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"PlayStation 4k"

Posted: 14 May, 2016

There's been a lot of news about the new Playstation 4k lately and at first I was a bit surprised and worried that Sony would do this, but thinking about it, it makes perfect sense.

I'm a big Playstation fan, the PS4's had a fair amount of use since it landed in our house (not as much as the WiiU, natch) so it's been a good investment (we got it for free). But I look at how many games I've actually bought and it's sod all. No where near enough for me to consider buying an updated version.  I'm probably not the only person that feels this way, so why the hell would Sony do it?

(I'm quite likely to put the money down for PS VR, but that's only for Rez and Jeff's new 'thing', which I've had a sneak peak at.)

I reckon they're extremely confident that they can sell a new console to the 'core'. (I used to think I was in that demographic, but clearly not anymore.) I also reckon that they'll heavily discount the original PS4 just to get it out to a wider audience. I also think they're hedging against MS making a strong push for the Universal App platform, that'll 'allegedly' run games on Windows 10 and XBone. All good - and they're probably right on all points - as long as the games don't stratify into two distinct levels, and I don't have to break my balls making more skus for the games that I make...

The bigger problem with this strategy is that it'll have to become the norm. Consoles compete against PCs, Phones and Tablets, whose technological march never stops. Consoles are static. There's no way a fixed spec can compete for four or five years against the amazing leaps phones and tablets are making. Kids are much more likely to grow up lusting after an iPad, so what else is there to do? You have to keep bumping the spec. Every 3 years a new Playstation? Ugh.

But what if MS do the same, and what if MS really do make some headway with the Win10 universal play? For me, this basically screams, "buy a gaming rig". Spec up a decent PC. Bask in the glow of the Steam sale. Play your games at higher res, with higher refresh rates and just hop on the PC upgrade cycle. I know, it's a ball ache. It's not as simple as a console. It's not as small, or as silent. But for the price of a new Playstation, I could buy a GTX970. Every few years I can bump up the CPU. I've been rocking 16gig of RAM for years, so no big expense there.

I've had consoles for years, but I started as a gamer on home computers and it looks increasingly likely that the most cost effective way for me to rock the high-end of games is to just stick with PC Gaming.

I'm looking forward to the PS4k, but unless the price is amazing, I think this is the point where I hop off the Playstation wagon. I'll save my money for Nintendo.

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