On February 20th, Sony announced the PS4 and it's currently scheduled for a Holiday 2013 release. People were excited up to the event but afterwards, they were left with an empty feeling. This is mainly because Sony didn't show the console itself, but showed the controller and a few demos. Will the PS4 live up to expectations? Not at first. The 8th Generation will be very similar to the 7th Generation with a few minor differences.
In the 7th Generation of gaming, the Wii outsold the Xbox 360 and PS4 by a landslide. In the 8th Generation of gaming, I strongly believe the Wii U and Xbox 720 will eventually be near the top while PS4 will be 3rd just like the PS3 was. If you're a serious gamer, you'll know that graphics aren't everything. It's all about the gameplay. You can have a beautiful and photorealistic game but the gameplay will be absolute garbage. With the original Wii, Nintendo proved that you can have inferior graphics and timeless gameplay.
Let's start off by looking at the PS4 and what we know about it. 8GB of GDDR5 RAM doesn't come cheap. There isn't backwards compatibility disc-wise, but you'll be able to stream PS1, PS2 and PS3 games via the internet which means buying the games all over again. According to numerous communities on Google+, the machine is essentially a Facebook Box with UStream capabilities. This is very nice to some gamers, but Sony said themselves that there will be more Gameplay videos all over the internet. Do you know what this means? Everyone that has a PS4 will just play games to make videos. Youtube will become saturated with them and nobody will want to view these videos because everyone makes videos themselves! Sony has dug themselves into another pit with this feature.
The main selling point of the 7-year-old PS3 was the Cell Processor which is one of Sony's biggest mistakes of all time. They're still selling the PS3 at a loss which is a big issue. Besides sales, the PS4 is clearly taking the power route. Most Gaming Computers have 16GB of DDR3 RAM and 4GB of GDDR5 RAM. With the PS4 having a whopping 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, don't ever expect the price to come under $500 within the first year of launch. Sony will sell the PS4 at a small loss and make a small profit after a game or 2 is purchased.
On the other hand, The Xbox 720 will clearly offer a richer gaming experience. Microsoft's upcoming system is said to have a controller very similar to Nintendo's Wii U Gamepad. This means that the Xbox 720 will compete with the Wii U head-to-head and the PS4 will come in at third place. Does this mean the Xbox 720 or Wii U will be in first place? Not at all. Valve is expected to release the Steambox this year which will compete against the Xbox 720 and PS4 but not the Wii U. Why won't it compete with the Wii U? The reason is because Nintendo takes a different approach. The PS4 and Xbox 720 will take the power route and try to run photo-realistic games that are also available on the PC and Steam. Nintendo tries to maintain a rich gaming experience and stand out from the competition with Flagship titles like Mario, Zelda, Yoshi, Metroid, etc.
In reality, Steambox and the Wii U could possibly be the winners of the 8th Generation of gaming, This is because Steam has more online players than Xbox Live and PSN. Also, the Wii U will be the most affordable choice out of the systems. The Wii U is the first entry into the 8th Generation and is struggling at the moment. Don't ever think the Wii U will fail because of the lack of software in it's first year. It has a long life ahead of it.
It's very possible that the PS4 could triumph the Steambox, Xbox 720 and Wii U in this 8th Generation of consoles, but what do you think? It's very possible that Sony will actually sell the PS4 at a major loss to gain a head start in the 8th Generation. If the PS4 is under $300 at launch, expect the system to outsell every other piece of technology out there. This is possible, yet unlikely. Anyways, which system will win the 8th Generation? Nobody knows. Only time will tell.
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