Post Xbox One Two Scorpio, what should Sony do next? *spawn* (oh, and Nintendo?)

There is a market for sure! But when I look at Neo and everything they've said, no exclusive titles etc this is the landscape I see for a Sony fan:
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I'm not sure if you agree with the borders I placed and but I think those are relative zones. If you are in the green area and you are okay with that, then Neo is fine. But outside of that area I think you're going to see backlash as you've effectively altered their customers base investment in 3 years time.

The green spot (sweet spot) is just so small with Neo.
The Yellow spot is all about buyers remorse for new PS4 owners.
The end of PS4 means no one buys PS4 go forward, begin switching to Neo only. Limited life remaining with PS4.
Suckers area means you have paid an exuberant premium for not much better performance.





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Reminds me of this

 
Reminds me of this

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Holy shit this video is real. My sex life is a lie! I must embrace these manly techniques!
 
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I am a big Sony fan and I can't wait for Neo and here's why...the games will look and perform better. 1080p is just one factor, how about more effects & better textures (etc) as well as a rock solid framerate. We already know there's a difference with a 50% performance difference so a ~240% performance increase will be nice. Another reason is each gen I tend to gravitate back to PC for multiplat titles - this will mean I won't need to. And another plus is that down the line as PS4 is struggling Neo won't be struggling as much.

I mean, I keep saying it but people upgrade a gfx card in a PC for less performance improvements. I appreciate it's not for everyone and only time will tell if it's a success - but I can assure you there is a market.

From the leak docs the neo will only acces 1 gig more of ram for games. The increase in textures will be very low.

We also only know about Tflops , what about Rops ? If the rops stay the same and only get an increase through clock speed the difference will be much smaller.


You gotta ask yourself why sony isn't showing a console that will be launching within the next year
 
That's been mostly solved. The last time I had to forcebly reboot my console was around November 2015.

I still have trouble with youtube and Netflix. Sometimes in need to quit the app itself and restart it. But otherwise I don't get problems with games and other apps
 
Interesting, most of the commentary seems focused around, Neo being cheaper, faster to market, better games etc. These are all topics on how Sony beats MS. None of the commentary touches on how Neo is or isn’t a great product for Sony’s existing customer base in which I see Neo as terrible product for their line. Sony’s lack of communication is a red flag to any consumer as Sony is usually very strong with their communication plans. Neo’s specifications are generous for a mid-level upgrade except Microsoft’s bold move to skip a level straight to 6TF makes Neo appear woefully out of place. Lastly, their continued drive to release Neo delays any chance of PS5 arriving sooner. These three factors combined are proof that Neo is hard to market and it is in my opinion that Sony’s best move is to delay/cancel Neo entirely and just make it into PS5.

Sony has been purposefully quiet about Neo and is currently stuck between a rock and a hard place about how to communicate Neo itself; their hype filled E3 Experience with a live orchestra fell flat with a missing Neo ending to their presentation. Before E3 they announced Neo in a fashion less spectacularly than Nintendo; yes, I’m talking about the executives confirming Neo’s existence and launch this year during an interview, but failed to show it at an official announcement because the games weren’t ready to show it. This is from a market leader with a global market lead of massive proportions failing to deliver an announcement on the biggest stage of gaming. The response from Sony was, “I didn’t expect MS to announce Scorpio so well in advance (18 mo), we didn’t announce Neo because the games aren’t ready yet [for Neo]”.

Imagine a smart layman who understands resolution and framerate. There are only 2 types of TVs I can own today, 1080p and 4K. That person can either own a PS4, or want to buy into Sony. Neo is released and it costs more than PS4. What questions would that layman ask?

Q: So why would I buy Neo it costs way more than PS4.
A: Games will look better on Neo, and have a 1080p minimal resolution requirement, games will look better on Neo, and some games might have better frame rate.

Q: Okay, so PS4 does 1080p for almost all titles already, so that’s not a big difference to me. And if this device can’t do 4K, explain to me how games will look better, and will all games have better frame rate?
A: Well, I need to show you the games running side by side PS4 vs Neo to show you how games look better, and frame rate will depend on the game, so I can’t tell you exactly today which games will have higher frame rates.

Q: So is this device for PSVR? Because you said that all games for PSVR run 60 and works perfectly for PS4.
A: Neo will run all games in 1080/60 in PSVR. But so does PS4. But Neo games will look better, once again, we’ll need to show you the two games running side by side.

And there is the inherent problem. In order to justify Neo’s worth, you need to run it side by side to PS4. Just think about what a disaster that is for their marketing department; how BAD would it be if your audience you are selling it to are having issues seeing the differences in quality between a Neo and PS4 title. So there better be a noticeable difference between how games look on PS4 and Neo right? Of course there will have to be, or you would just buy a PS4. Let’s not even dive into discussion of whether Sony should start looking at whether the gap between the Neo and PS4 version of a title is large enough during certification.

Neo is not in trouble because Scorpio is a MS product, Neo is in trouble because Scorpio will exist within 12 months of Neo’s launch. If Scorpio did not exist, no one would know that a 4K native console device could actually be available in holiday 2017. Everyone would have taken it for granted that greater than 2x the PS4s power would be the norm for the next console gen. 1.5 or whatever you want to call it. It’s entirely possible that Sony expected MS to follow suit.

The rebuttal that when PS5 comes it will crush Scorpio is pointless, because that’s not what Sony is actually worried about. The issue is that Sony will take 2 generations of hardware to get to 4K native when their competitor will do it in 1, and there is no messaging or communication you can wrap around that to make that sound good to your existing customer base. If you’re a Sony fan you’re going to wait a long time for 4K native, let me explain.

Let’s look at the product release timeline with pricing:
PS3 2006 - high fidelity gaming; $499/$599
PS4 2013 - HD gaming 1080p; $399
Neo 2016 - 1080p 2x better looking HD gaming; $499?
PS5 2019 - 4K UHD gaming ?? $499??
So if that schedule looks way too tight and likely to blow up your good will with your customers the simple answer is to delay PS5; and there it is, you’re going to wait a long time for 4K native.

As someone who owns a launch PS4, you’ve got to be thinking, 6 years is a long wait for 4K UHD, those guys at MS have 4k UHD native gaming in 2017 (4 years). I’m going to have to use my launch PS4 for at least 6 years to get it, likely we’re looking at 7-8 years. And if you were a sucker to buy Neo, in a short time frame after you’d be asked to buy into PS5 to get that 4K experience.

Neo is a mistake and Sony has not done their customer base any favours. Games will have to look significantly better than PS4 to be able to justify it’s own worth, and it also pushes out PS5 and 4K because you don’t want to launch 3 consoles in < 10 years.

In my perspective, Neo is simply a fan service device whose core purchasers are members with high dispose income that are Sony through and through. It’s actually a really bad device for Sony customers given the politics that surround it. Neo unfortunately became a reality when it was leaked and MS announced their Scorpio to be released 18 months from today. If Neo was never leaked, it’s possible Sony could have went back to the drawing board entirely.


I agree with the majority of this and its a really well written post.

If sony goes with a 4.4tflop console based on the ps4 with only 8 gigs of ram then even a 12 gig upgrade on the scorpio will show a notable texture quality difference. If MS goes to 24 or 32 gigs of ram the quality difference in textures will be quite transformative. That is before any difference in hardware. We don't know what the difference between vega and Polaris is . But if MS is using Vega that is a newer architecture which may be more efficient and better designed.

Sony could run into trouble if the spring release is correct because during their launch of neo they will have MS talking and showing Scorpio .

How will sony combat that ? Whats more , what does MS have in the pipeline to show off Scorpio. Halo isn't the franchise it used to be ,but a halo running a 6tflop machine with tons of ram will look stunning. An upgraded Crack down on it will be amazing.

Sony will have to market against these forces with a difference of as little as 6 months between launches and with tight price diffrences.

Not to mention they have to get the message out about psvr too.
 
But will the visual quality difference will be really high?

We already have a condition like this with console x PC.

Turns out, despite pc have much more power and memory, the game still look same-ish with console when seen from couch distance.


Post Xbox One Two Scorpio, what should Sony do next? *spawn*


Stop using tiny Philips head screws please. Especially don't use them to screw heatsink clamp like in PS4.
 
From the leak docs the neo will only acces 1 gig more of ram for games. The increase in textures will be very low.

We also only know about Tflops , what about Rops ? If the rops stay the same and only get an increase through clock speed the difference will be much smaller.

ok, draw distance and detail - the point was that resolution is not the only improvements we should see as it was in response to this by iroberto "Q: Okay, so PS4 does 1080p for almost all titles already, so that’s not a big difference to me. And if this device can’t do 4K, explain to me how games will look better, and will all games have better frame rate?"

You gotta ask yourself why sony isn't showing a console that will be launching within the next year

could be because they don't want people to think you need Neo for PSVR or maybe they don't want to hurt sales...who knows
 
How will sony combat that ?
Price and popularity. You don't have to compete on power if you can compete elsewhere.

Sony will have to market against these forces with a difference of as little as 6 months between launches and with tight price diffrences.
It stands to reason that the machine with 2/3 the power and less RAM and less Bandwidth etc. will be cheaper to produce. MS will defnitely have 'the most powerful console' marketing message and that'll attract some buyers. They'll also have 'play on Windows'. Sony will have PS4 selling en masse and Neo selling to upgrade who are happy with PS4 but want a bit better, and will pay a bit more for a bit better. So two different audiences on the whole in my mind.
 
Price and popularity. You don't have to compete on power if you can compete elsewhere.

It stands to reason that the machine with 2/3 the power and less RAM and less Bandwidth etc. will be cheaper to produce. MS will defnitely have 'the most powerful console' marketing message and that'll attract some buyers. They'll also have 'play on Windows'.

Microsoft is the one with the 2/3rd power, less ram, and less bandwidth hence cheaper to produce console with the Xbox One S. So MS will have the cheaper bargain market covered as well as the power-performance market.
 
The current market share advantage of PS4 can't be stopped easily, gamers buy what their friends have. Naughty Dog continues to win best game of the year. Horizon looks like a real system seller. They make must-have titles which keeps their existing user base loyal and growing. If there is no more generational "reset", all those who bought a PS4 or Neo will stay on that platform unless Sony fails significantly with the PS5. Market share movement will be much more difficult in the future because of FC/BC. Including a year headstart with console VR.

If Neo comes out this year, at the rumored specs, it's a best case scenario for Sony. The PS5 would be expected late 2019. Scorpio won't get it's price down to the goldilock zone in that short time frame.

But the most probable is that Neo is early 2017, then PS5 would be late 2020. Giving MS three years to recover some market share.
 
Microsoft is the one with the 2/3rd power, less ram, and less bandwidth hence cheaper to produce console with the Xbox One S.
Ignoring that the bottom end is secured to PlayStation due to brand recognition, why thinkg Sony can't compete on price? Certainly XBone isn't notably cheaper than PS4 due to architecture, although a slim may be with ESRAM scaling. But probably not a huge amount in it with the small chips. Where XB1S is competing with PS4(slim), price won't be much different and certainly not enough to change the tide of popular opinion. It's only really the top end where MS have a competitive advantage (beyond potential ecosystem) and Sony can certainly compete there, unlike the view that Sony have nothing and are done for.
 
You are assuming they can launch in november. I am assuming they cannot.

Better launch in March than waiting until november 2017. Which is exactly what Sony did when they launched the PS2 in March.
 
If the (console) gaming market is mostly decided by computing power sony is doomed. It doesn't matter what neo or scorpio does. Microsoft wins by the virtue of xbox and multiplatform games coming to pc.

What sony should do is good business and not chase after the 1%. I believe ps4 has very good momentum ongoing and it makes sense to keep winning by producing excellent content. I doubt microsoft is willing to subsidize scorpio too much and I doubt there is huge market in 599$++ category. Something like 199$ ps4 and 399$ neo should be plenty good assuming the content is in there. If there is 100$+ price difference in neo and scorpio that might make a huge difference in market penetration. Ofcourse microsoft has deep pockets and can sell at loss, but then buying market share isn't necessarily the best business to be in.

What sony really should not do is to do a reset. Resetting the cycle let's other players come back into play as whatever was isn't anymore. Sony should really take a note from how smartphone, tablet and desktop markets work...
 
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If the (console) gaming market is mostly decided by computing power sony is doomed. It doesn't matter what neo or scorpio does. Microsoft wins by the virtue of xbox and multiplatform games coming to pc.

What sony should do is good business and not chase after the 1%. I believe ps4 has very good momentum ongoing and it makes sense to keep winning by producing excellent content. I doubt microsoft is willing to subsidize scorpio too much and I doubt there is huge market in 599$++ category. Something like 199$ ps4 and 399$ neo should be plenty good assuming the content is in there. If there is 100$+ price difference in neo and scorpio that might make a huge difference in market penetration. Ofcourse microsoft has deep pockets and can sell at loss, but then buying market share isn't necessarily the best business to be in.

What sony really should not do is to do a reset. Resetting the cycle let's other players come back into play as whatever was isn't anymore. Sony should really take a note from how smartphone, tablet and desktop markets work...

you think MS will put out a $600 + console ? Microsoft who got destroyed by the press and fans for releasing a $500 console 4 years prior ?

Scorpio is going to come in as close to $400 as they can get.
 
Ignoring that the bottom end is secured to PlayStation due to brand recognition, why thinkg Sony can't compete on price? Certainly XBone isn't notably cheaper than PS4 due to architecture, although a slim may be with ESRAM scaling. But probably not a huge amount in it with the small chips. Where XB1S is competing with PS4(slim), price won't be much different and certainly not enough to change the tide of popular opinion. It's only really the top end where MS have a competitive advantage (beyond potential ecosystem) and Sony can certainly compete there, unlike the view that Sony have nothing and are done for.

Don't ignore what a halo product can do for lower end products.

If Scorpio is a success then many can invest in xbox one knowing their games will work in the future when scorpio enters their price range.

Meanwhile streamers and reviewers will all talk up the superior Scorpio.

The xbox one is using cheaper ddr 3 ram and the Esram will be much denser which should result in a smaller APU with each shrink. So Ms should enjoy a price advantage . how big I dunno
 
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