No ..

As long as the Jap. Video Game market exists, Sony will remain in the Video Game Industry.

I started to stay away from this thread and many like it but I have to come on out and say it.

No, there will not be a PS4.

The PS3 will be dead by or within the year 2009 and Sony with its tremendous losses spent into this costly project will exit the videogame business.

I didn't want to say it because all it does is stir up mess but somebody has to prepare people for what's going to happen. Just enjoy your games regardless of what happens. Sony is in tailspin right now and that's the simple out and out facts.

They shoulda never got caught up in this game of chicken with Microsoft. Microsoft played them.

John Lucas

I see these types of threads multiple times and it just makes me wonder if they have the right team for the "will not be competing next year." I'm going to go against the grain here for a sec and say personally, I believe microsoft will be out of the console war. Microsoft was down some 7 Bil dollars and to this day has YET to see a profit in their gaming devision. Paired with horrid hardware failure rates, and almost full frontal failure on every other aspect of the company non os related (Zune, DVR project, Dev work for the table, etc.) I don't see there entertainment devision cutting it in the hardware market.

Sony on the other hand has been profitable on ALL fronts, last I heard Sony pictures, music, TV's, Camera's, etc were all doing fine, and the ONLY 2 things hurting them at the moment are Cell-tech, which was partially designed and currently being used by Intel, PS3 units themselves, which if you think about it are still pulling money (and a constant flow of mind you) from the PS2 and PSP. If you think about it in all its likely hood there doing just fine lol. 

Now the thing I find fascinating is the fact that my earlier belief that MS would drop out of the console war started with a few major pointers in my opinion.

1.) They introduced "Games for Windows," isn't it a bit odd that all theyre biggest hits are ariving on the pc o.O? Hell no! The userbase is enormous :D FAR greater than their console counterpart.

2.) Viva pinata DS!! Halo DS! A help for nintendo from MS? I think vice versa, I think MS is trying to get their exlusive titles to the biggest fish in the water at the moment and those and halo are probably the only things MS will make a proffit on. (last I knew they gained money on premium and core and are still losing it on elite)

3.) Bungies "leave without really leaving" sounds like pushing software onto other platforms if you ask me :P

4.) Not really impressive numbers by any means but if you take a look at OS marketshare a few years ago and look at it today, its definately bad for MS's sake, before steve job's returned, MS held 99 percent of the known operating system market, today, they own less than 90, I think it was 86ish perecent and dropping on a yearly basis, Vista ISN'T taking off as fast as XP and with the widespread phenomenon known as the "iProducts" lol the competition is lighting up rather brightly.

5.) I had a bunch of other points but I can't type them here at the moment :D the boss keeps hovering around >_> mehbeh later. Anyway closing statement I have a feeling MS's going to drop out of the console war and announce themselves as a software developer, which in my opinion is what they should have done from the getgo, its like everyone says, their dev tools are great, there hardware is faulty lol. Let a software company make software. 

Hey John, I want to see this in your signature.

Signature's getting overloaded as it is, Words Of Wisdom.

Don't worry. You can hold me accountable by what I said here. Save my post for future reference.

I never run away from my words. Which is why one of my signature parts points out the time when I was wrong.

Plus it's not nice rooting for a console to fail which is how I would be looked at by having that in my signature.

I've said this many times in Kotaku and other places on the 'net. E3 2006 made sure I saw how this generation would play out in full.

Sony's handling of this whole project is horrible, plain and simple. It is only going to get worse before it gets better. I just got through reading some posts on Joystiq and even some Sony fans are starting to get pissed. It's like a kid being peer pressured into some activity by another kid and the peer-pressured one getting in all the trouble in the end. Microsoft is the other kid and Sony is the peer-pressured one. They played right into Microsoft's playbook and the results are hazardous.

The PS3 will not make it out of 2009. That's a Guaran-Damn-Tee.

John Lucas

Sony will tell you there will be a PS4, but they would say that even if there wasn't going to be one. They've probably been talking about PS4-PS8 to try and keep Sony supporters on board and shoo away any thoughts that this might be Sony's last gen in gaming. But that's only a guess.

Wow. You know what I like, when people judge a console based on less that a year of being out. Do you judge a football team based on one game? Do you judge a book by its cover? Do you judge a person by their looks? Come on! The PS3 has yet to see its first proven IP with R&C. On the other hand, the Wii already released Metroid Prime and Zelda with Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Mario Galaxy on the way, all in the first year!

There will be a PS4, with a Wii 2 and a Xbox 720. There is not enough proof right now to say otherwise.

I would hope that the PS4 would make it in about 5-6 years. To me I'd say Sony should just use the PS3 just like Microsoft did for the Xbox, which is perfecting it and getting rid of the bad issues, making it better so that when the next console comes out, it'll be ready?

Quite the contrary.

Most of the fight for a generation is done in the planning stages before the generation even starts. The pre-period before launch and the business plan set up. The end part of the fight is in the 1st year. Unless competitors are able to keep even keel within a generation (which arguably only happened in the 4th gen and only in some regions) the hierarchy, the pecking order is decided early on within that 1st year. This sets the loyalties and allegiances that extend a system's lead and also a system's lag.

Neither Gamecube nor XBox 1 stood a chance against the PS2. The PS2 held the market to themselves practically for 2 years after devaluing Sega's Dreamcast. That generation was decided in 3 months after those newcomers launched. Gamecube dropped like a rock and stayed there & XBox never rose above the tall grass but they were newcomers anyway so you cut 'em some slack.

The time period where all systems are in play ARE the judging period. XBox 360 got a year headstart on the other two but could not penetrate Japan and was weaker than expected in Europe. It had a rough start and only picked up throughout the 1st year ending in the hit Gears of War. Wii was like stallion out of the stable and ran over the 360 in less than a year. Now we have a contest currently between these two competitors which if you look at the way things are going with 360's weaker reach in regions outside of USA doesn't bode well for them to be market leader. Wii has taken over worldwide and is looking strong for this very important holiday season. The question in this part is can 360 hang on and possibly take the lead back over. Halo 3 was a boon and yet hardware sales didn't match those amazing software sales. That week according to this chart it only pushed 360 over Wii by 25,000 when Wii has been on a slight ebb the past weeks. If they can't match Halo 3 or come close to it the Wii will start pulling ahead this year and especially in 2008.

See how quick that works? You CAN see how the race is going very quickly.

Sony launched in a major region late (Europe) and is lagging everywhere else (except New Zealand). It beat 360 in Japan but that's not saying much with that "Name is Mud in Japan" system that is the 360. In its BEST region (Japan) it gets bested by and large by its 7th gen competitor the Wii. Wii has dropped considerably in the past few weeks there and is STILL double the PS3 sales! What is THAT?! This ebbing won't last and sales will pick up again very soon.

You can take a look at how the systems are designed, the audience they are aiming for, and the support and reports of support behind them to make a call on how the race is going.

It's been a year. That tired excuse of it's too early to tell is nonsense. You could tell even BEFORE any launch if you know what to look for. The actual competition of all systems in 1st year is only your confirmation of your theories.

It only takes the 1st year and depending on how the race goes less than that to determine the outcome.

11 months since all contestants were on the battlefield. I think that's a healthy time period to make calls on how the race is going especially considering the trackable trends in sales. GBA beating PS3 in America on a continuous monthly basis??? That's PATHETIC. GBA is outdated by DS and is STILL outselling PS3 a new snazzy 7th gen powerhouse system. That is horrible. Even outsold by its predecessor and handheld counterpart.

You'll learn soon enough. I've seen too many of these "console wars" not to know the telltale signs.

John Lucas