This can be achieved thanks to the completely different approach to PS4’s architecture, where Sony can leverage third-party tech investments as opposed to taking on all the cost themselves.
The Cell chip developed for PS3 proved a major drain on Sony finances and it took a long time before the PlayStation division could finally break-even and start profiting.
”Unlike PS3, we are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of PS4,” Sony chief financial officer Masaru Kato told Eurogamer. ”At the time we developed PS3, we made a lot of in-house investments to develop the chip, the Cell chip. Development of the chip saw the silicon processing and all the facilities invested by us ourselves.”
”But this time, yes we have a team working on chip development, but we already have existing technology to incorporate and also product investment and all the facilities will now be invested by our partners, other foundries, so we don’t have to make all the investment in-house.”
Practically all development studios commenting on the PS4 when it was officially announced by Sony praised the very PC-like nature of the new platform, which would make it far more accessible and less of a trial and error gambit that PS3 and the Cell chip led to. It’ll also make multi-platform development a ton easier.
A lot of hopes are pinned on PlayStation 4 over at Sony, so let’s hope profit comes much sooner.
Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, was recently quizzed on whether they ever considered an always-on requirement with their next-gen console, to which he replied: ”Did we consider it? No, we didn’t consider it.”
”The main reason being that many countries don’t have robust internet connections. It makes sense for people to have internet connections to play online games, but for offline games there are many countries that we saw do not really have robust internet.” There was initial fear that Sony and Microsoft would adopt this ‘new menace’ in their designs.
