Ps4

Wibble

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There is a rumour going around on twitter and the like is that the release of the PS4 is going to be much sooner than we expect, possibly even this year.

I assume it is bullshit but does anyone know different?
 
It comes from the earnings report that R&D is going up by $700m in the next year.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/10q4_sony.pdf

And when questioned on it in the conference....

Sony's executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato made the revelation on a conference call to investors today. He was asked to explain increased research and development (R&D) costs.

"For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life," he said, "but this is a platform business, so for the future platform - when we'll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that - but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there."
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I hope it's true because then in my fantasy world the prices for the PS3 would drop down to £100 and I'd buy one.
 
I know a few developers are clamouring for the next generation consoles already. I haven't heard about this, though.

One thing is for sure, I won't wait three years to pick one up this time.
 
Also....

Sony: No Plans For PS3-type Investment For Future Consoles

Sony: No Plans For PS3-type Investment For Future Consoles

Games division turns profit due to PS3 cost reductions and sales.

Posted on 05.27.2011 at 01:29, by Anoop Gantayat

Sony's massive initial expenditures for the PlayStation 3 lead to years of losses. This is something that apparently won't be repeated for future platforms.

During an investors briefing today (via Nikkei), Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato was asked if Sony expects its games division to continue to maintain its recent profitability. Different from the major losses of Sony Group as a whole, the company's games business turned profitable over the fiscal year.

Kato noted that the main factor in the losses for the past few years has been the big difference in sales price and cost for the PS3 system. Sony even spent billions to create its own semi conductor facilities.

This is something that won't happen in the future. The semiconductor business is changing, said Kato. "It is no longer thinkable to have a huge initial financial investment like that of the PS3."

Sony's Network Products & Services division, which overseas the PlayStation business, saw a 0.4% increase in sales to 1,579,300 million yen. Last year's operating loss of 833,000 million yen was turned into an operating profit of 356,000 million yen.

PS3 hardware cost reductions and increased software sales were major factors in the turnaround.

Sony shipped 14.3 million PS3 systems, 8 million PSP systems and 2.64 million PS2 systems over the year. Software shipments were 147,900,000 for PS3, 46,600,000 for PSP and 16,400,000 for PS2.

For the current year, Sony forecasts 15 million PS3 systems, 6 million PSP systems and 4 million PS2 systems.
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Which suggests that PS4 will be built on the PS3 technology, just beefed up, as was always expected.

This is a web of allsorts as I posted in another thread....

WeasteDevil said:
What's interesting on the gaming side for me however is how they are trying to create this bottom-up eco-system from phones to top-end consoles. In this respect I'm talking about PS Suite and what they just announced with the PSP Remasters.

Sony is remastering select PlayStation Portable games for release in high definition on PlayStation 3.

These Blu-ray disc games come with bonus content and in some cases stereoscopic 3D visuals.

The first game to get the PSP Remaster treatment is action role-playing game Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, due out in Japan in the summer. A trailer is below.

"The graphics of the PS3 version, including monsters, fields, equipment, as well as Felyne Comrades, are more gorgeous and vibrant than ever, and will deliver dynamic gameplay when played on the large TV screens," Sony said in a press release. "SCE, with strong support from software developers and publishers, will deploy various measures to enhance the software title line-up for the PS3 system."

PSP Remasters are playable on both the PSP and PS3, and save files on either system are transferable, meaning you'll be able to continue your PS3 experience on the go on your PSP – a hint at things to come on Next Generation Portable?

We're promised bonus content and, thankfully, you'll be able to play the PS3 games online through the PSP ad hoc system.

At the time of writing the PSP Remasters Series has been announced for Japan only, but E3 is just around the corner.
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PSP Remasters coming to PS3 in HD News - PSP - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Where is this leading? It's clear that with a PS Suite game you will be able to play on the Android phone, the PSP, the NGP, and the PS3. Then, it seems, that a PSP game you will be able to play on the PSP, the NGP, and the PS3. Then, developer/publisher willingness accounted for, any NGP game will be able to be played on the PS3. So, taking this further, I can see that PS4 will use basically the same architecture as the PS3, simply beefed up, and that the same game will run on a PS3 and a PS4 under different settings, similar to how PC games can still run on a lower end rig and a high end rig, with the PS4 being to run every game along the chain from phone to PS3/PS4 games - and finally, PS2 games.

It's interesting in that you could be playing the game at home on the PS3, and then when you go out simply carry on where you left off with your NGP. It's quite clearly a move towards the point where the console will not exist, but rather when you get home will sit in a dock of some kind connected to the TV and provide the extra power required for that, yet still remain as a single executable box. In this respect, I think that they have the right idea.
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I thought they hadn't got close to the PS3's full potential yet and cosidering Sony lost money on each one sold, they were going to milk it for all it's worth before even thinking about a PS4 yet.

It seems strange that they'd sell a console as a loss leader with the idea that the software makes the money only to replace it when there is an easy couple of years still to come from it.

It would definately reinforce the theory that the PS3 was merely a weapon in the battle between HD-DVD and BlueRay as it seems Sony are ready to move on now BlueRay seems to have that war won.
 
Mihajlovic said:
I hope it's true because then in my fantasy world the prices for the PS3 would drop down to £100 and I'd buy one.
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November 2013 at the earliest. They need to get the PS3 price down further as well. Look what happens when the price comes down.....

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PS3 is currently on the same sales curve as PS1 was.

SONY%2BHARD_thumb.jpg


Then the funny bit....

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This generation Sony has sold more PS2s than PS3s and more PS2s than XB360. It's now 11 years old!
 
The funny thing with the PS2 is that you'd have thought it reached market saturation a long time ago. I honestly don't know who's buying them.
 
Biscuit said:
The funny thing with the PS2 is that you'd have thought it reached market saturation a long time ago. I honestly don't know who's buying them.
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fecked if I know, either. Who the hell buys a PS2 in this day and age?
 
Ideal for parents on a limited budget I guess - probably get the console and 5 or 6 games for £40 or so. Massive library, a lot of which is child friendly.
 
Pexbo said:
I thought they hadn't got close to the PS3's full potential yet and cosidering Sony lost money on each one sold, they were going to milk it for all it's worth before even thinking about a PS4 yet.

It seems strange that they'd sell a console as a loss leader with the idea that the software makes the money only to replace it when there is an easy couple of years still to come from it.

It would definately reinforce the theory that the PS3 was merely a weapon in the battle between HD-DVD and BlueRay as it seems Sony are ready to move on now BlueRay seems to have that war won.
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Toshiba have developed this technology where you can stick one Cell chip on top of the other. Once they get down to a 28nm process, two of them side by side with a few tweaks here and there will give them a chip with 4 PPUs (basically a bit more powerful than the XB360 CPU) with 32 SPUs in a package smaller than the original Cell CPU. Whack in 2 to 4GB of RAM, a more modern off the shelf (slightly modified) GPU, and the job is done - with little R&D cost. Games could run on PS3 and PS4 with the same disc, just one would be 720p and 30fps and the other would be 1080p and 60fps with more effects, more AA, more AF, etc. Very similar to how settings on a PC game work.
 
WeasteDevil said:
It will continue as well, as they are now targeting the developing economies, some of which have massive populations - Brazil, India, Russia, etc. Forecast is to ship 4 million PS2s this financial year.
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Interesting graphs Weaste. Are you expecting then the price for the PS3 to go further down and to what levels, realistically?
 
Crazy that the PS2 still ships so much! It was a super console though, and I actually do get it out the very odd time to replay an old classic.

I'm surprised Sony are going to release a new console so soon, I mean I know because of Cell and the resources they already have it'll be far easier to do so than if Microsoft did, wouldn't it?

But Microsoft are planning to keep the 360 going til 2015 or something.
 
WeasteDevil said:
You can buy one on Play.com now for 200 for the 160 model, although the RRP is still 250 (320 model). I expect a price drop of at least 50 pounds by the end of the year.
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Christ, I paid €400 for my 40gb back in the day. Oh how things change.

Is that at a profit or loss to them?
 
cina said:
Crazy that the PS2 still ships so much! It was a super console though, and I actually do get it out the very odd time to replay an old classic.

I'm surprised Sony are going to release a new console so soon, I mean I know because of Cell and the resources they already have it'll be far easier to do so than if Microsoft did, wouldn't it?

But Microsoft are planning to keep the 360 going til 2015 or something.
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Microsoft have a dilemma in terms of the hardware for their next machine, and not just the CPU, DVD is too small, so they either go download only or they bite the bullet and go with a different disc format.

I'm quite sure that both Microsoft and Sony would like to wait until 2015 and beyond, but with Nintendo releasing a new machine next year, and depending on how powerful that machine is, their hands are being forced.

I don't think that Sony will be too worried though, look at that graph of PS2 sales over the past 6 years. They can keep both PS3 and PS4 in the sales channel, especially if they are compatible with each other.
 
WeasteDevil said:
Microsoft have a dilemma in terms of the hardware for their next machine, and not just the CPU, DVD is too small, so they either go download only or they bite the bullet and go with a different disc format.

I'm quite sure that both Microsoft and Sony would like to wait until 2015 and beyond, but with Nintendo releasing a new machine next year, and depending on how powerful that machine is, their hands are being forced.

I don't think that Sony will be too worried though, look at that graph of PS2 sales over the past 6 years. They can keep both PS3 and PS4 in the sales channel, especially if they are compatible with each other.
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I presume Nintendo will be of the same format as the Wii still though? Same target audience and all. Surely they still can't compete with MS and Sony on the hardware front.
 
WeasteDevil said:
Microsoft have a dilemma in terms of the hardware for their next machine, and not just the CPU, DVD is too small, so they either go download only or they bite the bullet and go with a different disc format.
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Surely they can't stick with DVDs? Just outdated and shit compared to Blu Ray. What are the options available with new formats? Or will this be a new creation by Microsoft?
 
beardsleybob said:
Surely they can't stick with DVDs? Just outdated and shit compared to Blu Ray. What are the options available with new formats? Or will this be a new creation by Microsoft?
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They've just released a new firmware for the XB360 that increases the space on the DVD by about 1GB I think, because although a dual layer DVD can hold almost 9GB, previously on the XB360 it was less than 7 due to space for piracy protection etc. However, as seen with LA Noire, it's on 3 discs. They need to up that. There are new technologies available, but none of them compatible with Blu-ray, and surely they want the machine to be able to play Blu-ray movies? A HD-DVD resurrection is possible I suppose for games, and because the format is dead in the mainstream, they may view that as being a help towards piracy. It should also be quite trivial to modify a HD-DVD drive to play Blu-ray movies also. We'll see. Nintendo are rumoured to be using a modified BD drive in their next console - probably will not be able to play BD movies.
 
I don't think that they were necessarily considering it, it was me speculating, but yes, it's a possibility, as we've seen GT5 running over 4 PS3s (at 4k resolution or 240fps :eek: ). The gigabit ethernet is enough to allow for this. I can't think of any other reason why they put a gigabit port on it.
 
Lance Uppercut said:
fecked if I know, either. Who the hell buys a PS2 in this day and age?
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I bought one a few weeks ago, my PS3 isn't backwards compatible and I felt like playing a few supposedly great games that had avoided my radar all these years (PS2 has a lot of those!)
 
Redlambs said:
Wasn't it only last year or the year before I called this one Weaste? It's not just about Sony/M$ and Nintendo and what they want to do, these super publishers nowadays have a lot of pull.
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I don't think that we are going to see a new XBox or PS until late 2013 at the earliest. By that time XB360 will be 8 years old. They got some life out of it.

I'm certainly not expecting any announcements from either MS or Sony at this E3. E3 2012 maybe, first look, 2013 launch. Depends on how good this new Nintendo console is, but as you know, it's a game of diminishing returns now, once the resolution and frame rate is dealt with, what do you do? Would the average gamer even think about what you could do? Everything is up in the air, we had this massive move toward GPU, now it's going back to CPU or GPU that can do general purpose processing.

Frostbite 2 is very interesting, it tells me that PS4 will use Cell again. DICE must have asked Sony before taking the path that they have taken.
 
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