Sony PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim have Arrived
Sony Corp. has unveiled the two new versions of its smash hit PlayStation 4 gaming consoles Wednesday: the PS4 Pro which is designed to run virtual reality games and display high-quality video, and the PS4 Slim a slimmer and efficient version of the original PS4which was first released in November 2013 Bloomberg reported. Fans of the console have waited with eager expectation for the new video game machines.
The PS4 Pro costs $399 and will be available to gamers on sale Nov. 10 while the PS4 Slim will cost $299 -- $50 cheaper than the original PS4 today -- and will be on sale in most major markets on Sept. 15.
Bloomberg opined that for most consumer electronics devices, normally tech companies release updated versions after a three-year rest, which was similar to the cycle that the Xbox 360 and PS3 had before with their predecessors.
However, gaming consoles apparently have their own unique lifecycle. Seven years passed between the release of the PlayStation 3 and the PS4, Sony's latest new console. The devices showed Wednesday were not in the strictest sense a new generation of gaming consoles, a leap forward as tech pundits say.
The gaming press has often referred to the PS4 Pro as a kind of PS four-and-a-half similar to the incremental improvements that Apple's iPhone has had.
Bloomberg believes that the latest PS4 consoles mark a significant shift toward a strategy of more frequent updates in the hopes that people will cash out for a new console more than once or twice a decade.
"We're adjusting and accelerating our innovation cadence," said Andrew House, chief executive officer of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Bloomberg further added that Microsoft Corp., Sony's main rival in the gaming console business, seems to be going in the same direction. It's already selling a powered-up, slimmed-down version of the Xbox One, called the Xbox One S.
Sony is currently beating its main rival by a mile. It has sold 43.4 million PS4 consoles worldwide since its release, compared with 22.3 million for Xbox One, according to industry website VGChartz. Sony expects to sell about 20 million PS4s in the 12 months ending next March. Analysts expect that about one quarter of those will be PS4 Pro.
Microsoft announced at the E3 gaming conference in June plans for a bigger update, which it is cryptically calling "Project Scorpio". Details still remain vague -- Xbox seemed to rush the announcement to undercut similar news from Sony. But Microsoft says it will go on sale in late 2017, and will be more powerful than any other console on the market when it does according to Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg speculates that there are a several factors pushing this shift to more frequent updates. Game consoles are an oddity among gadgets. Not many other products can be marketed as must-have devices even after they're a half-dozen years out of date. Meanwhile, a range of other options for playing video games -- from high-powered personal computers to inexpensive smartphones -- are updated much more frequently. Older consoles risk seeming underpowered by comparison.
Bloomberg further said that in the past, after a console was out for several years, supply chain efficiency and the rapid progress of computer chip technology -- known as Moore's Law -- allowed Sony and Microsoft to chop the price of devices over time. But Sony and Microsoft can't rely on progress continuing at that pace, according to Damian Thong and Ansel Laudo of Macquarie. In particular, big advances in chip technology are increasingly expensive.
"The 'end of Moore's law' changes the business model to one where Sony must 'un-train' consumers from expecting large console price declines, and encourage consumers to accept paying up for more performance," the analysts wrote in a research note published last month.