Garrett Hawke
Member
Well there used to be a platform where in multiplayer games everyone was getting the same resolution and performance. And now there's none.And now there's two. So?
Well there used to be a platform where in multiplayer games everyone was getting the same resolution and performance. And now there's none.And now there's two. So?
Well I simply do not agree with this at all and I hope it flops. I think console generations are good the way they've always been.
We'll see. I'm betting PS4K will get off to a great start but then momentum for both will slow and all the PS4 momentum they had will diminish.Nope. But there's a market for it, or at least Sony thinks there is.
We'll see. I'm betting PS4K will get off to a great start but then momentum for both will slow and all the PS4 momentum they had will diminish.
Well there used to be a platform where in multiplayer games everyone was getting the same resolution and performance. And now there's none.
Well there used to be a platform where in multiplayer games everyone was getting the same resolution and performance. And now there's none.
We will most likely see MP games where PS4K them runs at a higher resolution in MP but I doubt there will be games where the MP runs at 60FPS on PS4K and 30FPS on PS4. It will probably happen in SP but not MP. That would be completely unbalanced and unfair and the devs know that.
We'll see. I'm betting PS4K will get off to a great start but then momentum for both will slow and all the PS4 momentum they had will diminish.
Cost of making ps4 is 250 and they will likely sell it at 299 retail going forward
Cost of making ps4k is 300 or even 325 and they will likely sell it at 399 which means a higher profit margin
"Games as a service"......better include a way to still acquire physical copies, or it simply will never take off.
How did that work for ps3? And ps3 was an $800 machine for sold for $600. How many thought ps4 would flop with 8gb gddr because it would cost too much?How about hardware makers give us more powerful consoles to begin with? Sony should have launched PS4 with a 2.56TF GPU and a 2GHz CPU in the first place. I would have gladly paid $500 so that every game had access to 40% more power from day 1. I doubt it would have lessened the PS4's sales or dominance in any way either.
How about hardware makers give us more powerful consoles to begin with? Sony should have launched PS4 with a 2.56TF GPU and a 2GHz CPU in the first place. I would have gladly paid $500 so that every game had access to 40% more power from day 1. I doubt it would have lessened the PS4's sales or dominance in any way either.
Let me pull some numbers out of my ass.
Cost of making ps4 is 225 and they will likely sell it at 299 retail going forward
Cost of making ps4k is 350 or even 375 and they will likely sell it at 399 which means a lower profit margin
Pretty one sided article, you don't even touch on any of the potential negatives.
You cannot maintain forward comparability forever. What happens when a developer wants to take advantage of the 16GB RAM on the PS5? What happens to consumer confusion regarding what games are supported on which platforms? What happens with the level of a playing field if an online game runs significantly better on one system than another?
How can you afford constant R&D costs if you aren't selling Apple numbers? What happens to firmware updates when the PS4 is holding back PS5.5's operation or security?
Chubigans, I've read your article and it's fine as it is, but I have the feeling that some people here don't understand how getting rid of big leaps in hardware generations makes sense from a financial perspective. Maybe a sample calculation including install bases (also mentioning the scalability of modern game engines) would be a good addition to the OP.
Interesting read OP, I'am still on the fence about the NEO but I can definitely see the positives. I think it will all depend on how the marketing is handled and how they integrate it into the ecosystem. If everything goes smoothly I could see this being a huge success, time will tell though.
Personally I'm not a fan of the idea of an iterative console future.
It's up to Sony and probably Microsoft to tell me why this is a good thing. The constant speculation and hypothesising is getting tiring already, all I want to know are the facts.
Do I really need to wait until the middle of June to find out what the future looks like for a console gamer?
im confused chubigans...
in your introductory message you paint the introduction of the PS4 Neo or X1.5 as some kind of new paradigm. However, in that very post you mentioned products such as the DSi and New 3DS wich are essentially the equivalent.
So in short there are not "new" dynamics to study here, the dedicated gaming industry will behave the same as it has done in the past.
Even more, we had peripherals that became such succesful like the Balance Board or Kinect that they sort of became a platform within a platform. Same will happen with PSVR.
So nothing new to see here really.
How about hardware makers give us more powerful consoles to begin with? Sony should have launched PS4 with a 2.56TF GPU and a 2GHz CPU in the first place. I would have gladly paid $500 so that every game had access to 40% more power from day 1. I doubt it would have lessened the PS4's sales or dominance in any way either.
Both those are possibilities, the different profit margins.
That said I think Sony is happy with *any* profit margin on consoles, given the history of what loss they used to take on these consoles at the beginning.
As long as they are selling reasonably well (meaning 10 million+ per year or possibly more), that means PS4K could potentially rake in maybe $100 million just on the console unit with a controller alone, with PS4 also raking in more possibly with a higher profit margin and maybe similar sales volume.
Soon that profit margin may change, over time, as more PS4Ks are made. The long-term gameplan will work out, hopefully as well as PS4 OG for them.
I'm sure they expect PS4K to last until PS5, so maybe 3 or 4 years. And maybe it will even outlast PS4.
We'll see how the market dictates that, how long PS4 and PS4K survive beside one another. If anything has been proven by the market worldwide in general, a cheap console with good games always has a pretty good market.
Chubigans, I've read your article and it's fine as it is, but I have the feeling that some people here don't understand how getting rid of big leaps in hardware generations makes sense from a financial perspective. Maybe a sample calculation including install bases (also mentioning the scalability of modern game engines) would be a good addition to the OP.
Now Sony has said that PS4 has to be the primary system, that experiences beyond resolution and framerate and graphics cannot happen. But they're still essentially relegating those now almost 38 million+ PS4 buyers to second tier status. For devs in an industry where they are already outsourcing tons of work to other studios, where they can barely have games run on Xbox One and PS4 without massive day one patches and bugs and exploits, they now have to develop for hardware that could be ever changing every few years.
I get the advantages. This is the N64 expansion pak to the next level. But let's not pretend this is great for gamers as consumers or the console industry. This is solely about a giant corporation who wants to use declining hardware sales and leverage its brand into higher profit margins with new consoles. Apple and phone manufacturers are highly successful with convincing consumers that they need the next years phone because of the 2 megapixel camera increase and slight change to gpu etc.
But these are just my thoughts. Let's see what happens. The industry is going to change whether we like it or not.
"Games as a service"......better include a way to still acquire physical copies, or it simply will never take off.
Are we shareowners in Sony and Xbox that as gamers/consumers we should care about their finanical perspective.
Games as a Service
The worst thing about generational leaps is that it simply doesn't work in today's game industry. We're starting to pivot into the idea of games as a service. This was teased towards the end of the PS3/360 lifecycle, but its really coming into its own with games like The Division and Destiny having a strong online base with roadmaps for the future. It is dependant on one thing, really: a healthy userbase to get users from, which is easily disrupted by a generational gap.
Honestly GAF is looking too deep into this. All this is is a 4K PS4 and that'll be it's main selling point. It's being sold right alongside the regular PS4 and Sony isn't splitting the userbase. When this thing is announced, nothing much will change, the sky won't fall, and all this speculation will be for nothing. It's a premium product for people who want it. Nothing more, nothing less.
So I assume we are moving to hardware that has dev software that does all the work now?
I just don't see it, if anything this move will limit technological progress. Making faster hardware with lots of cool features is great, but if you replace that hardware with newer different hardware before devs and middleware companies have time to take advantage of it you are doing more harm than good.
Sorry I can't explain myself better.
There are some who feel like a revision in the middle of a console's lifespan is pointless, and that Sony should have waited for the PS5. I have news for you: this is not the middle of the PS4's lifespan, and there is no PS5. There will be a new console after the PS4K, and that will be an upgraded version of the PS4K. This is the new life cycle, of which there is no beginning, middle, or (hopefully) end.
- no more games design for the lastest iteration, good bye to exclusive that show hardware full potential.
Are we shareowners in Sony and Xbox that as gamers/consumers we should care about their finanical perspective. The OP is trying to portray this is as something that is necessary and good for consumers and this industry when this is primarily a straight business decision to go the smartphone route of forced obsolescence and new hardware quicker than before. It's not about gamers. It's about leveraging the strong Playstation brand and getting double the money they could get with continued and slowing ps4 sales with ps4k sales that also help buffer their 4k television business. I don't have issues with this. But call the spade a spade.
Honestly I think this is the reason why Sony is doing this. Platform exclusives are going away. It just doesn't make sense to develop for 1 platform anymore. And Sony gets very little from owning all the studios who develop exclusives. So there wouldn't bee that many games that show full hardware potential anyway. Sony wants to compete against PC. They need a box that is easy to use, costs less than PC, and has good performance.
So nothing will change then right?Good luck making the devs optimizing to the lowest common denominator when they don't even care to release a product that isn't broken on day 1.
So I posted this over on Gamasutra as I was a bit tired of insiders posting on behalf of developers that are "angry" over the PS4K. I wanted to take a more realistic view of what a PS4K could mean for the industry. It's posted in full below the link-
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidGalindo/20160422/271014/The_Case_for_the_PS4K.php
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The console game industry is a slow, predictible one. You release a console, support it with everything you got, and if its successful you start engineering new "slim" models to help keep costs down while adding some minor new revisions. Then, in maybe 5-7 years time, you release the big new kahuna, and start again.
There have been some exceptions for sure. The PS3 actually saw its feature list cut as backward compatibility was removed in chunks in future hardware revisions. Nintendo opted for different upgrade paths, such as the Expansion Pak for the N64, or went a whole new hardware route like the DSi and New 3DS. Microsoft, despite rumors every year of a new optical drive-less system, keeps it relatively tame with a new "slim" 360 model, as the original Xbox did not have a long enough lifespan to merit a system revision, joining the likes of the GameCube, Dreamcast, and so many other consoles who didn't live to see a slimmer, smaller future.
This is, in fact, completely antithetical to the industry at large. Everything is improving yearly. New computers, new Blu-Ray players, new cars, new TVs, new blenders, and yes, new smartphones and tablets. But not game consoles. And so a predictable trend can occur: we see the rise in sales, followed by the plateau, and then the dip. By the time the dip happens, prices are slashed and rumors of the all new system are already happening. You can practically set your watch to it.
And then we have this...the PS4K. Assuming the leaks are true, it disrupts everything we know about the console market. Veteran game journalists, even those we can point to for a clear, precise measure on the news, are left saying, "what?" No one really seems to know what to make of this. And without Sony expanding on the news until a later event or even E3, there's not much to do other than speculate on the biggest question of all: why?
Generational Loyalty
I'm all over the place when it comes to game consoles. I stayed with Nintendo from the NES years to Gamecube, then won an Xbox at a graduation raffle and stuck with Microsoft to the 360 era, where I traded that in for a PS3 and ultimately stuck with the PS4. Broken chains in backward compatibility made it easy to jump around like that, whether it was hardware specific (N64 to GameCube) or a mix of software and hardware (Xbox to Xbox 360). Certainly there have been others who have stayed with one company forever.
Still, it was easy to see, at least in North America, the switch in momentum. The success of the PS2 followed with the success of the 360, and now we're back with the PS4 leading the sales charge (the Wii, of course, was a massive thing of its own, but ultimately lead with a lot of one-time buyers that didn't come back for the Wii U). There's no reason to stay loyal to any one company, in that there was never a guarantee that your purchases would be valid on the new consoles. Both the PS4 and XB1 opted to sever all ties with their respective predecessors, though like so many other things MS would try and reverse years down the line with a BC program.
The point is that generational loyalty up until now is fruitless unless you're specifically doing it for first party franchises, something that has become increasingly irrelevant (poor reception to a majority of new IPs both Sony and MS have tried to wheel out this gen) or getting a bit long in the tooth (can MS really launch Xbox 2 with Halo 7 and command the type of brand power that the franchise used to have?). Ultimately you go where your friends are, or where the games interest you the most. In a cycle that encourages players to slash ties with where they were coming from to a new platform that has everything they're looking for, how do you make sure that customers are tied down to a brand, or at least, have less of a reason to abandon it in favor of the other guys?
The way to do that is to blur the line of product cycles. Perhaps even erase it completely.
The Future is Here
It is a completely different shift to what we're used to. No longer will we be filing into the theater in a secret event broadcast streamed to the world, waiting to see what's underneath the curtain. The glamor and hype of a new console can now be broken down to what essentially are patch notes. Here's what's new in New Console 2017: a new GPU here, some CPU improvements here, runs all the same games, cya in 2020 for the next system.
It is certainly the biggest disappointment in this, if only because the spectacle of a new console launch is so much fun. But it is probably gone forever.
So what does that leave us with? A brand new console, coming way sooner than anyone has expected, that changes a generational cycle into a constantly refreshed cycle. No longer are there gaps in these product generations that allow for consumers to jump to other platforms, at least not one that's easily discernible. You probably didn't know it at the time, but that copy of Knack you bought in 2013 will be playable in 2023, on new hardware.
That's the benefit of the x86 architecture that Sony, MS and (its heavily rumored) Nintendo has chosen to use for their consoles. It prevents hard cuts to product life. The PS4 won't have an end-of-life cycle. It will continue to be produced, at a cost that benefits Sony, until it is phased out in favor of a new hardware revision.
And that's the whole point of the PS4K: in an age where tech advances are slowing to a point where a technological leap is impossible without a high cost or a long wait, companies have to change up this cycle. Digital Foundry pointed out that tech improvements are slowing to a crawl. Will consumers actually wait until 2022 to get a generational leap in graphics at a consumer friendly price?
What if they didn't have to wait?
Think about how unfriendly the current generational lifecycle is for the average consumer. They can either come in too early at high adopter prices and a slow start of game releases, or right in the middle where sales peak and deals are good, or come it at the end, where support will soon be ending for the system and mere years or even months are left for game releases. If they don't hit that sweet spot, they can be left holding the bag on a system that has been essentially abandoned in favor of the all new console.
Games as a Service
The worst thing about generational leaps is that it simply doesn't work in today's game industry. We're starting to pivot into the idea of games as a service. This was teased towards the end of the PS3/360 lifecycle, but its really coming into its own with games like The Division and Destiny having a strong online base with roadmaps for the future. It is dependant on one thing, really: a healthy userbase to get users from, which is easily disrupted by a generational gap.
Imagine for a second that you're running a major studio, and you want to create the next big online game. Development starts tomorrow, with the game releasing late 2018. If the PS4K does not exist, and the PS5 creates this chasm as all generation leaps do, then what can you do? Develop for the PS4, and have tools in place to bridge the gap to the PS5 when it comes out? This is essentially what Destiny is doing, but it comes at a major cost, something that Activision and probably other major publishers like EA and Ubisoft can support, but few others can.
See, not only are consumers used to this cycle of set lifetimes for consoles, but game development also has to plan around it. Do you release a new IP late in the cycle of a console, or hold it back for the new system, which will have added costs and a new set of developmental issues with a much smaller userbase, but the potential for expansion in the future?
With this new cycle, you don't have to worry about that anymore. The PS4 is also the PS4K, and is probably the PS5 too. When the PS4K launches, it will already have a userbase of over 40 million players. It already has all of the developmental tools that have matured and strengthened over the last few years. There's no risk to building the next big online game late in the PS4 future, because the transition over to the new system is built into the ecosystem. This is a huge, huge benefit to game development.
There are some who feel like a revision in the middle of a console's lifespan is pointless, and that Sony should have waited for the PS5. I have news for you: this is not the middle of the PS4's lifespan, and there is no PS5. There will be a new console after the PS4K, and that will be an upgraded version of the PS4K. This is the new life cycle, of which there is no beginning, middle, or (hopefully) end.
Wave of Anger
Certainly there will be anger to come with this news; it's already happening, but then again, it always happens with everything. The internet amplifies everything to a degree that it becomes somewhat impossible to measure the actual consumer response to things until they're released.
What it comes down to is, how will this translate in the marketplace? Quite easily, actually: here's the PS4, at a new lower price, and here's the new PS4K, which is more powerful and a little more expensive too. Which one do you want?
And that's the new future of game consoles: a life cycle that never ends, that is constantly updated, that largely benefits game development and also benefits new consumers ready to jump into games whenever they'd like. This is a major, positive change for the industry.
I will miss the idea of a new console that completely disrupts the industry with new exotic hardware and a whole new way to play a game. In fact, that era might end with Nintendo, who prepares to put the Wii U behind them with an all new game console that could be radically different than anything they've done before.
But the time for disruptive product cycles is over. There's too much risk involved, with game budgets more expensive than ever, and other markets increasingly eating away at each other. There was a lot of debate before this generation launched on whether or not there was even a market for game consoles anymore as the PS3 and 360 quickly plummeted in sales. The PS4 answered that question with a resounding yes. I wonder what answers the PS4K will bring.
Honestly I think this is the reason why Sony is doing this. Platform exclusives are going away. It just doesn't make sense to develop for 1 platform anymore. And Sony gets very little from owning all the studios who develop exclusives. So there wouldn't bee that many games that show full hardware potential anyway. Sony wants to compete against PC. They need a box that is easy to use, costs less than PC, and has good performance.
It doesn't need to work like that and things won't change much for a developer that would like to maximize a game console.So I assume we are moving to hardware that has dev software that does all the work now?
I just don't see it, if anything this move will limit technological progress. Making faster hardware with lots of cool features is great, but if you replace that hardware with newer different hardware before devs and middleware companies have time to take advantage of it you are doing more harm than good.
Sorry I can't explain myself better.
Good for Sony, bad for me.
So nothing will change then right?