Sony's opened up the kimono a little bit to give us a peek at their plans for the next generation, or at least the timing. PlayStation Europe head Jim Ryan, speaking to Eurogamer TV at a press event for the PS Vita in London, had this to say about the next generation console race: “I think we would consider it undesirable to be significantly later than the competition [with the next PlayStation].”
So far, all we really know is that Nintendo is working hard to get the Wii U out at some unspecified time in 2012, though the guessing is that it will probably be later in the year rather than sooner. Rumors have been flying about Microsoft's next generation console, with some sources saying developers are already working on games for a 2013 launch and that Microsoft may show off the console in 2012. Rumors about Sony's next-generation efforts have been much scarcer, leading some to speculate that Sony is behind on its next-gen planning. Given Sony's well-publicized financial problems, that wouldn't be terribly surprising.
Ryan pointed out that "There's still a lot of unfinished business on PS3. If you look at PlayStation 2, now in excess of 150m units installed globally, a huge majority of that was done at price points of £120 or lower. [With PS3] we've only just hit £199 in the UK, so clearly there's a considerable untapped part of the market there.”
Sony would like to get more profits out of their current hardware before having to sell a new generation of hardware with much smaller or even negative profit margins. The only thing worse than that, though, would be leaving the field wide open for the competition to grab market share with next-gen hardware; Sony's still smarting from giving Microsoft a 1-year lead with the Xbox 360 before the PS3 came out.
Rumor has it that one first-party Sony studio has already ceased PS3 development and started work on PS4 software, and they are also involved with development of the PS4 graphics.
What do you think? Should Sony wait to get a new console out, even if it means giving Microsoft a lead?
