Will next gen be affordable and/or worth it?

With devs, especially Epic Game, claiming it's time for new consoles, how can Microsoft and Sony make significantly more powerful consoles than both the 360 and PS3 yet make it affordable (for customers) and profitable for them (Sony and MS)?

Look at Battlefield 3, that was running on three 590 GTX Nvidia graphic cards. One of them alone cost around 400 euro. How can Sony and MS develop a console that run games at 60FPS and 1080p resolutions like a high end PC, without costing around 800 euro? Seriously?

Also, with some devs complaining that this gen is so expensive, (a triple A game costs around $25 million to make, excluding marketing). Imagine how expensive next gen will be! Just look at Epic's Samaritan, it would probably cost twice as much to get a game to run and look that good. Most triple A games need to sell at the very least 2 million copies to make any profit, so how many copies will they need to shift next gen to make a profit?

I think that if they will start to make it to expensive less people will buy it forcing them to lower the price again. But yea the future is not clear right now.

I think after Sony basically tanked with the Playstation 3 at $599, all three companies are now smart enough to wait until they can develop a console, make it affordable, and still earn a profit.

Are you sure the Battlefield 3 trailers were running on 3 GTX 590's? Cause they just released them a few weeks ago and theres no way that DICE would release a game that required that high of a configuration to run it at full settings. I know that the Unreal Engine 3 demo was running on 3 GTX 580s.

This is why I believe Sony and MS are delaying their consoles. They're waiting for the tech to be more affordable before dishing it out to the customers.

There's no way in hell I'm buying a $700 video game console.

I'm guessing a lot of developers are going to be out of the job since the next-gen games are going to be expensive to make.

And since they're going to be expensive, people are going to take less risks and make generic fraghead-type games that appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I hope that's not the case.

DukemNukem43 wrote:

There's no way in hell I'm buying a $700 video game console.

That won't happen. Microsoft and Sony both know how much of a monumental fuck up the PS3 launch price was and I'm sure we wont go through that again

Funnily enough, the PS3 sold a shitload despite it's lack of games and it's monumental price.

Sonji wrote:

Funnily enough, the PS3 sold a shitload despite it's lack of games and it's monumental price.

Mainly because of its huge fanbase the ps2 had.

This is where we need to stop and ask ourselves, are graphics that important?
I mean, really the only improvement there's been from one generation to the next recently is graphical quality. Is it worth making whole new systems just to enhance the graphics?
I think not. The current systems can go on for much longer I'm sure.

I doubt new consoles will come out in the next 2 years. This is why I like PC gaming. Way more power. The initial price is steep, but after that it is relatively cheap to upgrade, depending on what you get.

The PS3 was overpriced because Blu-ray was a new format and the Cell Processor initially costed Sony a shit ton of money to mass produce.

We can all assume that the PS4 will be using the same format (with a faster BD drive) and will be using an updated version of the Cell Processor. Meaning that the price probably won't be 599 dollars. My expected price range for next gen consoles would be at most 400 dollars.

Alanski wrote:

The PS3 was overpriced because Blu-ray was a new format and the Cell Processor initially costed Sony a shit ton of money to mass produce.

We can all assume that the PS4 will be using the same format (with a faster BD drive) and will be using an updated version of the Cell Processor. Meaning that the price probably won't be 599 dollars. My expected price range for next gen consoles would be at most 400 dollars.

and a different GPU so that Devs can develop for it much easier.

Sonji wrote:

Funnily enough, the PS3 sold a shitload despite it's lack of games and it's monumental price.

Relative to what the PS2 had going and what the Wii was doing, PS3 had a really shaky launch. I forget what the launch price in North America was, but here in Australia (I shit you not, google it if you want) it was $1000. No one in their right mind bought a gaming console for $1000 in this country.
There is no way that will happen again