There will be no PS4 - analyst
According to one industry watcher, Ken Kutaragi's effective demotion signals that PlayStation 3 will be Sony's last console
That's certainly quite a claim. Yuta Sakurai, an analyst at Nomura believes that in dropping an engineer like Kutaragi from day-to-day management of PlayStation and the promotion of Kaz Hirai and David Reeves is a sign that Sony is shifting its focus from hardware to software.
"The appointment of Hirai could be the start of a shift from hardware to software," said Yuta Sakurai told The Financial Times. "I cannot now imagine a PlayStation 4."
Sakurai argues that Sony may see a brighter and more profitable future in the gaming industry as a publisher of software rather than hardware. The company is losing vast amounts of money on PlayStation 3 and is faced with a rival in Microsoft that could in theory afford to sell Xbox 360 for $50 and make a similar loss on hardware as PS3.
KBC analyst Hiroshi Kamide believes that Kaz Hirai's new role will be to "smooth over" relationship with third party publishers, as Kutaragi's failure to do so left PlayStation 3 without exclusives such as Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed.
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Sony has responded to the speculation by the Japanese analysts.
"Following the launch of the PlayStation 3 just a few weeks ago," US spokesman Dave Karraker told Gamespot. "And witnessing the huge consumer demand for the product, I think it would be rather short-sighted for anyone to predict there might not be a next generation of PlayStation product."
However the issue is not about Sony's intent, but whether it can continue to fight toe-to-toe with Microsoft to own your living room. The end of the line for PlayStation is quite a claim, but you only need look at Sega for an example of a company leaving the losses of being a hardware company behind in favour of profitability as a software publisher.
While the Xbox 360 is a great machine, do we really want a hardware monopoly in high-end consoles?
