Blu-Ray was a gimmick; a gimmick is a unique selling point. It was important to the PS3 and the fact it was good for gamers but it was a gimmick. Sony implemented it as a central point of the PS3 because it was good for their whole company. Sony have therefore implemented 'gimmicks' in their design that they had faith in. Given the price of the research they're putting into Morpheus and their experience in the film and game industries isn't it POSSIBLE they'd look at this for a big opportunity for their entire company?

I suppose 'obsessed' may be an over-statement but even you admit that they have two projects this year that qualify as cinematic, and while its true its not all their titles are as inclined to explore cinematic game design, as you point out, they've being exploring and found massive success with experiments in this area for quite a while. Since the original Uncharted atleast.

I'm not 'bashing' The Order; it was a flawed game, but its flaws make alot more sense if you try to look at it from the angle of 'what were they trying to learn'. I am certainly not saying all Morpheus games will have those problems, but rather suggesting we take a moment to think about what it explains. 

Companies tend to look to what worked for them and desire to replicate it. My guess is the PS5 will be like the PS4, but much more powerful of course. Something like Morpheus will be an add on because the lesson Sony took from PS3 and PS4 is how important the entry price is early on. The PS5 will set out to be $399 at launch.

But there is a big reason for Sony going streaming on PS5. Developers, publishers, and Sony will have full control of the games. There will be no second hand sales and everything will be profit for publishers. I'm thinking that the pure profit margins and low cost of 'hardware' will be the reason why Sony will do this. Their hardware will be a access box that costs less than a Vita TV and will feature easy access features like being able to play on mobile, tablets, and smart TVs. There will be too many convenience features to pass up for most consumers.

Will there be less sales from developing countries and countries with poor internet? Probably. But I think that it will be worth it in the end because they will have tons of people who will be interested in it.

So really, it's more like the Wii was the next PS2, thus the title of this thread should be 'Will the PS5 be the next PS2?' =)

I don't think there will be much of a PS5. Since Sony wants the PS4 to be roughly a 10 year console and there are so many endeavors into similar yet side works it seems like they are pushing to almost work themselves out of the consoles business. If it is released it might be something like the PS TV/Vita TV (even though it seems to be a flop for now). This also seems to be shown with the Samsung Smart TV and hard push for PSNow. Seems they would rather put out something that has less risk and just take a subscription without giving something tangible. 

MS on the other hand seems to be trying to make the Xbox more of a side step from PC and more like an alternative and/or accompanyment while offering similar features that Sony is. 

Nintendo in this case seems to be wanting to stick to consoles, at least at this point, but streamlining it with Fuzion.

The issue with a gimmick is it's about being novel, VR will have been a feature new to this generation in it's implementation, it won't be unique next gen.

Another thing to consider with this idea of your's is that VR doesn't work for all games, only really 1st person titles and in gaming we have other perspectives besides first person view. Games with cinematics are usually viewed from outside of the character you'd normally control's eyes, so Morpheus only really works within FPS perspective games, be it racers or FPS games.

BTW I didn't actually even mention about the success of those games, cinematic games are a part of the market, but they're not everything and cinematic, by which I mean titles like The Order or Until Dawn may not work for immersion in VR, because they take place in a different perspective from what VR is intended for or what it actually works with.

What I'm saying is FPS games work in VR, others don't, so betting the farm on VR isn't the right way to go. Now if VR can be included because it gets dead cheap to produce that's a different matter entirely, if a headset can be made for $50/£50, like a little more than a controller costs it's a different matter entirely, Sony or any console producer could include one in every box, especially if microprocessor stacking becomes cheap and PS4 uses the tech I mentioned in my original post, manufacturing will be pretty cheap, even if Sony goes with a 20 Teraflop or even 40TF APU, HBM and UM based hardware, because it will be pretty mature in manufacturing processes by 2018.

You trying to use The Order as a way to prove VR will be a standard isn't really logical, because the game isn't an example of a title that would work with VR, Gran Turismo may be because similation games are viewed through FPS perspectives, but even then some people like myself prefer to use external car view to take in the whole track much better while I'm racing.

If morpheus's successor is cheap to make then Sony can include it in the box, but it won't be an unknown gimmick, it will just be a standard part of the tech built into the design of the system.

Sony would be better off just releasing the system at the cheapest possible price, with the specs they and developer's deem to be suitable for what they want to achieve with the 9th gen of console games, sell Morpheus 2 separately, much like they're going to with the 1st version, just like PS Move and Playstation Camera in the past.

Forcing people to have it isn't the way to go.

Doubtful in my opinion.

It's anti-consumer, everyone's seen the backlash Microsoft got for trying to force 24 hour connections and anti-used games on customers, it's illogical to think that Sony would build their next platform around that, especially when the hardware available will be plenty capable of producing a huge upgrade from what we have today, cloud focused systems aren't needed, they're a crutch, better to have it as a feature for use in titles like MMOs or for dedicated servers, not be all your platform is about.

Publishers have the option this generation to use DRM, but they know customers won't go for it, they'd rather get people to buy their games than limit them with DRM control.

People will never go for being tied into a subscription based system like they have on their mobiles phone contracts or their Sky TV plans, they want to buy their console day one and then buy the games they want, maybe pay £40/$50 a year for PS+ that gives them access to a load of games and ability to play online in retail games, paying more than that isn't something they want, I know this because it's all people said when the rumors of a potential similar thing could have happened this generation.

Physical hardware is going to happen again, because it's always worked, people don't want to not be able to access their games when their internet goes down, everyone, in every country, even those with the best internet infrastructures in the world has instances of internet connections not working in their homes, if your system is built relying on that, you lose access to all of your games when you internet stops working, it's ridiculous to build your console around that kind of a limitation, especially when these Vita TV style boxes will still need to have a processor, RAM and everything you'd build into a console anyway.

Latency is another factor, it would be present in all games, because it's a law of physics that broadband cannot overcome and you want to have that in all games? LOL no my friend, we'll have generations more of physical consoles, you buy throughout each generation, maybe digital games will become gradually more popular, but still there will be a copy of the game on your hard drive, you'll play that on your console, just like this generation and the last before it.

This is a technical impossibility, VR requires a lot of horse power, 60fps is not optionnal in this case, same for image quality and resolution, if you want the immersion to work really well you need all of this together.

This means that Morpheus will either work on the PS4 as is, or require an updated console with a faster GPU/memory... unless they just want to display tiles and minecraft.

Either way, Sony themselves stated that they wanted to develop VR as a standard platform, in the same manner as Blue-Ray or 2D/3D television is, their PS console may have support for it, but this is only a display method for some games... so far there is no history of Sony forcibly pushing gimmicks with their consoles (much to their honnor).

The more I think about it the more this seems to be a variant of "MS did it, so Sony will do it" (with Nintendo this time around).

MS is working on prediction technology that is supposed to reduce latency to almost zero. When this happens I wouldn't be surprised if they trot out their Rio service. Sony would be wise to copy this technology from MS.

As for not being able to access internet, if your home internet goes down, you will be just as easily be able to pull out your phone or tablet and keep gaming as though you were never disconnected. There will be tons of ways to keep playing without missing a beat. You'll be able to play your full console games on your way to work, at work, on your way home from work, and at home. It will be too convenient to pass up for most consumers.

As for the physical media always being around and the like, even that is going away. People don't care as much for collecting DVDs or Blurays when they can just as easily fire up Netflix and stream all their shows and not feel like they were ripped off at all. Same thing applies here. Hundreds of games at your disposal and it only costs you a monthly fee? And you can take your games everywhere with you? It will happen. I'm predicting next gen. Some are predicting the generation after, but its going to happen. I hate to say it but you should brace yourself for it.