Sony Planning to Not Lose Money with New PlayStation 4

[ChillyWilly007]

The PS4 will be so much more than a PC... It will be a dedicated PC gaming machine - not a Windows OS that handles many other functions besides gaming. A streamlined gaming console with fast ddr5 - all dedicated hardware. Can't wait to see what Microsoft has planned...

 

[hetneo]

It's quite a bit disappointing to hear Sony's CFO officer mixing up fixed expenses of R&D with losses. They had no losses, it just took a bit of time for the variable proportional profits to overtake fixed expenses of R&D, it's Business 101. It's same for any product that has R&D phase, only difference is time in which profits overtake expenses.

 

[Thunderfox]

The Cell chip was a huge waste of money, and developing Blu-Ray was costly as well. It makes sense that the next generation would be cheaper without either of those expenses built into to cost of every console.

 

[southernshark]

The value is in using PC hardware. Last time around they had to design a system to last TEN YEARS. This time... they are using PC framework... so if they need to, they can upgrade it in 3 or 4 years with a faster APU and all status green.... plus games will be backward compatible. So it's a very different ballgame this time around. And I for one believe that the consumer will be the real winner, as we now have platforms which can change and upgrade on a regular basis. Plus it will be much easier for developers to design things for an x86 architecture and port it to multiple platforms with less hassle.

 

[southernshark]

The value is in using PC hardware. Last time around they had to design a system to last TEN YEARS. This time... they are using PC framework... so if they need to, they can upgrade it in 3 or 4 years with a faster APU and all status green.... plus games will be backward compatible. So it's a very different ballgame this time around. And I for one believe that the consumer will be the real winner, as we now have platforms which can change and upgrade on a regular basis. Plus it will be much easier for developers to design things for an x86 architecture and port it to multiple platforms with less hassle.

 

[rexter]

@6kartu - Bloob is right, at the time PS3 came out, BD players were around $1000 to $1600. HDMI and other new features are still expensive at the time like the surround sound the PS3 has. On top of that BD still on war with HD-DVD. Sony has to make so much offering on their box, like backward compatible and such or get defeated by Xbox.
Now all these things are accessible like SSD, Blu-ray, usb 3.0 external drive or USB drive for extra storage, even chip from AMD so R&D is not as intense as the PS3 unit.
If only the PS unit has major rework - its the controller. if they can make it wider the Xbox so you wont feel as cramp then it would be "THE" console...

 

[DRosencraft]

My point about the PS3 point is that even after all the cost savings from the drop in price of components and licensing fess with the aging of components, it still took more than half the console's lifetime to start turning a profit in the least bit. Even now a new PS3 is about $300.

It's not as if the AMD components in the PS4 are completely off the shelf either. They are for all intents and purposes a new CPU/GPU that is being used. Yes, based on existing core technology, but still not completely off the shelf, so there is some R&D that will need to be recouped. There is also the tech they've put into the new controller, which while nothing to get excited about is still a cost both in terms of R&D and in overall production.

Will the PS4 be less expensive than the PS3 at launch? I would hope that's a given. But they're not gonna be able to terribly undercut the rest of the console market either. It would help to have a better idea of the pricing for the next Xbox, but devoid of that the newest consoles we have to compare to are the refresh of the PS3, and the Wii U. The PS3 retails around $300, and the Wii U at $350. It's highly unlikely that they'll sell their console for less than $350 at launch, so $400 to $500 is the likely range. Is that going to equal to a financial loss? I expect there will be at least a little just because they are going to try to keep the price down on the console as much as possible.

 

[HikariWS]

PS3 was the main reason for BD wining HD-DVD (which should never had lived in first place, RIP forever) and was well worth it.
But Cell was a total dead weight. Sony expected a lot on it but rare hardwares used it, including a few clusters using it in paralel with K8 chips.
At the time, heterogeneous and paralel processing was expected to be the future of performance once serial x86 processing power would stagnate, but Intel overcame it and brought us great evolution in both parallel and serial x86 processing, while ARM and other vendors offered great CPU architectures for embedded systems.
I hope PS4 with its AMD GPU and x86 CPU will be easier to emulate in PC!

 

[dalethepcman]

PS3 was the main reason for BD wining HD-DVD (which should never had lived in first place, RIP forever) and was well worth it.

You are correct that the PS3 was the reason why BD exists today. I worked with both technology's when they were first released, and HD-DVD was superior in both technological advancement (allowed virtual machines to be run from the disc at launch) and manufacturing cost (built using a traditional DVD disc, just adding additional layers).

Sorry to burst your bubble, but just like the betamax was technically superior to VHS, HD-DVD was superior to BD. It was not until BD+ (mid 2007) that the capability of BD met the capability of HD-DVD for software built into the disc.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ade55rl (for some reason tom's can't hyperlink anything with an _ in the address)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD%2B