tv's or cameras. Sony will manufacture something that is highly spec but reasonably priced due to not having multiple proprietary items.

The problem is not making it high spec'ed, but selling it for a profit.

Sure, Sony makes $500+ cell phones but they make money when they sell them. And the same goes for their laptops and cameras (not so much on TVs which is one of their divisions that faces more troubles).

The problem is when they make those beasts but sell them at a loss, which is the case with their consoles. And their economical situation forces them to stop losing money.

The way I see it, they only have 3 solutions:

1-Act like always: make powerful machine and sell at a loss. This will result in Sony going bankruptcy.

2-Make a powerful machine and sell it for a profit. The console will be expensive and few people will buy it. Sony won't lose money but developing for them won't be a necessity for 3rd parties.

3-Make a modestly powerful console and sell it for a profit. They won't have the most powerful console but since the price will be atractive they will sell more units, making them win more money while still being important for 3rd parties.

Which way would you go?

you are going to be in for a shock, if it does i say there is going to be quite a good chance for it too, PSVita bundled with the PS3 and the PS+ with the motto "take your game on the go" playstation ding!

if you have not figured it out yet, that is one of the reasons they made the PSVit with modified Arm Processors and a modified standard SGX GPU, Sony did that for the very reason they made PS+ now supported on the PSVita, along with you can now use your PSVita as a game controller for your PS3. combined with Playstation Mobile. even when the PS4 gets released the PSVita will be able to connect to that system also.

trend's in Gaming going foward is Mobile devices connecting to Livingroom Hubs, Sony already has such platforms already set to go. why do you think they also purchased Sony Ericsson out right?

for all intent's and purpose the WiiU game tablet is a Handheld connected to a Central Hub, which is the WiiU do you think the Nintendo 3DS or 3DSXL will be left out of this connectivity option moving forward?

How about Microsoft with surface, smartglass, or windows Phone?

Its not about short term sales, its about how long you can support your systems, and aside from Sony and their PSPGo there is more past experience about Sony putting support for their systems for longer on the shelf than the other two in this market. the WiiU just released and already Nintendo is not doing anymore 1st party efforts for the Wii? AND THEY WERE IN 1ST PLACE  ALMOST THIS WHOLE GENERATION and STILL ARE WITH NUMBER OF SYSTEMS IN THE CONSUMER'S HANDS but yet Nintendo is already talking about not making any 1st party efforts for the Wii?

while Sony is in 3rd place, and yet is still pushing 1st party efforts on a 3rd place console?

What I was suggesting is that they would have to take significantly larger losses to preserve their price point ...

Nintendo is not incompetent and it is unlikely that Sony or Microsoft could produce a dramatically more powerful system than they could for the same price using the same amount of energy. So, if Nintendo is spending 50% more to manufacturer the system (excluding the controller) and it is using twice the electricity it is moderately safe to assume that Sony and Microsoft would need to increase their manufacturing cost by at least 50% and use at least twice as much electricity to maintain their processing power advantage. Suppose Microsoft los $100 per XBox 360 at $300/$400 meaning their manufacturing cost was $400/$500, if it costs 50% more to maintain their processing power advantage the manufacturing cost increases to $600/$750 and Microsoft loses $300/$350 per system sold; even by Microsoft standards that is insane.

Now, you're right that people don't care about the power consumption directly but they do care about the size, noise and failure rate of their systems which are all indirectly impacted by energy consumption. The PS3 was dramatically bigger than the PS2 at launch and if the PS4 was a 400 watt monster it is likely that you would see a proportionate increase in the size of the PS4 compared to the PS3; and you would likely have a very large fan on at all times that was quite loud to keep the console from over-heating.

I see, but I disagree.

You are taking those numbers taking the WiiU as your baseline and while you can do that, you should also take into consideration how Nintendo works. Nintendo focus on low power consumption and that bring extra costs that the competition don't have. For example they said that they went with the MCM to save energy and space and that goingthat route was more expensive. Msoft and Sony will launch with 2 chips and will only try to get them fit into 1 later in the lifetime of their consoles.

And let's look at it from another point of view. Microsoft. When they launched the 360 it was based on high spec'ed parts. They went for the best they could manage (cost, heat, etc) and went for it and that made them lose those $100 per unit. Now they won't be able to do that because the high spec'ed components of nowadays are out of the reach for a console, mainly because of heat. So they will have to deal with, at best, the second tiers for each category. Add that to the fact that Nintendo made their hardware decisions in 2008 (hence why the rumors of and HD4000 based GPU) while the other have made their decisions in 2010 or 2011 and you end in an scenario were their console can be much more powerful while not being astronomically expensive.

Or to put it in another way, WiiU costs $180 to make losing only a few dollars. Msoft could make a console for twice the cost and sell it for $300 losing only the same hundred dollars that last gen.

True, that's why I said if cooling is enough for that task. Let's face it, most consoles are still made with looks first and cooling after.

But those components will be tailored to Sonys needs... And that probably will up the costs, as will R%D - all going into the costs of the console... You and me have the benefit of not cosumizing our parts and spending ton of money on research...

I just see it as a balancing act between 3 variables, power, energy consumption and cost ... Nintendo increased cost and power consumption moderately in order to increase processing power. For Sony and Microsoft to preserve their advantage in processing power they have to make concessions in either energy consumption or cost.

Now, I'm not claiming that Sony or Microsoft can't produce a significantly more powerful system, I'm just saying their systems will likely have a smaller processing power advantage than the PS3 or XBox 360 did. I'm personally of the opinion that both manufacturers are going to release $400 systems that are similar in size and energy consumption as the slim version of their previous generation console, and they will probably be about 3 to 4 times as powerful as the Wii U; much beyond that in terms of processing power will likely result in being too expensive or running too hot as a home console.