[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]I'm curious why you would think that. Everything from parts manufacturers, to job postings, to game studios are all pointing at a new console release towards the end of 2013. This new PS3 is surely less expensive to build than the previous version (finally getting good chip yealds, cheaper CD drive, ram price drops, less metal, etc.), so my bet is that after the bundle sales are over we will see a nice little price drop come in.The main reason for no price drop is that there is no real competition. PS3 and X360 are both happy with pricing right now. WiiU is coming out, but it is still behind the current gen of console graphics in overall performance, so that isn't exactly a threat. The PC game market seems to be heating up, but it is not that much cheaper to upgrade a PC into a game rig (price for GPU, PSU, ram, and HDD to turn a 3 year old PC into a game rig would cost ~$250). Add to it that sales are not exactly hurting on any platform, so there is simply no real reason for them to drop prices.Here is what I am expecting from next gen consoles (wiiU excluded of course):Massive ram increase from current 256MB to 1GB or more to allow for massively larger maps, more complex environments, and much better textures. I think they severely underestimated the future price drops in system memory, and that game devs gave them a lot of hell over such a limited size. Being released in 2013 there is a chance for DDR4, but they may stick with DDR3 because it will be cheap.A little CPU improvement. Probably a 2-3x improvement, which considering how old the current chips are, this is really not much. But to be honest, the bottleneck in the system is not on the CPU, so this should not be a huge dealRelatively little GPU improvement. I think we will see capability for 4K video playback, but that the main focus will be on 1080p or 2K resolution at 30fps with the capability of running some AA and AF finally to polish things up a bit, and 3D support at 720p (for VR headsets, cause I think we will see a huge push for this very soon). To be honest it would not take much improvement over the current RSX to accomplish this, and I think most gamers would be happy with it (hell, even I would find it adequate and worth buying, which I cannot say about the current gen).Drive space will be in the 500GB-1TB range on traditional platter drives. We may see an intro of some SSD drives, but with the push for more streaming content, and downloaded games (no CD/DVD/Blueray drive for games), I kinda dobut that SSDs will be large/cheap enough to include this go around... maybe on a refresh 1/2 through the cycle, or perhaps a small SSD cache drive to make things snappy.Audio will stay largely the same, offering 5.1 audio, or possibly 7.1, but honestly (and perhaps sadly) I think we are done with major audio improvements on quality. I think the only real improvement will be support for more voices to have more audio sources within a game.But I think that will be it. Last time around I was highly disappointed because consoles were designed for 720p and SD with no cleanup, when 1080p really took root (but really, who could blame them? the whole industry was pushing 720p for mainstream, and they had no idea that 1080p would become so cheap so quickly). If they can simply play a game at native resolution, with a minimal of frame loss (30fps), and just a little cleanup (especially AA), then it would really be 'good enough' until 4K gets popular. Thankfully I think 4K will not hit the main stream until 1/2 through this console cycle, so hopefully it will not be as much of an issue as it was with the last gen.Either way, with games being developed for true 1080p, and better textures I think we will see massive improvements in the visual quality of games, and with more system memory we will get some huge levels, or at least some much more interesting level design than we have been seeing the last 10 years.[/citation]
i say that because in the past when the 360 came out the original xbox was $99. when the PS3 came out the PS2 was either $129 or $99. when the Wii came out the gamecube was $49.99.
the board of directors at Sony told the playstation guys that if they lose money on hardware again like that they will fire them.
so either we are going to see massive price drops on the 360 and PS3 (which should of started by now for sure) or the price of the next gen consoles is going to be crazy high. in which case most people want care anyways. the PS3 tanked at first because of its price, and to fix the issue they had massive price cuts to what should of been the launch price in the first place.
sony went from being dominant in the console world to last place. high prices means people won't be them. you know what type of PC I could put together myself for $600. Core i5 quad core gtx 660 8 or 16gb of ram. blu-ray drive etc and it will destroy the next gen consoles. FYI the next playstation console is being rumored to be powered by amd on the cpu and gpu front by an AMD APU.
to show the rise and fall of sony because of a $600 price failure here are the sales numbers over history from the psone to the PS3.
Worldwide sales figures
1. PlayStation – 102.49 million shipped (Japan: 21.59, US: 40.78, Europe: 40.12)
including PSone – 28.15 million shipped
2. Nintendo 64 – 32.93 million (Japan: 5.54 million, the Americas: 20.63 million, other: 6.75 million)
3. Sega Saturn – 9.5 million (Japan: 6 million, North America: 2 million, Europe: 1.5 million)
4. 3DO - 2 million
Worldwide sales figures
1. PlayStation 2 – 150 million as of 31 January 2011
2. Xbox – 24 million as of 10 May 2006
3. GameCube – 21.74 million as of 30 June 2012
4. Dreamcast - 10.6 million as of 6 July 2002
Worldwide sales figures
1. Wii – 96.56 million as of 30 June 2012
2. Xbox 360 – 67.2 million as of 31 March 2012
3. PlayStation 3 – 63.9 million as of 31 March 2012
sony is almost 90 million PS3's short of what the PS2 sold and are in last place. that is what a expensive priced console does. Not only that but we actually had a global economy that functioned to some extent when the last consoles launched, which isn't the case now.
So how do the current gen consoles coexist with the next gen ones with the current prices? either we have a massive price drop, the current consoles just completely go away ignoring sony's desire for their consoles to last a minimum of 10 years in the marketplace and come in at similar price points, or they are crazy expensive. not sure i enjoy any of those options except the first one, but at this point we have seen no indication of that and if the next gen consoles really launch as the rumor mill has said next year then we should of seen some price drops by now.