What I mean by "failing": Sony can still sell more consoles than MS next gen, but I want the sales to be even, so that Sony need to give us (consumers) more for your money. Even Sales would be a "failure" for Sony and a success story for MS.
Example: Sony sells 80m PS5s, MS sells 70m Xbox Seres X/S.
This is a rant... but thats what I do, I rant a bit for an hour or something in between work and post it just to be thorough.
The PS3 was innovative. It had a lot of high end and new hardware at launch.
Wireless controllers,
HDMI,
Blutooth,
Wifi,
Bluray drive and movie playback ,
standard off the shelf up-gradable HDD,
2 generations of full backward compatability including an adapter to move PS2 saves to it
compatability with PS2 controllers (dongle) and PS1 and 2 video cables
Multiple memory card slots
USB (later Media server) media playback
Etc...
The reason it did poorly was because it was a year behind and it cost a hell of a lot of money
while the world was heading into a recession....
What did that "lesson" they learned / survived give us? I dont want to be a dick in saying this but we know, outright, that Microsoft
wanted a console similar enough to Sony's console. They both run the same architecture. The PS4 generation
was comparatively, for its power at launch especially certain aspects like the CPU- The weakest generation for flagship consoles.
The slow ramp up of PS3 sales led Sony to make a console they knew they could sell at 399 at launch next.
That 399 price point accounting for inflation is equivalent of a 345 dollar price, if adjusted for 2006 when the PS3 launched.
And Microsofts Xbox one 499 launch? Adjusting for inflation its only a ~5 percent increase over the cost of the Xbox 360 at launch.
But that was including the kinect etc.
You can only imagine how much weaker the PS3 and 360 would be adjusting for that price on launch
and. Imagine a PS3 with wired controllers, no bluray drive and only a 20GB HDD available at launch, no WIFI.... Now maybe it would approach
the 350 dollar price point. Likely not even then given they were selling each one at a loss. More likely it would also have to be weaker to sell
at that price. We dont have to imagine- We got the Xbox one and PS4 - which launched highly outclassed already by budget video cards.
Yes they had all those features I named from the PS3- 7 years later after they were passe' and didnt cost much to implement. No longer
cutting edge to have WIFI, you could buy a 100 or less dollar tablet in 2013 that had blutooth, wifi, etc etc.
The PS4 was a laptop with a somewhat decent, GPU-centric APU with one of the weakest mobile-level CPUs that is - til this day
universally thought of as the weak link in the machines. Why? Because Sony was penny pinching, Because Sony was looking to release
something they knew would be affordable and have no issues getting a big installed base out there. PS4 was Sony's bow down from
exotic hardware and inovation. The PS4 has only the share function and controller touch pad and speaker over the PS3- in all other aspects its just more powerful but
they share all other actual features. Even though 499 would have been probably an acceptable price point and they could have aimed for a nicer CPU or
over 2TF- they dialed it back.
The PS5 is what happens when Sony is once again in a position where they can spend money, take chances, and lead the market enough to know
"If we do THIS and THIS- even if its a change, developers want to release on our platform- we could change the face of console games by
doing this- but its going to cost more and its going to make waves, they wont be simple ports, if they take time to TRY, our system will do something new "
They didnt just put another, bigger hard drive in the machine. Its a totally different storage technology- one so advanced they are on the cutting edge of
what even PCs have inside them this year. They went so far that even Microsoft in its position to try to make a one-up and their recent tradition started with the one X
of having higher specs... they managed not to be able to match. They created a new controller.... even further removed from their first 3 generations of controllers
and adding actual functional differences through adaptive throw triggers and advanced haptics, And in spite of what people are bitching about on the power-side....
We were not as obsessed with teraflops that much back in 2013... Ok some people were but there was very little in the news- And when they did it was to compare
1.8 to 1.3 in the two consoles. Even then when the Xbox one was tweaked last minute they upped the CPU .... they didnt bump the GPU to 1.4 til Xbox one S.
Today - this year we have some PC cards in the mid teens for teraflops. We have some coming out with 20-30 (for a lot, lot of money)
Do you remember that in 2013 the R7 260X was like 150 bucks, and it had 2 teraflops? It on paper beat the PS4 for 150 bucks.
The RTX 2080 has 11 Teraflops and is an older generation of card, but youre still not going to break 10TF for less than .. well I dont know
for sure given sales and the market right now but a 2060 Super OC model is like 7TF and those are around 350 bucks.
Even accounting for the fact that you could get a STRONGER card for 150 then and a weaker card for 350 now, factor in the GPU
as a measure of percentage of price in a comparison and you see obviously.. .350 for that GPU lets assume discounts once the
new cards are out and lets give the benefit of the doubt and say 300 bucks for a 10tf card this christmas.
Even if the PS5 is 600 bucks, the GPU is half of that... and thats not factoring in the high end storage solution.
TLDR: PS4s generation was weak because PS3 didnt do well and MS was instead trying to differentiate itself with its Xbox one
moving to what eventually became gamepass and the series S, taking used sales out of the equation and encouraging use of
their store, services and subscriptions leading to things like the pathetic Jaguar CPU holding us back terrible, and
the PS5 and SERIES X represent consoles closer in power-to-price ratio of generations before making them a better value
for the money in terms of specs.
I think this is a good time for console gamers. Ok so there will be some cheaper options, MS may pick up some casuals if it gets the right
messaging though I honestly think they've already bought switches and Nintendo will dump the price by 50 bucks this holiday and
simply sweep that market fully (My prediction).