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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Should consoles cost $500+ ?

Farsala on 26 June 2016

I personally think $500 consoles and $250 Handhelds are a waste of money.

But in terms of building hype, I think the Neo and Scorpio are worth it for Sony and MS in the long run. The home console industry is in need of another reinvigoration. Neo and Scorpio will push sales of SW on the cheaper SKUs when people see how great games look on the Neo and Scorpio. The reason being of course is because 60m people already own those consoles that play the same games, they just won't look as good.



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d21lewis on 26 June 2016

I enjoyed gaming as a kid, even though I could only afford about two games a year back then. I don't know. I just feel like gaming is a kid's hobby that kids can't really afford anymore. We took it from them because gaming grew when we grew.

It's kind of like comic books. They were always kind of mature but still not threatening. The fans got older and so the stories got darker. Kids can enjoy it but it's not really for them anymore.

I'm grown, I can afford it, and appreciate the presentation these days but maybe console gaming (despite people saying they're weak) is a little too advanced these days. Just thinking out loud.



Snoopy on 26 June 2016
d21lewis said:
I enjoyed gaming as a kid, even though I could only afford about two games a year back then. I don't know. I just feel like gaming is a kid's hobby that kids can't really afford anymore. We took it from them because gaming grew when we grew.

It's kind of like comic books. They were always kind of mature but still not threatening. The fans got older and so the stories got darker. Kids can enjoy it but it's not really for them anymore.

I'm grown, I can afford it, and appreciate the presentation these days but maybe console gaming (despite people saying they're weak) is a little too advanced these days. Just thinking out loud.

Too bad your opinion is invalid for me. I was making about 50,000 dollars a year in stocks when I was a kid. Now, I am a millionaire. Life is so easy when you're as cool as me.



d21lewis on 26 June 2016
Snoopy said:
d21lewis said:
I enjoyed gaming as a kid, even though I could only afford about two games a year back then. I don't know. I just feel like gaming is a kid's hobby that kids can't really afford anymore. We took it from them because gaming grew when we grew.

It's kind of like comic books. They were always kind of mature but still not threatening. The fans got older and so the stories got darker. Kids can enjoy it but it's not really for them anymore.

I'm grown, I can afford it, and appreciate the presentation these days but maybe console gaming (despite people saying they're weak) is a little too advanced these days. Just thinking out loud.

Too bad your opinion is invalid for me. I was making about 50,000 dollars a year in stocks when I was a kid. Now, I am a millionaire. Life is so easy when you're as cool as me.

..... Can you loan me five bucks until payday? I swear I won't spend it on beer.

😸



sergiodaly on 26 June 2016

I don't mind. If the hardware is that good i will pay for it, but that's me and i get it that not all gamers are like me and probably do it on a budget. That's why different skus were invented. Give me a more powerful console with lower loading times i will get that instead of the cheaper one.

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Mummelmann on 27 June 2016
greenmedic88 said:
In short, the answer lies in the marketing.

You can buy a high end smartphone for $399, with the bare minimum storage (non expandable). The manufacturer is happy to sell the same phone with more internal storage at an inflated price. Apple adds $200 to the price to "upgrade" from 16GB of barely usable storage to 128GB. This does not change the bare minimum SKU, it simply allows the manufacturer and retailers who sell the device to say the phone costs $399.

During the 7th generation, both MS and SCE attempted a similar SKU structuring by the third hardware refresh, effectively stripping the specs (in this case, the HDD) in the interest of selling a bare minimum MSRP SKU. It's arguable that both companies did the same thing with the initial SKUs with the Xbox 360 Core and PS3 20GB, both of which were limited in use due to the cost cut packages in the interest of providing those lower tier entry priced SKUs.

What's interesting about the 8th gen is that only Nintendo offered a stripped down SKU initially, whereas MS tethered Kinect to the XBO with a single $500 SKU. SCE offered a single $400 SKU and the rest is history.

You can sell a $500 console; there is a market for one, provided what the consumer is getting for that price is perceived to provide a cost/yield benefit, typically in the form of specs which should be directly tied to real world performance. However, the market for $500 consoles is much smaller than the market for $400 consoles, meaning the manufacturer would be wiser in offering that $400 option, without hobbling the performance.

I'm more of the notion that manufacturers simply maintain the same price while taking advantage of current advances in processing and memory capabilities, rather than continuing to manufacture the same dated ICs using cheaper manufacturing processes and passing a portion of the savings on to the consumer.

It makes less sense financially to sell that same updated hardware at a significantly higher price as this automatically shrinks the potential consumer base, unless the manufacturer is deliberately attempting to sell a smaller niche product, typically by marketing it as a "premium" product.

Great post, I agree with this. I remember always fighting back when people use the tired, old argument that 199$ is "mass market price", when the truth is that anything is mass market price with the right marketing, and smartphones have showed this in earnest in the past decade or so. The modern, highly convenience driven market, craves products that can be tailored and have broad area of use and features, most of all, they are also a lot more sensitive on format and direction rather than actual, sheer technical content and prowess (even relative to price).



Miyamotoo on 27 June 2016

No, I don't think consoles need to cost more than $300, but that's just me.



DamnTastic on 27 June 2016

over 500$? I think we've been over this. Complete madness

But I don't think sony really cares about it with neo. It's for people with too much money or ppl who really want it.



AlfredoTurkey on 27 June 2016

They should be $299.99 or less. When I was growing up, they weren't even that much.



Johnw1104 on 27 June 2016
OdinHades said:
Johnw1104 said:
People are just too short sighted. The difference between a good console and a great one is about the cost of two to four games, but people would rather settle for the crappy piece of hardware that they're hoping to get years of use out of because it's a tad cheaper.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am lol, we've just had the weakest generation of hardware yet.

Well, there are also people for which a difference in power doesn't make a difference at all. I personally couldn't care less if games run in 4K or 1080p, if they run in 60 fps or 30 fps, if they have AA or tesselation or whatever. I simply do not care. On top of that there are also people who never buy more than two to four games for their system so it does make a real big difference for them. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer, some just get a console for FIFA or whatever. It happens. And there are also people who simply cannot afford a console for 500+ $. Especially children and teenager. When I was a little kid, I only git two games per year. One for my birthday, one at christmas, nothing more. My parents bought the console itself (NES) for me and my brothers together, we had to share it. In that kind of situation, every dollar counts.

Sure, if you live alone, have a decent job and no children, you don't care too much about money and just want a console as good as it gets. But in that case, I'd say just go for a beefy PC. Scorpio and Neo should be an ok solution for people somewhere in between. But at the end of the day, I think it's quite important that consoles are somewhat cheap.

There will always be people for whom the price model doesn't work... as it stands there's undoubtedly plenty who feel $400 is too much. Exactly how strong the hardware needs to be varies across each generation as well.

For this past one, though, the clear reasonable benchmark to meet was reliable 1080p at 60 frames, and no console achieved that. This was the weakest gen we've yet had. That doesn't necessarily bother everyone (Wii U has been my favorite so far, for instance, and it's the weakest), but if I'm going to spend $400 for a console that can't handle what is to be reasonably expected or, say, $500-$550 to hit that benchmark, I'd much prefer the latter. 

Really, I'd like to see how many games the console owners buy on average per console, as that would indicate just how much money they had to throw around. If it's only a few then they probably can't raise the price much, but if it's 10+ then I don't think the extra $100 would be unreasonable. People would never see it that way, though.

When you consider how inexpensive the hardware and software is when adjusted for inflation compared to past years, it's no real surprise that the hardware isn't very impressive these days. I wouldn't mind catching up just a tad.