If you thought Sony designed to the PlayStation 4 Pro only to establish an edge over arch-rival Microsoft in the ever expanding gaming console market, you probably had it all wrong. At least that’s what Sony Interactive Entertainment’s President and Global CEO Andrew House is saying.
Sure, the company must have had some serious brainstorming to make best out of the head start it is having before Microsoft launches the Xbox Scorpio in 2017, but apparently, there was another important factor they had in mind: To prevent PlayStation gamers’ migration to the PC platform.
House revealed this in an interview with the Guardian shortly after the PlayStation meeting.
“I saw some data that really influenced me.It suggested that there’s a dip mid-console lifecycle where the players who want the very best graphical experience will start to migrate to PC because that’s obviously where it’s to be had,” House said.
“We wanted to keep those people within our ecosystem by giving them the very best and very highest [performance quality]. So the net result of those thoughts was PlayStation 4 Pro – and, by and large, a graphical approach to game improvement.”
The Sony CEO’s assessment is indeed spot on, but it is hardly a new development. In fact, this has been recurring for the past few generations of gaming consoles already.
At the beginning, most gaming consoles deliver a graphical experience at par with that delivered by PCs. However, over time, those same consoles tend to lag far behind as PC hardware improves at rapid successions.
Sony finally took this trend seriously and rolled out the next-generation PlayStation only three years after since the last offering. It is indeed a positive move, but how much it works out for the company remains a question that only time can answer.