My view is that NEO is merely an upgraded PS4 and plays all of PS4 generation games, and is limited to PS4's library. PS5 itself will be a product that bucks forward compatibility but will support full backwards compatibility with PS4 and NEO. Allowing its own brand of games to take advantage of the hardware. And perhaps a PS5 NEO will come out and repeat the cycle.
Yes, and I say that contradicts House's assurances that PlayStations get 5-6 years of full support from the time they launch. PS4 owners are currently being reassured they won't be forgotten simply because something a few years newer came along, but you haven't shown where they said the same won't apply equally to Neo buyers, nor explained why that should be the case. With the assurances that (currently) Neo can't do anything unique because PS4 isn't ready to be left behind just yet, "three years newer" is quite literally the only selling point for Neo. So how do you explain in 2020 that "three years newer" somehow
now means "actually just as useless as the one you could've had for far cheaper." How you gonna do me like that after I
just paid you top dollar for the
newest one, Andy??
House has said that Sony does not want to destroy the concept of generations, as they are advantageous to them.
Can I get a link for that, because I suspect it's another misunderstanding. Generations are all kinds of bad news for reasons I explained before, but first and foremost,
every time Sony tells people the PlayStation they own isn't good enough anymore, they're inviting them to buy
someone else's hardware instead. So the best plan is the one that cuts off the smallest/least-active part of your user base, but you propose to cut off
everyone, including the big spenders who just bought in to your platform.
To what end? Moving
software is the goal, while moving hardware is the necessary evil that lets games happen. This applies equally to both supply and consumption. The more we can minimize hardware-induced disruptions to software delivery, the better off we'll be, as devs and as gamers.
And so i do not see your view of NEO becoming the base standard at some point as feasible.
Especially considering that the hardware itself is not a big enough gap to become a base standard outside of more graphical rendering potential. BW is only 25% more, CPU is only 30% more. Strong enough for an incrementally more powerful unit, but not enough for a full on upgrade.
Well, three years is three years. If you don't find PS4->Neo a compelling bump, I doubt you'll be any more impressed by Neo->Trinity. PS4->Trinity will compare favorably, of course, but that's the six-year gap House says people will naturally be looking at on their own. So like smartphones, people are expected to tick-tock, but with three-year gaps between hardware rather than annual refreshes. Why? Because annual refreshes increase hardware fragmentation without appreciable performance differentiation. As House said, they want to provide devs with a more stable target than that. Doubling hardware refreshes to every-three literally provides the proverbial Happy Medium. Not only are you free to completely ignore the "tock" iterations no matter when you buy in to PlayStation you're actually expected to.
Yes, this strategy works best when the latest and greatest hardware is indeed the latest and greatest, and I know you've argued in favor of intentionally hobbling Neo with old tech, both to prevent devs from becoming too ambitious and to increase the appeal of PS5 upon its release, but such a strategy furthers neither goal. Mandating support for
n-1 already keeps devs well grounded while leaving them with a place to include all the bells and whistles that normally come at the cost of performance hits. More to the point, Trinity's specs are what they are, and their appeal is what it is. Gimping Neo doesn't make Trinity any more appealing, it just serves to reduce Neo's appeal even further than you have already by promising its increased price and performance merely buys its imminent obsolescence.
Fortunately, more frequent hardware updates and the introduction of a "premium model" gives you more flexibility when it comes to release timing. If releasing at GDC instead of ~PSVR means Neo gets Polaris or any other substantial improvements, Neo buyers will be more than okay with the wait, and everyone else doesn't care about Neo at all, regardless of the specs. Similarly, we can pencil Trinity in for GDC 2020 and expect her to have a mature Navi platform, but if Navi 2 is due later that year, then yeah, definitely wait for it. If Navi 2 isn't due until Holiday 2021 however, then yeah, do Navi "on schedule" at GDC '20, and we'll just catch Navi 3 (or 4) on the next cycle.