Barkley said:
Eh, it depends what he means exactly hard to say. But I think an almost 6 year old console still selling very well when it hasn't had a price cut in almost 3 years is more impressive than a $299 console not being cut in price in 2 and a half years. Launching at a lower more appetising price certainly lowers the necessity for an early price cut. As for the "years after release" he's right that PlayStations are much less frontloaded than Nintendo consoles in general. To be fair he also never directly made in that bolded section any comparison with other systems anyway lol. |
I think you are appeasing his point a little too much honestly. If he had simply wrote that Sony home consoles generally sell better for longer periods of time than Nintendo home consoles have in the past, then there would be nothing to disagree with because that is a factual statement. If he said that the Playstation 4's performance was more impressive than the Switch's, I honestly wouldn't disagree either. But, that's not really what he said. Instead, he drew a parallel to how Nintendo games don't go down in price but continue to sell. The fact of the matter is that Playstation 4 has gone down in price two times already, whereas the Switch has not. Even the "Lite" model is arguably not a price cut considering how much of the experience is being taken out of it. Thus, the Switch is a much better comparison to Nintendo titles not going down in price than the Playstation 4 is, because that system has twice already.
He didn't make a direct comparison? He's in a thread about August 2019 Hardware numbers, where the only competitor to Playstation 4 in sales is the Switch, and comments on the other consoles later in his comment. He even specified home console in an attempt, probably, to dodge a comparison to the Switch.
As for your point about the Switch's lower price translating to less of a need for an early price cut, well I half agree. It is true that a $300 price point is naturally going to cause less of a barrier for entry than a $400 price point, but let's be honest, that's not the whole picture. Value also comes into play. The 3DS launched at $250 and while adjusted for inflation for 2017 does add $22 to that price tag, that's still much less than the Switch and Playstation 4. Yet, that console still had a tough barrier for entry because, in reality, consumers didn't mark it's value at that price. I think if anything an argument could be made that the Switch's barrier for entry, value wise, might have even been higher than the Playstation 4, because the Playstation 4's closest competitor launched at $100 more, whereas Switch had nothing to compare to and was even speculated at $250 before it's price was revealed. So while economically it's much easier to get your hands on a Switch at launch than a Playstation 4, the value for both consoles was probably pretty proportional.
Also, saying "Launching at a lower more appetising price certainly lowers the necessity for an early price cut" is a bit disingenuous honestly. It's not an "early" price cut at this point, I'm pretty sure it's the longest a high profile console has gone without a price cut in video game history.
Last edited by AngryLittleAlchemist - on 23 August 2019
