PS4: What Sony Should and Shouldn't Do

donniebaseball23 writes "As a follow-up to his piece on Xbox 720, veteran games journalist Chris Morris has put together some thoughtful advice on what Sony needs to do (and needs to avoid) to ensure that the next generation PlayStation is a success. In particular, Morris notes that Sony must 'look beyond games' to create a fully fledged entertainment hub: 'Nintendo has been pretty adamant that it has little interest in content beyond games. Microsoft seems to be rushing to embrace the set top box world. Sony, though, seems a bit confused about what it wants.'"

Comments

Future of Nintendo

[bonch]

Does anyone else have a nagging feeling that Nintendo is doomed in the next console cycle? The Wii U didn't grab the same attention that the original Wii did, and Nintendo is being attacked on two fronts--the hardcore market with the PS3 and Xbox 360, and casual gaming with the iPhone. Nintendo always had handheld sales to fall back on, but sales of the 3DS have been underwhelming, forcing an early price drop. It seems like Nintendo backed itself into a corner with the Wii, tying the company too intimately with the casual gaming market, whose gamers are fickle and prone to jump onto the next big thing, which turned out to be the iPhone.

Yes, yes, I realize people have been declaring Nintendo to be doomed since the Nintendo 64, but just because they survived previous eras doesn't mean they will survive the next one. Nintendo's stock price jumped after a rumor that Pokemon was coming to the iPhone, which turned out to be untrue. It just seems more than ever that it makes little sense for Nintendo not to become a software developer, since that is what they are most famous for in spite of their trend-setting controllers. Yet despite the novelty of the Wii remote, I still prefer the Dual Shock.

I love Nintendo's classics, but their refusal to embrace online play on the same level of their competitors as well as their reliance on nostalgia titles is frustrating. Sadly, I haven't turned on my Wii in so long that I can't even remember the last time. I think the last game I played on it was was Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, an old PC-Engine game, and only because it's Wii-exclusive.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[Liam Pomfret]

Sales of the 3DS underwhelming? At the initial price point, before its flagship titles had been launched, sure. At the current price point, with those flagship Mario titles now released, the 3DS is absolutely *flogging* the opposition. By the beginning of December, the 3DS had already passed the 1st year sales of the original DS. What's more, the 3DS has sold more in its first 9 months than the *Wii* did in its first 9 months. The idea that the 3DS is doomed is preposterous. The way you're painting things with the "war on two fronts", and Nintendo being able to "fall back on" handheld sales, you make it seem as if Nintendo lost the home console war to the PS3 and XBox360. Just in case you missed it with the howling of "hardcore gamers" and fanboys, the Wii thoroughly flogged them. Seriously, Nintendo is in no danger at this point. I'm not saying Nintendo's done everything perfect, there's plenty of things they could have done a lot better. But their financials aren't really an issue. Nintendo made a loss, and people are making a big issue out of it, but it's really a red herring. Hell, a huge reason (if not the main reason) for that loss was the strong yen, not the sales performance of the 3DS.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[Azuaron]

You apparently haven't looked at hotcake sales for the past decade. You can't move hotcakes. You say you've got some hotcakes for sale, and people are like, "I want ice cream cake!" And then you have to explain that you mean pancakes. But now they just want ice cream cake, or frosted cake, and all you have is syrup-drenched flapjacks.

It's a sad life being a hotcake salesman, let me tell you.

All joking aside, citing current PS2 sales is hardly relevant, since the PS3 doesn't have the same kind of record: Nintendo's current generation has beaten the pants of the current generations of Microsoft and Sony, and the Wii U's reception has been similar to that of the Wii months before its release.

Pretty much, it's impossible to say how well the Wii U is going to sell, and I definitely wouldn't short Nintendo's stock quite yet. They're scrappy, scrappy fighters with a rabid fanbase that has absorbed what was left of Sega's rabid fanbase. That's a lot of rabid.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[pak9rabid]

Which quite ironically, is pretty much just a snes pad with one extra l/r button with a knee jerk reaction to the n64's analog stick.

Interestingly enough, the PS controllers look like that because before Sony released the PSX, they were working with Nintendo to create a CD-ROM addon for the SNES (much like the Sega CD for the Genesis). Near the end of the project's completion, Nintendo decided to abandon the idea, when infuriated the president of Sony. Not too long afterwards, Sony came out with the PlayStation to rival Nintendo.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[Kjella]

Somehow I don't see either Apple, Sony nor Microsoft really threatening the core audience of Nintendo, it's still the console I'd buy for a kid where Super Mario Galaxy is an age-appropriate game. Backed themselves into a corner? I'd say the Wii was a huge unnatural success in markets Nintendo would never usually reach, hell it still has a lead of 30 million units sold on both the PS3 and XBox360 (95 vs 60 vs 65). If I'm trying to think age brackets I'd guess 30 vs 60 vs 60 would be more what I'm thinking. I don't think they'll make another monster hit like that, the controller was something extremely unique and innovative in 2006 to get people off their chairs and into action but with Kinect and motion analyzing cameras that market is pretty saturated and you can't expect them to pull off something like that in each generation.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[mjwx]

Does anyone else have a nagging feeling that Nintendo is doomed in the next console cycle?

Nope.

Out of all three console manufacturers, Nintendo is in the least peril. First from the Billions the Wii made, next from the strategy Nintendo is following.

Nintendo understands that consoles are casual. They always were and will continue to be for casual gamers. The most casual console of the last three generations ended up being the victors.

I love Nintendo's classics, but their refusal to embrace online play on the same level of their competitors as well as their reliance on nostalgia titles is frustrating.

This is the opposite of most peoples experience with Nintendo. Most console owners dont want to play online competitively, they play for 4 maybe 5 hours per week so they simply want a machine that starts quickly and is easy to use as well as having games which are simple and fun to play.

Of all the console manufacturers, the one I'd be worried about is Sony. Sony cant afford another loss leader like the PS3, in five years the PS3 hasn't become profitable, let alone made it into the black. It took 3 years for them to stop selling the each unit at a loss. However this is not the problem. Nintendo has shown that consoles are casual, yet I doubt Sony has learned this, they still seem intent on chasing a more dedicated gamer which simply doesn't exist in sufficient numbers on the console. A PS4 with the financials of the PS3 will probably sink the entire PlayStation division given the utter failures of the Playstation Phone, Playstation Portable and PS Vita.

Microsoft will probably release an overpowered casual console, remaining decidedly indecisive but openly willing to chase the casual dollars. If MS is good at anything it's following the leader.

As for the Wii U, yep, it may be evolutionary rather then revolutionary but at least Nintendo is trying new things. It probably wont be the smashing success that the Wii was but unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo can afford for the Wii U to be lacklustre although I highly doubt it will be. It probably wont sell like the Wii did, but it will still do well.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[mjwx]

The Wii's sales began to significantly drop several years ago. Last May, sales were down 38% year-over-year and fell to record lows in Japan.

Nice attempt to frame the argument.

But the Wii has sold a lot more consoles then Sony and Microsoft. Also remember that Sony had to significantly redesign it's console to stop it haemorrhaging money and Microsoft has also redesigned it's console as well as various versions (Arcade, Elite).

Wii, 1 production model: 90 million sold.
Xbox360, 4 production models: 66 million sold.
PS3, 2 production models: 55 million sold.

Telling me that sales of the Wii has dropped is simply saying they aren't selling as phenomenally well as they were when it was released, the same thing happened with the Xbox360. This simply indicates it's reached it's saturation point, not an indication of product failure. A slow down in sales after 5 years is normal. The PS3 on the other hand did not experience the majority of its sales after it's redesign.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[walshy007]

The reason they abandoned it was because after looking at the fine print all game related profits where the media used was a cd would be going to sony... the profit from games was nintendo's bread and butter income.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[LordLimecat]

Does anyone else have a nagging feeling that Nintendo is doomed in the next console cycle?

No, because Nintendo has received cynicism every new console generation since the N64, and last I checked the Wii mopped the floor with the Xbox and PS3 for about 4 straight years, and followed it up by annihilating the PSP in sales with their DS.

And if I recall correctly, this was the Wii which was panned prior to its release for its bad graphics, stupid name, and awkward controllers, which turned out to be some of the reasons that everyone loved the thing.

So no, any speculation about how Nintendo is dying will be unconvincing until the numbers are actually out.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[_KiTA_]

Does anyone else have a nagging feeling that Nintendo is doomed in the next console cycle? The Wii U didn't grab the same attention that the original Wii did, and Nintendo is being attacked on two fronts--the hardcore market with the PS3 and Xbox 360, and casual gaming with the iPhone. Nintendo always had handheld sales to fall back on, but sales of the 3DS have been underwhelming, forcing an early price drop. It seems like Nintendo backed itself into a corner with the Wii, tying the company too intimately with the casual gaming market, whose gamers are fickle and prone to jump onto the next big thing, which turned out to be the iPhone.

Er, someone already corrected you about the 3DS comment, but I feel the urge to point out that the WIiU's graphics look amazing.

Here's the nightmare scenario for Microsoft and Sony, and why both of them tried to retrofit motion controls into their console:

The big joke of the last 3 generations is that Nintendo has put together under-performing hardware. You simply can't run the same amount of processing power on a Wii, Gamecube, etc as you could with comparable consoles. What they do have this generation is something the other two cannot compete with them over -- motion controls.

Now, the problem facing Sony and Microsoft is that Nintendo can now afford to put out a console with good graphics capability and keep the console very affordable. As any PC gamer knows, game graphics aren't getting any better. A sub $100 card is enough to run video games at a very respectable resolution and quality. You can bump up the AA, the filtering, the resolution by buying a bigger card, but all things considered, we've hit a plateau. What's more, the games aren't even using these advanced cards to their fullest -- and they can't. It's just too expensive to make games with these ultra quality graphics.

The WiiU will be able to play PC ported games. It will be able to feature match Microsoft and Sony, AND has features they cannot match -- high quality, 3rd generation Motion Controls and an integrated tablet for a second viewport and touch screen gaming.

So here's the question that the next generation is going to have to answer -- if the WiiU can play the same games as the PS3 / PS4 / XBox 360 / XBox Next, and can play the WiiU exclusive games... Why in the world would you ever buy the more expensive PS4/XBox Next?

Re:Future of Nintendo

[SrLnclt]

Your link is blacked out today you insensitive clod!

Re:Future of Nintendo

[caitsith01]

the WIiU's graphics look amazing.

You haven't seen a PC game in the last 5 years, I take it? Those graphics look pretty average, and I'm very confident the PS4 and next Xbox will be vastly better.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[Xest]

The problem is I don't think it's as simple as simple sales rates anymore, with this gen introducing services and other content too, the number of units shifted is a pretty pointless measure of success for a company and acts as little more than a number for fanboys to have a little circle jerk over.

There's a pretty fair argument that the additional profit from games (higher price point, higher attach rate) for the other two consoles, as well as the income from downloadable game addons, downloadable movies, music, avatars, and all that cruft, and profits from addons (Move/Kinect) as well as service subscriptions themselves (i.e. XBox Live) that Sony and Microsoft have probably actually made more profit than Nintendo despite the lower units sold for Microsoft and Sony's consoles.

The units sold only matters if you can monetise those units, and Nintendo has out and out failed to do so. Microsoft and Sony have in contrast had solid, and fairly succesful plans.

I don't even like Sony in the slightest, so it pains me somewhat to offer somewhat of a defence for them, but the fact is whilst Nintendo had the potential to be far and away the winner in terms of profits this console round due to their large install base, they completely failed to take advantage of that, and that, coupled with the early failure of the 3DS (even if it's picking up now) is why Nintendo has struggled financially, the Yen is certainly going to be part the problem, but not to the extent they're claiming. I like Microsoft a bit more, but recognise they still have a long way to go in terms of ethics in some areas.

It takes more than just shipping a succesful console to have a profitable games console division or business, you need to be able to shift games, and nowadays, many other types of content and subscriptions with it to boot.

I'd like to see Nintendo thrive, because IMO they're the most ethical of the console manufacturers, and so deserve to based on that, but time and time again they throw their growth away. This is fundamentally the difference between them, and say, Apple over the last few years, Nintendo has all the good will that Apple has (or at least had) and the strong massively loyal fanbase to boot, but whilst Apple has had a handful of failures too, Apple has been far more consistent in it's successes, whilst Nintendo has been painfully inconsistent. They need to maintain the kind of momentum they had when they released the Wii, but instead they keep letting it slip away time and time again. Because I do like Nintendo and think that from a moral point of view they deserve to do well, because they are fairly ethical, it genuinely does pain me to see them keep doing this. It's what I imagine having a daughter, who dates the odd brilliant guy with a phd, and high paying job, that really thinks the world of them, only to keep dumping them for countless douchebags in between must be like- you still love them, but it isn't going to stop you shaking your head in despair and having a go at them when they're being so fucking stupid.

Re:Future of Nintendo

[Miamicanes]

> The big joke of the last 3 generations is that Nintendo has put together under-performing hardware

You're overlooking the 400-ton elephant wearing a pink tutu standing over in the corner -- 1080i60. As much as we'd like for it to be true, native 1080pAnything is far from universal. You'd be horrified if you saw the architectural mess inside most mass-market sub-$400 LCD TV controller ASICs -- it makes the parallelport-semi-SCSI-kludged-to-USB trainwreck that evolved with scanners look downright elegant by comparison.

The raw panels themselves can do 24p, 30p, and 60p without drama, but the brain-damaged controllers driving them were value-engineered to just kludge anything besides 720p60 the same way they always have -- they bob it (ie, they treat 1920x1080 16:9 interlaced video as 1920x540 16:9 progressive video, then resample it to 1366x768).

When presented with 1080p24, instead of just natively showing it at 24fps, they stupidly apply 3:2 pulldown to emulate 1080i60 and pass it to the same braindamaged controller. I've seen cheap LCD TVs that somehow managed to end up with weave artifacts out of 1080p30 source. And today's Walmart crap is the semi-high-end from 5 years ago.

Put another way, it's going to be at least another 10 years before you can confidently throw out 1080p60 video and expect butter-smooth artifact-free rendering on the TVs in most living rooms. With current TVs out "in the wild", modes like 1080p24 and 1080p30, let alone 1080p60, are too inconsistently-implemented to risk depending on... and true 1080i60 looks like crap on anything besides a 240hz set that uses oversampling to emulate interlace fade. So we get the least common denominator -- 1080p30 pretending to be 1080i60, that 10-20% of TVs still manage to screw up and butcher.

Of course, 720p60 works well on just about everything. Unfortunately, 720p60 isn't sexy enough for the marketing department. So instead of getting judder-free butter-smooth 1280x720 60fps video without glitches, and with enough filtering to be almost indistinguishable from real-life, we end up with 1080i60 video that looks like crap.

That's the sad truth. 720p60 isn't good enough for the marketing department, 1080i60 rendered AS 1080i60 looks like crap on most TVs. 1080p60 is a fantasy in 94% of the homes in America, 1080p24 is badly-implemented in at least a quarter of the TVs out there, and 5-10% somehow manage to even screw up 1080p30 encoded as fake 1080i60.

It should be modular.

[Kenja]

It should be modular and have upgrade slots following ISO standard interfaces. Perhaps give the option of one or many Intel or AMD cpus and have different graphic options from both NVidia and ATI. Oh, and upgradeable storage & memory.

Re:It should be modular.

[Xeranar]

The top 4 selling games for the Xbox 360 outsold all but 1 PC title ever. Wii sold 7 titles more than any PC title ever. PS2 sold 1 and PS3 has sold none more than any PC title ever. (For Reference the best selling PC game of All-time I could find was Sims 3 at 16M copies ) I'm being fair here but the market seems to have spoken that just in current consoles they have PC sales beat hand down. PC gaming is really a mixture of AAA game houses like Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft and much smaller start-ups. It has few middle-sized designers producing for it because they can't afford to invest without a substantial guarantee of return. Consoles offer that. It's why I point out development cost, when you're getting down to indie games where you need less than 25-50 people to develop one of reasonable quality PCs really shine, but they have a huge gap in size and that's where consoles are bread and butter winners because a good ship for a Wii game is a million units while a good ship for a PC game is 100,000. It's a different set of logistics all together.

As for pricing, 60 bucks is being squeezed out of console players because the distribution system is controlled by a handful of players. Since department stores and discount stores are largely out of it (barring Wal-Mart) gamers get their games in physical locations from less than 3-4 outlets in a given location. They've monopolized the system and have justified the increase in price for profit. PC games are even more limited physically but tend to have a greater expanse online and with the intro of Steam and other competing systems it keeps the price in check.

As for the main point: Unified architecture means a designer has a target. If a game runs smoothly on a PC with ultra-high-end equipment that's wonderful, how does it play on a 4 year old rig with an AMD Dual-core Athlon II and a x800 video card? They don't have to prepare for multiple dynamics within a video card or CPU or even operating system variances. They simply have to write a game that will be using a PowerPC chip and an ATI or Nvidia custom video chip with a certain amount of Ram. It's the real advantage consoles have and its why every time they fiddle around with a power upgrade option it causes an uproar because usually it's expensive and it means leaving a relatively large portion of users behind. Think of the Sega CD or 32X. They were both perfect examples of upgrading the existing system with new technology and ultimately both failed because they were held back by older architecture and price. The speed we're seeing now though shouldn't be an issue to offer backwards compatibility through emulation for everything though so the need to be "upgradable" is really a limited concept.

Or...

[betterunixthanunix]

Knowing Sony, it will come with a module that lets them remotely disable pieces of hardware.

Rule #1:

[MoldySpore]

Don't advertise features that you may later remove completely

While I was not one of the ones who missed the OtherOS feature, for some it was a huge deal. I would hope the uproar over losing this option will teach Sony not to include and make light of large feature sets that they wind up removing later, after the fact. Regardless of what that feature may or may not be, I don't think it is cool to remove stuff that originally came with the system. I don't think anyone wants to see features disappear from a piece of hardware they own just because they want to stay up to date with the latest firmware/updates, and that doesn't just go for PS4 either.

Shouldn't Do Obviously

[A12m0v]

Never release another console for $599. How can posters here forget the real problem the PS3 had, especially at launch?

Don't bother with Sony

[Brain-Fu]

Sony released audio CDs that put rootkits on consumer's PCs, without informing them. After being sued for this, they did it again. They also failed their due diligence on security, causing their entire client base to have private data stolen. Combine this with their habit of selling features and then subsequently removing those very features, and I don't understand why *anybody* buys products form Sony.

I will never trust Sony again.

Lets fix things since 1994...

[Darkness404]

Here are a few things that I'd like fixed:

Get rid of load times. If I'm playing a game where I'm supposed to be immersed in it, a loading screen just kills the idea that you are part of the game. This isn't 1994 anymore.

Get rid of region locking on everything. Including digital downloads. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to enjoy a game even if it isn't translated into my language or "localized". Similarly, there should be some way to gift digital downloads seamlessly between regions.

Stop removing features. Updates are supposed to /add/ features, not remove them.

Seamless emulation between consoles. Not having proper PS2 emulation I'm sure is a contributing factor to why the PS3 finished in third. When the PS2 basically defined the previous generation, it isn't a great idea to decide to make your next generation console compatible with it.

Better build quality. No red ring of death, yellow light of death, or an overheating GPU like the Wii.

Re:Nintendo profits have been down for years

[Belial6]

Because as great as an android phones and tablets are, they are crappy for 99% of the games out there. Phones and tablets are pretty much only replacements for hand held consoles for the people that wouldn't have bought a hand held console anyway. Maybe when Android has gamepad support built in (I believe that is ics) AND tablet, phone and software developers start supporting it heavily, then maybe it would be a replacement. Today it is not.

There are plenty of good games on the Wii. At least as many as on other platforms. For Christmas, we got an Xbox 360 + Kinect. We hooked it up, appreciated how much fun it was for about a 1/2 hour, and then spent the next 3 hours playing Fortune Street on the Wii.

It is hard to say what will happen with the next generation of systems. A faster Wii with HDMI and 1080p would make up for any deficiencies that the Wii is currently showing, and depending on how fast, it could easily surpass the 360 and PS3. When Sony and MS come out with their next consoles, the public may be in the same position that they were in with the current systems. An inexpensive system with lots of fun games, or an expensive system that may look a little prettier, but doesn't have anything special to offer.

Re:Nintendo profits have been down for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any good games for the Wii? I own one but have probably spent less than 4 hours playing on it.

Not sure if trolling, but let me list a few;
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Metroid: Other M
Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Rayman Origins
WarioWare: Smooth Moves
All the Mario Parties
Resident Evil 4
Donkey Kong Country Returns
Goldeneye 007
Kirbys Return to Dreamland
Madworld
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
New Super Mario Bros
No More Heroes 1/2

And that's only the stuff I could think off the the top of my head.