Your answer doesn't take into consideration one crucial fact: Google VR. Is there and it's runing on inferior hardware to the PS4.
The Wii was a success because it added an extra layer of inmersion to games thanks to its motion input method. It was succesful even if it was a generation behind the competition in terms of fidelity. It depends on Sony's execution and their ability to pick up the right type of software that don't compromise the experience even if they need to scale the ambition and visual complexity.
Even 6th generation era type of visuals are quite impresive through a VR headset.
Pretty much agreed here, the market at large doesn't really care that much about improved graphical capabilities.
If that was the case, most of the growth wouldn't have been on DS/Wii last gen and it wouldn't be on mobile right now.
the very concerning part of this market though is the incredible drop in value that the customer is willing to pay.
Console gaming (especially midtier) survived on premium price and mechanics to mitigate the entry cost (used games going toward new games etc).
It's probably a little foolish to expect the market to come back to pay a premium for anything but top tier like now.
If the price of entry isn't prohibitive and the experience is THAT much better they don't need top of the shelf visuals to get a viable market.
No one suggested NIntendo to pursue VR, not when the other 2 competitors are in that boat and there's even a 3rd one with Facebook.
They can do interesting things with the AR but they don't really care at this point and they currently lack the equipment for a good AR experience anyway.
I feel like AR has way more potential than VR considering the cost and everything but we'll see.
Nintendo has all the tools to achieve what you suggest, in fact that's what the mayority of core Nintendo fans want out of the company. The Wii U would be a good starting point for that kind of functionality.
Exactly.
The real dumb part on their end was how they initially presented the VC as some kind of new platform and didn't follow through.
I mean the way they showed it for then Revolution, it would be another platform similar to how Wii could play Wii games and GC games.
Instead of making a simple and relatively painless platform, they ended with this Frankenstein service where every single game gets a new emulator for some reason.
If the VC actually took off the way they presented it, we could actually have a new platform for publishers to release new games that way.
Who's to say there's no indie that couldn't succeed this way?
The software focus of the ps4 is not conducive to a crowd that would accept wii like concessions
the best they can hope that way is Kinect like success where the core crowd is actually apathetic at best about the new peripheral.
Or they can pull another Move...