@welshbloke, One of my main reasons for thinking that ps3 will be kept for many years is simply money related: it doesn't make sense to me that you spend so much money in research and lose in production just to then cancel it out without leaving it to become a standard and become profitable... but today I remembered a line of thinking I used to had that I think will apply more as time goes on:
I didn't have to buy a new tv to watch Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. It didnt' matter the fact that they were high value, expensive productions with tons of special effects: it was just about the content, not the medium over which it's being transmitted. I believe this is an ideal. One for which games are trying too. Games have been much more tied into the technology because of their different nature, but I believe with time, someday this will tend to slow down. I believe it's slowed down in the past too: up to now every couple of years the growth was huuuge, from big blocky pixels to animations, from animations to rough 3d, from rough 3d where you could count the polygons to high poly meshes with bumps ... I and i believe the slowdown continues. We won't go 4d, and while it will be superb when realistic materials are simulated, and true raytracing-like light propagation happens, these things are more on teh lines of refining, not as much revolutionizing the game world. It was a big move from 2d side view to 3rd person view... but where can you go further from there except refining. Do I think we're done evolving technology? Not by far. One of my most anticipated features, realistic lightcasting & bouncing is yet just a ghost of what it will be... BUT there is a LOT that can be done with what we have already. Companies are starting to realize more and more that even with simple basic hardwares you can do great games (casual games, low requirements for hugely successful games like Sims, World of Warcraft...) that will bring in revenue, and that even non cutting edge devices like the Wii can bring in money with the righ tapproach and money. I believe there will be little incentive for the masses to quickly move on to the next generation. Profitability is important, and for that exploiting your hardware is important. And this hardware is quite powerful: we're reaching points where games are starting to stream off discs with no 'levels'. Now the art creation departments need time to catch up. Most importantly I believe now it will take quite a couple of years for the montion capture technology & infrastructure to become truly cheap and widespread in the industry: as that happens there's less need for next-next graphics because it's easier to create content faster. Sure, there will always be graphics nuts such as myself... but the differences will be too small to justify mass movement to another platform anytime soon IMO.
Obviously when expecting a 8+ year lifecycle for ps3 I'm not saying ps4 will be launched in 2015, it will, I believe, coexist with ps3 much earlier, but my point is that as time moves on hardware should become more stable and consumers I believe will end up paying less and less for hardware and increasingly only for content. So should the ps4 be released sooner I would still expect the ps3 to get support, actually even more than the ps2 is getting now because if my theory about this ideal path with the movie example should be true then the games will come out on both platforms, except one being the more budget experience one the higher quality one, but with less titles simply dropped from the lower platform like they are now because the difference might not be in "the ps3 can't do this game" like it is with some ps2 games now, just "on ps3 there will be less polygons & details and we won't have skin shaders & light bouncing".
3
One of my main reasons for thinking that ps3 will be kept for many years is simply money related: it doesn't make sense to me that you spend so much money in research and lose in production just to then cancel it out without leaving it to become a standard and become profitable... but today I remembered a line of thinking I used to had that I think will apply more as time goes on:
I didn't have to buy a new tv to watch Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. It didnt' matter the fact that they were high value, expensive productions with tons of special effects: it was just about the content, not the medium over which it's being transmitted. I believe this is an ideal. One for which games are trying too. Games have been much more tied into the technology because of their different nature, but I believe with time, someday this will tend to slow down. I believe it's slowed down in the past too: up to now every couple of years the growth was huuuge, from big blocky pixels to animations, from animations to rough 3d, from rough 3d where you could count the polygons to high poly meshes with bumps ... I and i believe the slowdown continues. We won't go 4d, and while it will be superb when realistic materials are simulated, and true raytracing-like light propagation happens, these things are more on teh lines of refining, not as much revolutionizing the game world. It was a big move from 2d side view to 3rd person view... but where can you go further from there except refining. Do I think we're done evolving technology? Not by far. One of my most anticipated features, realistic lightcasting & bouncing is yet just a ghost of what it will be... BUT there is a LOT that can be done with what we have already. Companies are starting to realize more and more that even with simple basic hardwares you can do great games (casual games, low requirements for hugely successful games like Sims, World of Warcraft...) that will bring in revenue, and that even non cutting edge devices like the Wii can bring in money with the righ tapproach and money. I believe there will be little incentive for the masses to quickly move on to the next generation. Profitability is important, and for that exploiting your hardware is important. And this hardware is quite powerful: we're reaching points where games are starting to stream off discs with no 'levels'. Now the art creation departments need time to catch up. Most importantly I believe now it will take quite a couple of years for the montion capture technology & infrastructure to become truly cheap and widespread in the industry: as that happens there's less need for next-next graphics because it's easier to create content faster. Sure, there will always be graphics nuts such as myself... but the differences will be too small to justify mass movement to another platform anytime soon IMO.
Obviously when expecting a 8+ year lifecycle for ps3 I'm not saying ps4 will be launched in 2015, it will, I believe, coexist with ps3 much earlier, but my point is that as time moves on hardware should become more stable and consumers I believe will end up paying less and less for hardware and increasingly only for content. So should the ps4 be released sooner I would still expect the ps3 to get support, actually even more than the ps2 is getting now because if my theory about this ideal path with the movie example should be true then the games will come out on both platforms, except one being the more budget experience one the higher quality one, but with less titles simply dropped from the lower platform like they are now because the difference might not be in "the ps3 can't do this game" like it is with some ps2 games now, just "on ps3 there will be less polygons & details and we won't have skin shaders & light bouncing".