Topic: PlayStation4 - News/Rumor/Speculation - Over 1 Million Sold on Day 1

[Evan_B]

There's only one website actually discussing these PS4 details. I highly doubt their validity.

[Louieturkey]

There's only one website actually discussing these PS4 details. I highly doubt their validity.

Are you talking about this site?  We're discussing it.

[ThePerm]

I'm with TJ on this one. It's just wasteful to get rid of your old system, at the same time its (not quite)hoarding to keep your old system and old games. If you have a system though you can't complain about the lack of backward compatibility, whats the bene-fit of having backward compatibility if you already have a device that plays the old stuff? Then again it is old stuff why bother?

me thinks Sony will release a $800 console. Microsoft will release a console around Wii U's current price, but will benefit from coming out a year later. Maybe March of 2014 the Wii U's price will drop.

[Ian Sane]

Why bother if it's old stuff?  Well, if you want to play those games again you might as well keep them.  You're only a hoarder if you're keeping useless crap.

Is my old SNES and copy of Earthbound useless?  There is no other legal way to play it.  And with videogames you can't rely on re-releases to not have inaccurate emulation or modern changes that mess up the balance of the game.

But if I own the old system, I don't really care about backwards compatibility.  The GBA was the only time I really used the feature because I never owned any previous Game Boy.

[ThePerm]

I was highlighting the dichotomy of dueling material philosophies, in reality I own a virtual boy that I don't even know if it works. It looks great on my shelf though.

[tendoboy1984]

It's more convenient to have one device to play your old and new games on.

Case in point:
- PS2 with PS1 compatibility
- PS3 with its PS Classics titles
- GBA with Game Boy compatibility
- 3DS with DS compatibility
- Wii with its Virtual Console service
- Wii U with its "Wii Mode" feature

[tendoboy1984]

It seems the PS Orbis rumors are ramping up lately. Sony may use a AMD-designed GPU based on the A10 series. The console's UI will be much more fluid than the XMB, and will allow for simultaneous multitasking (Example: download content from the PS Store without leaving the game). PS Move will be packed with each console. The console will have about 8GB of RAM and will have 256GB of storage as standard.

I still like the Xbox 720 rumors more, simply because Microsoft is tying everything into a complete ecosystem (Windows, Kinect, and Xbox).

Sources: Various websites found through Google News

[ThePerm]

 but not having it isn't so inconvenient that it would cause a beheading?

[tendoboy1984]

Is Sony even financially ready to market a PS4? Their credit rating is now classified as junk status. Their various other divisions are bleeding money (TV especially), and the company as a whole is in deep debt. They made a little profit on the PS3, but the development (and subsequent poor sales) of the Vita sunk them back in.

As we all know, Microsoft lost billions on the Xbox, but their Windows and Office divisions make up that lost profit. Sony doesn't have that luxury right now.

I know about all the rumors about PS4 devkits and hardware specs, but Sony can't take any more chances with making cutting-edge hardware. They just can't afford the potential losses if the console fails like the Vita.

Is Sony really in trouble, or is all of this talk overblown?

[nickmitch]

They weren't in deep **** before their credit rating dropped. It's not the end of the world for them, but it's definitely a kick to the balls. They're in a rough spot, but they can climb out.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Is Sony even financially ready to market a PS4? Their credit rating is now classified as junk status. Their various other divisions are bleeding money (TV especially), and the company as a whole is in deep debt. They made a little profit on the PS3, but the development (and subsequent poor sales) of the Vita sunk them back in.

I'm pretty sure Sony was never anywhere neat a profit, small or not, when it comes to PS3.

[tendoboy1984]

Is Sony even financially ready to market a PS4? Their credit rating is now classified as junk status. Their various other divisions are bleeding money (TV especially), and the company as a whole is in deep debt. They made a little profit on the PS3, but the development (and subsequent poor sales) of the Vita sunk them back in.

I'm pretty sure Sony was never anywhere neat a profit, small or not, when it comes to PS3.

Blu-ray players are really cheap now, the CELL processor has been downsized significantly over the years, and the console itself is now selling with a 250 GB or 500 GB hard drive (which is standard in most computers).


How are they not making a profit by now?

[BlackNMild2k1]

They dug a rather LARGE hole. and any gains they make now are only filling in that hole. They have yet to see any sunlight with their hefty loss of investment with PS3.


And since you don't seem to know the history, Sony basically wiped out all their PS2 profits with the PS3. PS3 was a huge financial failure that turned around far too late. Sony sacrificed PS3 profitability to push Blu-ray, which probably wasn't worth it in the short term if it doesn't somehow payoff in the long term.

[tendoboy1984]

They dug a rather LARGE hole. and any gains they make now are only filling in that hole. They have yet to see any sunlight with their hefty loss of investment with PS3.


And since you don't seem to know the history, Sony basically wiped out all their PS2 profits with the PS3. PS3 was a huge financial failure that turned around far too late. Sony sacrificed PS3 profitability to push Blu-ray, which probably wasn't worth it in the short term if it doesn't somehow payoff in the long term.

Blu-ray didn't pay off? It enabled many developers to build larger games due to the disc's larger capacity. And we can also have multiple games stored on a single disc (the "HD Collections").


Also, Nintendo is using a variant of Blu-ray in the Wii U, and the next Xbox is rumored to be using it as well.


So it may not have paid off for Sony (financially), but for the movie and gaming industry as a whole, it's proven its worth.

[TJ Spyke]

Sony makes no money from Wii U discs. And the industry was moving to larger discs anyways (see HD DVD, which is the same size as Wii U discs). All that happened is that Sony's format won out over HD DVD. And if it doesn't help Sony, then it doesn't matter if the gaming and movie industries adopt it.

[tendoboy1984]

Sony makes no money from Wii U discs. And the industry was moving to larger discs anyways (see HD DVD, which is the same size as Wii U discs). All that happened is that Sony's format won out over HD DVD. And if it doesn't help Sony, then it doesn't matter if the gaming and movie industries adopt it.

I never said Sony makes money from Blu-ray discs. They simply helped create the format with a bunch of other companies in the "Blu-ray Disc Association". The format itself is beneficial to the movie and gaming industries because now games can be larger, and multiple movies can be put on a single disc.

[BlackNMild2k1]

We are talking about Sony. let's not move the lines on the field just so you can pretend to make a play.

Sony gets a small share of the Bluray pie yet they sacrificed a lot to make it the winning format.
They are not the majority patent holder and the Bluray consortium doesn't make a cent off of Nintendo's custom blue laser disc format.

[Kytim89]

We are talking about Sony. let's not move the lines on the field just so you can pretend to make a play.

Sony gets a small share of the Bluray pie yet they sacrificed a lot to make it the winning format.
They are not the majority patent holder and the Bluray consortium doesn't make a cent off of Nintendo's custom blue laser disc format.

Sony's biggest issue is their arrogance. They simply do not know how to make weaker or non-advanced game consoles. The Vita does not give me any hope concerning the PS4. I think that Sony is going to be stupid enough to try and be the most powerful home console again despite the record sales loses they have incurred. Again, the fact that the Vita is recieving price cuts from other people besides Sony does not look good on their part, nor does the fact that Sony can't lower the price themselves and still make a profit. By this time next year Sony will be bankrupted and out of the game, or a radically different company with a new boss running the show.

[nickmitch]

Sony knows that they can't afford to go all out on the PS4. Being the most advanced console didn't really help them them gen. The best strategy for them is to take a small loss that could be made up for with software.

[Adrock]

Sony's biggest issue is their arrogance. They simply do not know how to make weaker or non-advanced game consoles.

At this point, it's less arrogance (I think PS3 humbled them to the point where they stripped it of tons of extraneous functionality just to get it to a more acceptable MSRP) and more poor management. Any company can make weaker hardware. That's not the problem. It's that Sony somehow still thinks they can beat Nintendo by offering more advanced hardware. It's not necessarily arrogance. It's poor strategizing especially considering it hasn't worked twice... going on thrice. One would think they would have learned from PSP and PS3, but they just keep dipping their hands in the fire and wondering why it hurts. I honestly think Vita would be performing far better if it was only slightly more powerful than 3DS, but cheaper. Nintendo had trouble selling a $250 handheld in a market they've dominated for over 20 years. Most people just don't want to spend that much on a handheld. Imagine if it was only 2-3 times more powerful than PSP, but Sony launched at $170. That's an $80 difference or 2 games. Even if they took a loss on hardware at $170 (which is a loss whether the hardware is sold), they start to make it back on software with hardware that is much more attractive to consumers. It just puts them in a better position.

By this time next year Sony will be bankrupted and out of the game, or a radically different company with a new boss running the show.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. I wouldn't go as far as bankrupt. PSFour hardware will outperform Wii U just due to the passage of time. Sony would actually have to go out of their way to release a console that's worse performance wise than Wii U. They shouldn't even worry about that. If Sony even takes a loss (I've read rumors that they're looking at not... at all), I highly doubt it would be a very large one.

[tendoboy1984]

Sony would actually have to go out of their way to release a console that's worse performance wise than Wii U.

But that's exactly what Nintendo did with the Wii U. It's barely more powerful than an Xbox 360.

Oh the irony.

[TJ Spyke]

Wii U is far more powerful than Xbox 360, not "barely".

[lolmonade]

I hope Sony does well with their next console.  The Playstation consoles have provided me with some of the most compelling game experiences over the last decade, and I seem to be able to find good games in any genre on their systems.

The problem is at this time, I can't see myself getting the PS4/Orbis at launch, especially given that I have a Wii U.  Graphics beyond what this current generation have shown haven't been a compelling enough feature alone to get me to buy a new console. 

Of course, hardly anything has been mentioned about PS3's successor, so maybe I just don't know of what is supposed to be a system seller.

[ShyGuy]

I hear PS4 will have an AMD A10 CPU with integrated GPU? Good but not great. Should be able to sell it under $400.

[Spak-Spang]

Seriously, the Wii has like 3X as much ram as the 360.  So it is a very powerful system. 

Let's just drop this insane the Wii U is not powerful crap...because it is.