The Neo is a member of the PS4 family. It counts as a PS4 sale by any reasonable measure.
Someone expressed a concern that announcing Neo but not making it available would kill sales of
vanilla PS4 this holiday. Okay, we'll ignore what Sony have been saying and assume Neo and PS4 actually
are targeted at the same market segment… So we're assuming that if Sony say Neo will be available in March, then 1M folks who'd planned to buy a PS4 this holiday will get a Neo instead. Sure, why not. But if Sony say Neo will be available in October, then only 500k will switch to Neo instead? Wut? The argument seems to be that announcing it before the holidays will harm holiday sales of vanilla PS4, but if we're assuming audience overlap, wouldn't making Neo
available before the holidays be just as harmful to vanilla PS4 sales, if not more so? If we're concerned for PS4's sales, why acknowledge Neo at all, if any talk of it is assumed to be harmful?
No, but some people will wait to see what early adopters and reviewers say about the Neo before committing one way or another. The last thing you want to do as a vendor is give your customer a reason to delay their purchase.
Regarding your second point, I could see that as an argument for announcing now even if it's
not available until Q1, but regarding your first point, I actually
don't see a lot of potential overlap between PS4 and Neo buyers, and I think the Meeting will make that clear. If a buyer has spent nearly three years for the $399 PS4 to become more affordable than $349, I don't see them pouncing on a Neo that costs $399 or
more.
No, it
doesn't seem likely they'd be persuaded by, "$399 is a good price, considering it's brand new tech," if the same argument didn't already persuade them to spend $399 on a PS4 three years ago, or even $349 on one last holiday. If anything, seeing new hardware for $399 again may tell those same people
that's the one they should be waiting on. Anyone not already in the ecosystem has been waiting for the price to go down, not up. Basically, I think Neo will be positioned such that anyone who'd been waiting for PS4 to become affordable will be reassured that now is indeed the time to buy it, because it's gonna be even longer before the new one is similarly cheap.
It seems better for them to actively avoid having any given consumer's attention shift from buying PS4 to buying Neo. Don't sell them on the idea of getting a Neo in the future. That's what you did three years ago with the PS4 — showed them a carrot they couldn't
quite reach — and they're still not a customer yet. Sell them a PS4
today instead of moving the carrot just out of reach again by showing them a "nearly affordable" Neo.
It's possible, but there haven't been any leaks at all suggesting that this is the case. So far it just seems like wishful thinking, which is entertaining in the context of your last statement:
lol That's not me hearing what I want to hear. That's me flat out rejecting the "a die shrink wasn't cost effective and/or naturally resulted in all of this extra power" rumor as ridiculous. ;p It was hard to believe from the outset, but I would think the mere existence of the SlimBone and Sony's statements that Neo
isn't intended to be a replacement for the PS4 would make it even more clear to people. Guess not.
Sony hasn't really said anything at all, except to developers. What they told developers is to hurry up and meet a specific deadline in the build-up to the holiday season when they've got a lot of other work on their plate. Sure, some of that is trying to build up a library but they could just as well have required Neo patches by the end of the year for titles coming out starting September / October and have the same net effect if the console was due for release next year.
It seems clear they're trying to ensure a slate of launch titles for the Neo when it launches this Fall.
Could be. I'm not saying it's gonna be Q1. I'm mostly just trying to point out that it's incorrect when people say, "Q1 has been ruled out by ______," and yes, that technically includes the October "Neo awareness" requirement.