It's gonna all depend on your customer base and area. Someone who bought a PS4 for this past Christmas might be more upset than someone who got one at launch.
Even then, I don't see it being an issue, because people that bought at Christmas time largely took advantage of Christmas deals. Christmas time buyers are usually price-conscious as well, if not the most so of the year, and seeing a new higher priced item on the market almost a year later are not going to see this as a sudden slap in the face for most of those customers. Especially not parents purchasing for their kids.
Would the X1 elite controller be a good analogy for your view on this?
Not a bad comparison, actually. A higher end option for people that want to invest in something that is above and beyond... But the difference here is that it it actually *is* the core hardware as well as the actual enhancement. So unlike having it be an accessory that is that expensive, this would include the core system, and all the enhancements just bundled into the same system itself, so to speak. But an excellent connection to make. And people ate that up. It did extremely well according to Microsoft.
Parents are going to be confused as fuck.
Hardly. This is like, the easiest thing to differentiate. There's no special characteristics you have to be really careful about. Honestly, the 12 different SKUs I have to explain to customers right now for the XB1 with virtually no differences but a bunch of differences on pricing are way more fucking frustrating than this specific SKU difference with an actual hardware difference as a premium model that will be given a model difference.
This is childs play (heh). And even if in the case of mild confusion, it doesn't even matter, because it plays the same damn games, just better. There's no exclusives one way or the other. There's no loss.
Because for consoles I could reasonably assume getting the best possible performance for 5+ years? People don't mind product cycles, but it's dangerous to accelerate them beyond what the market will bear.
The product cycle for the actual hardware of this generation will be determined by other factors, and a refresh of the core SKU with improvements isn't going to fundamentally alter what games are being released, and who is able to play them. It's a Premium option, with enhancements.
And the market will make the final decision, but from what I can see, the market is likely to accept this as just another option, and allow it to exist while primarily focusing on the core model.
Solid post OP.
I never quite understood why some people were so enraged about this.
If this PS4K releases and the games that release are both playable on both systems and the only difference is an increase in graphical fidelity -and ONLY- that then I don't see why folks would be upset.
Want the better graphics? Get a PS4K.
I could see an argument being made if there's exclusive content or features to PS4K is one thing, but so far all indications is that Sony is working against that.
It seems like people are taking this personally, for some reason, so I wanted to add a more objective, direct perspective on the market realities.
