Slashdot Mirror
Sony Won't Invest As Heavily In PlayStation 4
donniebaseball23 writes "Sony CFO Masaru Kato told investors this week that the company won't be looking to put the same kind of massive R&D into PS4 as they did with PS3. PS3's costs were astronomical because of Blu-ray and the Cell chip, but Sony's bottom line can't take another similar hit. Analysts are speculating that this will leave the door open for competitors like Microsoft. 'PS4's hardware could be less impressive than the PS3 at its launch. I think Microsoft will really be able to put the screws to Sony in the next console war,' Panoptic analyst Asif Khan commented to IndustryGamers."
HW is a good way to sell the console to game developers, though. A lot of big 3rd-parties jumped ship with the Wii, simply because it couldn't keep up. Similarly, you can get developers to make good exclusives if you have a uniquely powerful console.
And then, once you have the game developers, you get the games that sell the console to the players.
Why not reuse the cell design: use the exact same chip, but manufacture it with current lithography technology, smaller structures, higher clockrate, more SPUs. It may do the trcik, and there is no new learning curve for devs. I have programmed SPUs, and they can do wonders if used correctly.
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
Sony didn't say that they are going to produce a less powerful design, but a design which costs less, in terms of investment.
Although the outcome may be a not-so-powerful console, the other possibility is something with less "custom" solutions.
Such as:
- Off-the-shelf CPUs/GPUs, or custom ASICs using 3rd-party licensed CPU/GPU designs (instead of designing one from scratch)
- Off-the-shelf DDR(1/2/3/4/5/whatever) SDRAM (instead of using something from Rambus)
- Blu-ray, instead of a new kind of optical disk design (or, even eliminate the physical medium altogether in favor of online purchases)
If this is true, then it is not a surprise. Sony released the PS3, the most technically advanced of all the current generation consoles, only to be outsold by the comparatively weak Wii. And in addition, games released on both PS3 and Xbox 360 generally looked better on the 360 (e.g. Bayonetta).
Sony of all companies should have known that the most technically advanced console doesn't generally perform the best in the market. Sega's Saturn had a multiprocessor architecture before most game programmers knew how to program for one and the PlayStation destroyed it in the marketplace. Similarly, the PS2 fared better in the marketplace than the technically superior Xbox and GameCube (which was primarily hampered by storage space issues like the N64 before it).
What is important is third-party support. That's what made the NES, the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2 and other successful consoles. If you have a system developers want to develop for, then you'll get the good quality titles that have people flocking to buy your system.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
The PS3 had a lot of power when new. But since it was such a far-out architecture, developers had to work to get to it. And developers generally aren't interested in doing so. They'd rather just port their C code over and type make.
A system that is a little less powerful but much more conventional (like Xbox 360) could easily cost less and produce better games overall, even if the absolute top levels of capability are reduced.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Except it is. And the OP exactly right.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123069467545545011.html
brandelf -t FreeBSD
define successful? Sure the Wii has moved a lot of units. But in terms of games sold, hours played, or in terms of money made for developers (not necessarily manufacturers) they are way behind. Good for nintendo does not necessarily equate to success as platform.
Sony has really pissed me off with all their bullshit. So much that, *I* won't be investing heavily in the PS4, either. Like not at all.
The consoles make it more like gaming was in the early days. Tweak the shit out of what you have, because you can't just make them buy a new machine to play your "super game". Consider the C-64... its lifespan showed that developers could make some seriously awesome game if they got to know the architecture.
What PC gaming did is make it easy for companies to write something that took more horsepower, and because of the architecture of PCs, developers could just require more this or more that. (believe me, it wasn't a conscious decision to make the architecture open... IBM was just in a rush.)
I like the idea that game companies work on an architecture and squeeze it dry. Why should we go back to the model that allow developers to be lazy and code for the "latest and greatest" because they can't be bothered to get into the architecture. One of the primary reasons I don't game on the PC anymore is the upgrade loop I can't get out of. Now that my computers are not for gaming, I get MANY more years of life out of them.
Only LAZY developers make inferior games.... great games come from great programmers, not from great hardware.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.