Support NeoGAF

[Garrett Hawke]

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.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

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.

 

[Teknoman]

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.

I'll say. While there has always been the "console or handheld 2.0" revision, and even with Nintendo adding extra power via DSi or New 3DS...its usually not something that most developers even touch. And with how expensive consoles are these days, it doesnt seem like a practice that will stick.

 

[Indelible]

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.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

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.

 

[Bits N Pieces]

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?

 

[Refreshment.01]

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.

 

[CosmicQueso]

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.

And I'm betting it will be quite successful, that it'll generate not only new buyers but also lead a lot of current ps4 owners to upgrade, and allow the gen to go until 2020, giving the platform a much larger overall installed base, and a bigger, longer lasting market for developers to sell games to.

So, alas, we are at an impasse.

 

[potatohead]

Well there used to be a platform where in multiplayer games everyone was getting the same resolution and performance. And now there's none.

It's just relative. You're still getting similar performance for games between the two consoles, which are running the same games here.

Consoles and PC are merging closer and closer in capability. Not raw performance, but the architecture is somewhat dictating what is now possible within the realm of consoles.

There's no difference to PC really, but there's just another thing that is moderately similar in consoles now.

Oddly enough I think people will find we do not lose much in the console space with these changes.

As others have said, people will vote with their wallets. We will soon see what this means.

 

[dynamitejim]

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.

 

[iTehDroiD]

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.

 

[potatohead]

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.

This does happen on PC, even if we don't realize it all the time.

If I play at 40 fps and someone else at 144 fps, I'm not going to know.

And really, I don't care that much either.

 

[MrCarter]

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.

PS4 is already a success there is no denying that but now there is an option (operative word here) to get a slightly more powerful one. If the market is there then it's the consumers choice at the end of the day and nobody is forcing them to buy it.

 

[Resident_UA]

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

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

 

[Compsiox]

They should bundle PSVR with controllers and camera with it for $100 more. They'd win forever while bringing VR to everyone.

 

[hey_it's_that_dog]

Great post and an interesting take.

I didn't really have strong feelings about the PS4K, other than "I hope God of War doesn't suck on regular PS4 compared to Neo," but your points about smoothing the transitions between "generations" and the potential for continued compatibility have swayed me in favor, for now.

I dislike the 1-2 year period of mediocre or disappointing launch software and this change theoretically addresses that. I've also been choosing PC over PS4 whenever possible lately and part of that is due to the persistence of that library. If I'll be able play a PS4 exclusive that I buy next year on whatever future Playstation box for the foreseeable future, that definitely increases my interest in staying in the console ecosystem.

 

[ReBurn]

"Games as a service"......better include a way to still acquire physical copies, or it simply will never take off.

I'm not so sure. Nobody's really clamoring for physical copies of their PS+ or GWG games that they lose when they quit the service, They aren't even asking for physical copies of the ones people get to keep perpetually on Xbox 360. A handful might want them, but largely they are not expected.

I think the real problem would be if there were no means of ownership outside of the service. If consoles went all-digital and physical media ended people would complain for a while, but most would acquiesce. Just like they did on PC with Steam. But if they couldn't get games at all without buying access through a service to play them that would cause a backlash.

 

[Moneal]

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 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?

 

[iTehDroiD]

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.

I totally agree, but If the PS4 would have launched with a price 500$ instead 400$ I highly doubt it would have sold that well. I would have paid up to 800 bucks for the PS4 with more power, but most people woudn't buy it at that price.

 

[potatohead]

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

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.

 

[Resident_UA]

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?

I don't think anyone is expecting forward comparability forever. Not even sure where you got this from. There's no way that the game developed ten years from now will run on PS4. It might run on PS4.5. That's the whole idea.

 

[chubigans]

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.

Ah that would have been good, but I'm not hugely knowledgeable on costs for large scale AAA games. Just wanted to stick with what I definitely know.

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.

Yeah, even with all this info I have no idea if PS4K will be a slam dunk or not in the market. It's hugely interesting at the very least.

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?

Surprisingly it's looking that way. I have no idea.

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.

True, it has been done before, but never on this scale, and never with a console. DSi and the new 3DS were both done towards the end of their respective lifecycles.

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.

You might have, but I bet the 40 million who bought the PS4 at $399 might see it differently. Not to mention that would have put the XB1 at a cost advantage once they cut down the system to get to the $399 price.

 

[Boke1879]

So Chub. From a devs perspective give me your take on this and how easy or hard you think it'll be to create games for ps4 and NEO. Obviously don't reveal anything but a hypothetical scenario wouldn't hurt

 

[Resident_UA]

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.

My point is that you don't know any costs and you don't how this will play out. Worst case scenario PS4K won't catch on and you will get the same games on PS4K as you do on PS4.

 

[Madness]

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.

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.

 

[RedSwirl]

I agree for the most part, but I don't think big innovations will stop happening just because the base platform remains the same for the foreseeable future. New innovative features can still be added without compromising the base platform. VR is one. It's just that users will likely no longer have to buy into a whole new platform with a whole new innovation to get that innovation.

Apple does it all the time (well, less often these days). New iPhone and iPad models are advertised with flagship features that are either new hardware features or new OS features facilitated by better hardware. This includes things like 3D touch, the improving camera, the fingerprint scanner, the lightning cable, and so-on. In iterative platforms the OS also keeps improving. Just look at how much the Xbox 360 OS changed through the system's lifespan. On an iterative PlayStation that would just keep going on, but eventually there would be versions that drop support for an older model. New control interfaces could still be introduced too. The PS1 introduced dual shock mid-gen, Nintendo introduced Wii motion plus mid-gen. Even if the PS5 under the hood is just another upgrade, the Dual Shock 5 could still be a major upgrade.

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.

Just because a better model exists doesn't force developers to stop optimizing for older models. They probably still will since the existing PS4 has such a huge install base. They'd be dumb not to. iOS developers do it all the time. We're at iOS9 but lots of apps and games still get updates to improve their performance on like iOS7, likely because a lot of people still use models that won't upgrade past iOS7. PC graphics cards from two years ago are still perfectly usable, and developers of new games tend to make sure of that.

"Games as a service"......better include a way to still acquire physical copies, or it simply will never take off.

There's no reason it can't include a way to get physical copies, especially if you're talking about console games. Most big console games are at retail, it's just that retail is diminishing. With Games-as-a-Service though, that disc will probably only contain the 1.0 version of the game, which can fairly quickly become almost useless as the updates pile on. I still have a disc containing the 1.0 PC version of Team Fortress 2 from 2007, but I imagine if I inserted it Steam would probably just redownload the entire game.

 

[Lingitiz]

I think there will be growing pains at first, but it's ultimately the right move to update the console space to be more flexible and responsive to how fast technology is moving.

I still think there will be an eventual PS5 after this though and another step above that one three years later as well. Guaranteed backwards compatibility will be essential to all of this going forward.

Your point however of creating a game and not having to worry about the generational transition though is really huge. A lot of devs got caught with their pants down on the AAA side because investment in big budget console games seemed like a dangerous idea to fully commit to early on. Even Sony's own studios find themselves in a tough spot because they supported the PS3 so late. Removing that awkward late gen to new gen transition cycle I think it ultimately a huge deal.

 

[Resident_UA]

Are we shareowners in Sony and Xbox that as gamers/consumers we should care about their finanical perspective.

Anti PS4K crowd is fighting from all perspectives. Half of people are arguing here that this is bad for developers and suddenly there's a twist. "Why should we care?" I agree with you. We should not care about how good/bad this is for Sony, developers, and/or publishers. Once we separate ourself from this we end up in a place where we just need to wait and see. Nobody is forcing us to buy this thing. If it doesn't catch on, who cares. PS4 will still be there...

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

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.

 

[Oddduck]

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.

Yeah I can agree with this part.

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

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.

 

[wapplew]

just list some negative of this business model for me.

- no more games design for the lastest iteration, good bye to exclusive that show hardware full potential.
- iterative hardware will be very predictable, 200% more powerful every 3 years, forever. Less excitement, less hype, less early adopter.

OP already cover all the possitive, I might add some.

- Enhancing games instead of go crazy with new hardware, save dev cost.
- opportunity to get more dollar per user from hardware.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

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.

This is how it should be marketed.

 

[Maztorre]

While I think it's a positive move for both the platform owners (backwards compatibility becomes trivial, no more starting from 0 on software every 5 years, and their customer bases gain a lot more inertia since people will treat their existing games libraries and friends lists as "sunk costs") and most publishers/developers, for me it's made the idea of buying a console to complement a PC even more of a hard sell.

The PC is simply a better implementation of the concept of iterative hardware. Even if I threw down money for the PS4K it is still lagging behind an enthusiast PC which at this point shares 99% of its library, so the apparent hardware improvement is of no benefit. Games releases on the PS4 get no "free" upgrades (besides 4k scaling if rumours are true) to framerate/image quality without the developer going in and coding to take advantage of the new hardware, whereas part of the appeal of upgrading on PC is getting intensive image quality improvements on older titles (e.g. downsampling, injected AO, etc) with no additional support required from the developer.

While it was already becoming redundant to purchase a Sony/MS console as a PC owner so far this generation, with PS4K it makes it even more apparent that these systems are becoming little more than tweaked, closed, low-end PCs, but now without the handful of perks of being locked to a fixed spec.

This post sounds really negative but I should stress I think this will probably be healthy for the industry overall. However, at this point I think this concept is going to drive enthusiast PC owners away from Sony/MS hardware since they seem to be providing simply a worse/cheap/closed version of the PC paradigm now.

 

[2blackcats]

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.

But that's not what's happening. The new hardware is super similar to the old hardware. Everything is just turned up to eleven. The tools will need very little updating to be used across both iterations.

 

[Philippo]

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.

I don't agree with this, i think there will be a PS5.
And i hope it's true, otherwise we'll be stuck with devs being forced to adapt their games for the previous consoles without taking 100% advantage of the new ones tech evolutions.

 

[Resident_UA]

- no more games design for the lastest iteration, good bye to exclusive that show hardware full potential.

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 be 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.

 

[Boke1879]

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.

I think as active participants of this industry we should care about the health of it. And the current model just isn't sustainable.

 

[wapplew]

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.

Good for Sony, bad for me.
You are right on one thing, all successful Eco system holder let thirdparty do the dirty work. Apple, Google, Valve all not making games anymore.
I can see Sony kill all first party after they lock everyone in their Eco system.

 

[ReBirFh]

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.

 

[Moneal]

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 nothing will change then right?

 

[Curufinwe]

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

---

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.

Great post, but I do think games released on a new Sony console in 2020+ will be exclusive to that system.

 

[RipperGrim]

All I see is how it's going to benefit the companies and not the consumers, paying $400 minimum for a console that is going to be outdated sooner than expected, we now have to trust that we are going to get games that are not going to run like shit for the PS4 when they launch because they were tuned for the PS4k first and the ps4 second (We already have plenty of examples that this doesn't happen already and that's supposedly when the game is being made for the ps4 in mind). You can bet your ass that all games from now on will be shown off on the PS4k now with consumers going to have to wait for the game to actually be launched and impressions to come forth if they want to know how well the PS4 version runs.



Iterative consoles is the worst idea I have heard since MS's online only ideas. It's taking literally the pros of getting a console and ditching them.

 

[Lingitiz]

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.

I don't think they're directly competing against the PC, but against the entire entertainment/technology markets. Think how crazy it would be in a few years when smartphones and tablets are at the same power level as the PS4. Console gaming needs to be treated as a premium in order to encourage development and sales on the platform. To do that the tech needs to move forward a little bit faster and the transition between generational gaps needs to be softened.

 

[rokkerkory]

The real change is the s/w platform not the h/w. Don't trust Sony yet with a real s/w platform ala Win10.

 

[Refreshment.01]

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.

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.

The developer just designs the game to take full advantage of the basic PS4 model. To achieve that there certainly were various features that got removed or scaled back. Now these "scaled back/ removed" features are the ones that could potentially take advantage of the extra CU's in the new model.

As with many things with gamers on the internet they are yet again over reacting. We have been here already, latest time was the New 3DS.

 

[butman]

It's not necessary at all.

Consoles were made to have x games in a x period of time, until another generation console appears and technical capabilities exceed those games with better graphics and performance (60 fps regardless of the resolution at the time imo).
With PS4K, Sony tries to match the performance of PS4 games as if it were a PC. But unfortunately the PS4K is already outdated before birth.

As Collin said. Why not Sony wait 2 more years and launches PS5 (which it is also will be outdated as always it happens with consoles compared to PC) with the capability to run PS4 games as intended to do with the Neo?

 

[Resident_UA]

Good for Sony, bad for me.

Industry is going in this direction. There's nothing that would change it. Publishers want every game to run on everything that's possible. So if Sony stuck to old model at some point they would be outmatched by PCs. Here they are giving themselves a chance. They basically want to be Steam machine.

Don't get me wrong, I love console exclusives. When companies compete you get the best. But looking at PS4 vs Xbox fight it's easy to see how industry is changing...

 

[ReBirFh]

So nothing will change then right?

I think it will get even worse if you don't have the latest machine and it will be very hard to convince parents to buy a new videogame for their kids.

 

[Gono]

Mid-Gen upgrades means the death of maximum coding to the metal low level programming hardcore master champion blast processing brutal optimization.