How to sell next-gen consoles, Marketing, Positioning, and Pricing [2020]

[borntosoul]

We humans need to justify our spending, for an adult all we need is a feature/ excuse to spend the money.
My Phone excuse is l use it every day, l take pictures of my daughter and want the quality to be excellent so l don’t have to buy a camera, l use it for work, l can use it for buying things on the go, and surfing the internet etc.......
See my point? My $1200 expense was justified by that. I didn’t have to spend the money but I did.

Why should l upgrade my ps4 ? I didn’t get the ps4 pro and l have a 4K tv.
Why should l buy a ps5 ?

 

[Xbat]

I don't understand how there are some that think there won't be a perceivable difference between a 1.7 TFlop machine and a 12 TFlop machine.

 

[borntosoul]

Didn’t say there wouldn’t be a difference, and maybe I’m exaggerating a little.

How much power does the Xbox one have? What has that bought to the table?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't see the relevance to this discussion that's supposed to be predicting next-gen's hardware. How next gen should be marketed is a different discussion. It came up here to show the advantages of an SSD can be explained as more than just faster load times, as part of the pro-SSD hardware choice.

 

[borntosoul]

Thanks shifty.

 

[goonergaz]

I don't understand how there are some that think there won't be a perceivable difference between a 1.7 TFlop machine and a 12 TFlop machine.

Whilst I agree, I do also think 'diminishing returns' is real.

When I play Horizon ZD or watch the LoU2 foirage, I find it hard to imagine what 5-8x the power will give us that will be tangible.

Having said that, I'm in the mind that checkerboarding to 4k, increasing frame rate and effects/NPCs (in particular AI of opponents) will be a nice ''next gen' upgrade.

But I feel anything other than 'native 4k with eye peircing pixels and blinding HDR' will wash with the public (other than true exclusives)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We humans need to justify our spending, for an adult all we need is a feature/ excuse to spend the money.

Buying for a present, the justification is "they want it." If buying for ourselves, the justification is "I want it." Different people will then consider to differing degrees whether they should objectively. Plenty of people buy a new car despite nothing being wrong with their old car, because they want anew car. Plenty of people buy new clothes or new shoes despite there being nothing wrong with their existing clothing.

Why should l upgrade my ps4 ? I didn’t get the ps4 pro and l have a 4K tv.
Why should l buy a ps5 ?

I don't understand this at all. Did you have a PS3? Did you get a PS4? Millions of people did, despite the PS4 having less functionality than the PS3. PS3 was sold as, "it only does everything." PS4 was sold as, "it plays games." PS4 plays games better than PS3, so people upgraded. PS5 will play games better than PS4 and so people will buy it.

 

[Xbat]

And as sure as shit Sony's first party games would be exclusive to PS5 which will for me be the biggest reason to get a PS5

 

[borntosoul]

Buying for a present, the justification is "they want it." If buying for ourselves, the justification is "I want it." Different people will then consider to differing degrees whether they should objectively. Plenty of people buy a new car despite nothing being wrong with their old car, because they want anew car. Plenty of people buy new clothes or new shoes despite there being nothing wrong with their existing clothing.

I don't understand this at all. Did you have a PS3? Did you get a PS4? Millions of people did, despite the PS4 having less functionality than the PS3. PS3 was sold as, "it only does everything." PS4 was sold as, "it plays games." PS4 plays games better than PS3, so people upgraded. PS5 will play games better than PS4 and so people will buy it.

Hey shifty,
I had, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, ps1, ps2, ps3, ps4. No ps4 pro because it doesn’t compel me to upgrade.
Ps5 maybe, as long as Sony go to town on it and it gives us something special.
Tech is moving so fast that the ps4 will be overtaken by a tablet in performance at some point.
I have a pc with a ivy bridge cpu, why? Because for me there is no point to upgrade yet. I’ll wait for 7nm and upgrade everything then. That’s just me.

Edit...
And l feel your missing the point, as we get on to future generation improvements will be less and less obvious, therefore we will need even more investment and innovation to creat something special.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hey shifty,
I had, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, ps1, ps2, ps3, ps4. No ps4 pro because it doesn’t compel me to upgrade.

Right. The vast majority of console owners don't feel compelled to buy either mid-gen refresh. They are marginal improvements with a relatively hefty cost-of-entry. PS5 will be a next generation, same as PS2 -> 3 and PS3 -> 4.

Edit...
And l feel your missing the point.

I am most certainly missing the point because you never made one. You didn't say, "here's my view." I'm still not sure what you're saying. Are you saying PS5 isn't going to be good enough and no-one's going to want to buy it? It won't sell because it doesn't do anything more than PS4 just with prettier graphics?

 

[Gubbi]

Tech is moving so fast that the ps4 will be overtaken by a tablet in performance at some point.

Tech is moving really slow compared to what it used to.

We're in the end game wrt. silicon scaling. Performance per transistor does not double every other year like it used to, and transistors do not halve in price every other year like they used to. That means the performance delta between plugged console and a portable device is determined by the schmoo plot of electronic devices and the difference in electric power consumption. Just using a cubic law means a 250W console is 2.62 times faster than a 10W tablet. And that is not including the economics of consoles, allowing a bigger silicon budget (typically 2-3 times the silicon in a console APU compared to a mobile SOC). State of the art Snapdragon 845 has 720GFlops GPU, one third that of the five year old PS4, one-eight that of a XB1X

Cheers

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yup people expecting a generational leap for the next round of consoles similar to PS3/X360 -> PS4/XBO are going to be severly disappointed.

Regards,
SB

 

[borntosoul]

You guys don’t believe the ps4 will be overtaken by a tablet? Be ready to be disappointed.
I do understand that we are heading to a slow down but something will come along to surprise us soon.

 

[borntosoul]

Right. The vast majority of console owners don't feel compelled to buy either mid-gen refresh. They are marginal improvements with a relatively hefty cost-of-entry. PS5 will be a next generation, same as PS2 -> 3 and PS3 -> 4.

I am most certainly missing the point because you never made one. You didn't say, "here's my view." I'm still not sure what you're saying. Are you saying PS5 isn't going to be good enough and no-one's going to want to buy it? It won't sell because it doesn't do anything more than PS4 just with prettier graphics?

I’m saying the noticeable perception of improved graphics between consol generations will be less as we go on unless something changes the game. Tech in phones and tablets is moving much faster.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You guys don’t believe the ps4 will be overtaken by a tablet? Be ready to be disappointed.
I do understand that we are heading to a slow down but something will come along to surprise us soon.

It will eventually, same way PS1 has been overtaken by tablets.

I’m saying the noticeable perception of improved graphics between consol generations will be less as we go on unless something changes the game.

That's something everyone's basically agreed on, although some of us feel there's more to what's achieved on screen than raw power, and better used power (more modern architecture with better functionality and algorithm efficiences) means a smaller increase in raw flops over a generation will still yield much improved results on screen.

Tech in phones and tablets is moving much faster.

How can it? It uses the same chip engineering science and the same fabrication technologies.the laws of physics are the same, and thermal limits are also far more constrictive. Looking at benchmarks, do we get better than an 8-10x performance improvement every 5-6 years?

https://www.androidbenchmark.net/g3dmark_chart.html

Samsung Galaxy S9 (2018) - 4437
Samsung Galaxy S3 (2012) - 883

6 years == 5x better.

Doesn't strike me as moving faster than consoles or desktop performance. The only thing mobiles can do at the moment is make bigger SOCs and charge more. If consoles were to do the same and charge $600-700, they'd get the same sort of improvements over a $400 previous console as a new $600-700 iPhone can get over a previous $400 generation.

 

[borntosoul]

The reason tablet and phone tech s moving faster because it’s a bigger market. That’s why, more investment, it’s not all about what tech that is available at the time.

 

[BRiT]

Tablets can not deny the laws of physics.

 

[borntosoul]

Yes true we are all governed by them but I’m not talking about physics.

 

[goonergaz]

I do understand that we are heading to a slow down but something will come along to surprise us soon.

I agree, there is always a brick wall coming and somehow we get round it. I remember ~ 20 years ago talking to a friend warning me about Moores law and that silicon was reaching its limit and here we are today with Moores law being questioned again.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The reason tablet and phone tech s moving faster because it’s a bigger market. That’s why, more investment, it’s not all about what tech that is available at the time.

Firstly, I've presented evidence mobile isn't moving faster. You need to present evidence supporting your view it is*. Secondly, I explained gains in mobile are due to costs, so in the evidence you present, you need to factor out cost and show that for the same amount of money, technology in mobiles is progressing faster than other markets - simply comparing devices isn't enough.

Finally, I ask in what ways that more significant investment is yielding better progress? Are mobile devices privvy to better fabrication technologies than desktop chips? If not, how can they be faster? Or are they using better architectures with more R&D invested in them which desktop parts can't use? Is the progression of LPDDR memory happening more rapidly than (G)DDR because of more investment?

* There are obvious fields where it is, like display tech and cameras and sensors, plus various custom hardware accelerators. I'm talking about the CPU, GPU, RAM, and core architecture which need to be proven are progressing faster in the mobile space than desktop and server.