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ptofhearts said:
RaptorChrist said:

Until reading through this thread, I had no idea that people would look at $499 as such a high price point. For me, as a consumer, I want to see Sony release the PS5 with super powerful hardware that costs more than what the average consumer would be willing to pay.

Money is relative to the person spending it, and for some people, $499 is steep. Me ten years ago would have had concerns over the price, back during a time when the price of something played a much bigger role in my ability to buy it. Today, however, at the end of the month, once all the bills are paid, my wife and I usually have upwards of $1000 leftover, maybe more.

But those situations are always changing, and maybe ten years from now I'll be broke again, so it all depends on one's situation.

To put it in perspective: I am from Brazil and here, when the PS4 was released, it cost us around U$1000 to buy one officially, which is very, very steep, specially considering our minimal monthly wage at the the time would be around U$229. I bought mine only on February of last year, and I was fortunate enough to be able to afford one at it's U$399 price tag (since the price had been cut by then), which is still steep, as most people here still can't afford it.

A console at U$499 will have a surreal price here in Brazil, and I believe Sony would lose a lot of ground. Besides, there are other things to consider, like is it going to be advantageous for developers to invest more money to develop a high end game to sell it on a console that could potentially have a much smaller userbase, specially at launch?

Yikes. I guess ideally, in my opinion, a hardware generation would start out on the more high-tech side of the spectrum and only get cheaper with time, as once Sony releases the PS5, the specs are locked in, and all future development on that platform must be playable at those standards.

The issue with that is that in general, whichever console tends to sell the best during it's first year has a good chance of snowballing ahead for the rest of the generation. As a result, it would be in Sony's best interests to focus on having the system launch at an affordable price for everyone, despite personally wishing they would cater a bit more towards the tech enthusiasts.

Edit: Out of curiosity, do you sort of prefer Sony waiting to release the PS5 for as long as possible so as to prolong the value of the current generation? I'm not sure what my opinion is on the topic of short or long generations. I like the things I buy having value for a long time, but I also like getting new things, so that's a tough call.

Last edited by RaptorChrist - on 18 April 2019