Obviously prompted by the recent price increases, but really just a compounding of a number of factors.
Everyone here knows the challenges that development has seen this generation. We're 5 years in and compared to the last couple generations we have much less to show for it in terms of games. Less quantity, less quality - especially in the AAA space. Devs are struggling with both costs and the length of development cycles. As an example, Naughty Dog released four games in the PS3 gen, they've yet to release one this gen. The games that do come out often have optimization issues that sometimes never get fixed.
Now we're talking about new consoles in 2027/28 and it just doesn't seem reasonable. This gen will be the first to see prices increase instead of drop and if we were to get the usual power jump the new consoles are going to be pushing $1,000 USD. I just can't see that working for the mass market, especially when most people are still just using these things to play CoD/FIFA/Fortnite.
It seems like a good time to step back and either extend this generation, or have something of a sidegrade generation. Nintendo did this years ago with the Wii and while they have their own issues, they've managed to do well for themselves and have had a mostly steady supply of software with reasonable scope that sees both commercial and critical success.
Microsoft is pushing the Xbox anywhere and Sony is allegedly trying to make a play back into the handheld space. It seems like the right time to forego the "next generation" for now and let PS5/XSX enjoy a few extra years on the market. PS5 and XSX are still decent pieces of hardware and we're already seeing diminishing returns on tech - letting them continue to 2030 or so doesn't seem like the worst thing.
Everyone here knows the challenges that development has seen this generation. We're 5 years in and compared to the last couple generations we have much less to show for it in terms of games. Less quantity, less quality - especially in the AAA space. Devs are struggling with both costs and the length of development cycles. As an example, Naughty Dog released four games in the PS3 gen, they've yet to release one this gen. The games that do come out often have optimization issues that sometimes never get fixed.
Now we're talking about new consoles in 2027/28 and it just doesn't seem reasonable. This gen will be the first to see prices increase instead of drop and if we were to get the usual power jump the new consoles are going to be pushing $1,000 USD. I just can't see that working for the mass market, especially when most people are still just using these things to play CoD/FIFA/Fortnite.
It seems like a good time to step back and either extend this generation, or have something of a sidegrade generation. Nintendo did this years ago with the Wii and while they have their own issues, they've managed to do well for themselves and have had a mostly steady supply of software with reasonable scope that sees both commercial and critical success.
Microsoft is pushing the Xbox anywhere and Sony is allegedly trying to make a play back into the handheld space. It seems like the right time to forego the "next generation" for now and let PS5/XSX enjoy a few extra years on the market. PS5 and XSX are still decent pieces of hardware and we're already seeing diminishing returns on tech - letting them continue to 2030 or so doesn't seem like the worst thing.
