With the Coronavirus epidemic in everyone's mind, there's no doubt that it is going to hurt the general economy for a long time. Whether you think the virus is as bad as they said (I personally think it's just another annoying flu, but whatever), it is certainly bad luck it coincided with the near release of the next generation of consoles. The slowing of the industry around the world can have a terrible effect on a new piece of hardware's release. So what's going to happen from here? Are platform holders delay the release until markets become calmer, or would that only hurt the investers' confidence in them? And if that happens, will we see more games released during the first year due to the extra dev time?

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/ram-nand-dram-prices-coronavirus-adata

This might just be a speculation hit piece, however production of parts could well slow down including computer components. I did put in the poll 'Nothing will happen', if anything I think there will just be a slight slow down in supply. As of now PC parts like RAM and hard drives are quite cheap compared to sometrhing like 12-18 months ago.

I'm feeling dread. This is not just another flu. The mortality rate is like 3.3% minimum right now. I think the next generation will be pushed back to some point next year. The virus is affecting everything.

Here is a link for context from source and not a 'news outlet' of the ongoing situation with regards to this topic.

From the World Health Organisation: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-march-2020

I wish Sony would delay the launch to March in Europe, let xbox launch first, and then launch later with better specs.

To be honest I still have a pile of games to go through, I still haven't bought a lot of essential games from these past years, and Im happy with the graphics on the Pro, also I just bought a nacon revolution unlimited controller, so that fixes the biggest ps4 issue the controller.

To be honest I'm having second thoughts about ps5, I might just wait and build a good PC, it will cost more, but then games are much cheaper and I can play hundreds of thousands of games, in fact I will just sell my MacBook so that will pay for the PC.

Sony will have to impress with ps5 to make me buy one instead of a PC. I can build now a 8teraflop PC for 650dollars with SSD and water cooling, but by January the same price will build a 12 teraflop PC

I love consoles, mostly because I've been working abroad for 14 years, but I realize consoles are expensive, I purchased the ps4 and then the Pro, and not all games are enhanced, and I'm tired of repaying for remasters, when on a PC you buy once and then up the settings as you upgrade the pc. 

Most of all I miss playing strategy and management games, which are bad with a controller.

Lets take an example GTA5, even tough ps4 is powerful, and gta 5 is a ps3 game, it still doesn't look good, nowhere near what I saw on PC. You can add AA and resolution as needed on PC. And its 60fps minimum.

Then the ps4 doesn't read most of my movies which are in HEVC, so a PC would do a lot more, then free online on PC

Also, with PC I can get an emulator and play my switch games in 4K with AA.

I would be ok with if PS5 and Xbox Series X gets delay due to a virus, but even it does, it would causes the stocks to drop from top to bottom in most countries

None of the above. Consoles might be supply constrained at launch is my guess. Scalpers will have a good time. Since we don't know the price yet, we won't know if the price is going to be high because of the virus or if that will just be the excuse for high launch prices.

Today is the first day since Februari 17th that the number of active cases is going up again. It's currenlty growing exponentially outside China, mostly fueled by people continuing to travel to infected areas. Countries are too slow to respond, too unprepared to put an effective halt to the disease. So far the economy is still the number one concern. Tomorrow the total nr of cases will be over 100k
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
It can be slowed down and reversed, China has demonstrated that, but so far no other government wants to take drastic measures to slow it down.

As long as the name remains tied to beer companies and not console companies, it'll be fine for the most part.

There's plenty of time to clear things up before shortages become a big concern. Could also get worse, but usually it doesn't.

More praying to the gaming Gods?

Consoles are an expensive, discretionary purchase. In a poor economy they will be amongst the first things to suffer generally. People who have been told they can not expect a payrise in the near future, or worse fear for their job, or worse still lose their job suffer a significant negative wealth effect. They may or may not be poorer, but they feel poorer.

The only weird silver lining I can see is the nature of this economic crisis requires people to stay home. To that end, a new console to fill the time might seem like a good idea to those who can keep their jobs by working from home if mass quarantines continue.

That said, I don't think that will come close to compensating for a slow down in global growth as far as the console gaming business is concerned. Best thing that can happen for gaming is that this virus gets well contained by July at the latest.

Its not just another flu, china and south Korea deaths are probably misleading, most likely a lot more.

With that said, if you're young and healthy you shouldn't worry.

But I agree that the news are overreacting and making it seem a lot worse than it is, the flu kills around 40 000 per year and no one says a thing about it.

I think they could just present the new consoles online streaming instead of E3 and other events. I'm just hoping they delay it a few months, the current mid generation consoles are very capable and more than enough for a couple more years. Even the original ps4 is still OK, games such as god of war and spiderman are proof.

In my mind, the later they launch, the better the specs can be, so yeah. 

The switch is proof that a March launch works, gives them enough time to sell to the biggest fans, and then a few months for them to produce enough consoles for holidays 2021

My honest opinion, there is a reason why Sony hasn't shown anything of the ps5 yet, later than previous generations. Maybe they could launch the console first in Japan on December/January, and then a couple months later in USA and Europe, wouldn't be the first time they do that. In fact its likely if parts will be hard to come by.

Here in the UK I see no one excited for the next xbox, most gamers don't even know about it, everyone is hyped for PS5. And  in other European countries and Japan xbox is almost non existent. Sony has nothing to worry about. They are on the driver seat.

They are not worried about Microsoft, look at the 360, launched almost a full year before and ps3 still caught to it. And they know the ps4 still has legs with Last of us 2 and ghosts of tsushima and final fantasy 7. Not to mention sony still hasn't dropped the official price of the consoles.