| Birimbau said: This loss was due to Blu-ray driver that cost over $200 in 2006, but now we have much cheaper and faster BD drives costing less than $50, so Sony-MS can launch a $500-$600 console without any loss this time. |
The Cell CPU was also a very expensive component:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/18/playstation-3-costs-900-sez-merrill-lynch-mob/
I think a forum like this is not representative of the average gamer. Gamers on here are hardcore gamers and many of them would pay $500-600, millions of people wouldn't.
"The 17-nation euro economy will expand 0.1 percent in 2013, down from a May forecast of 1 percent, the commission said today. It cut the forecast for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to 0.8 percent from 1.7 percent."
I asked some of my friends who I consider casual console gamers (I.e., they only play sports games and COD) and they said they aren't buying a new NeXtbox or PS4 at launch, going to wait 2-3 years and just buying COD/sports games on 360/PS3, even if the graphics are way worse. I wouldn't be surprised if many people don't even want new consoles in 2013 and would rather purchase more games on their existing consoles than buy a next generation console without hundreds of games. There are a lot of games coming out in 2013 for PS3/360. This means that not only do gamers need to save up $300-500 for a new console with questionable # of "Killer apps" and launch games, but they'd need to save up $X to buy all the games they want to play in 2013 on their existing consoles. I bet if MS and Sony actually extended the life of 360 / PS3 by 3-4 years a lot of gamers wouldn't mind. For that reason, to entice people to upgrade from their existing consoles, the price of entry has to be reasonable or the technology has to be revolutionary in some way that's not just fancy graphics.
IMO, it makes a lot of sense to launch a low-end Sony SKU at $299-349 and have that version come with no mechanical hard drive whatsoever. Actually what Nintendo did on that front is very smart. A lot of us have external mechanical storage or an SSD laying around. Personally I don't want to pay for a 500GB-1TB hard drive at MS or Sony prices when I can buy it myself for much cheaper on Newegg or Amazon / or simply use existing storage I already have for back up. Having a $299-349 PS4 with only minimum flash storage (32GB) would be a great way to save costs.
Also, if PS4 is $499 and Nintendo drops the price of the Wii U to $249 by Fall 2013, Sony is going to be in a lot of trouble. You'd be able to buy 4-5 games with the Wii U for the price of a single PS4. That's how PS3 had one of the worst starts in the history of console gaming. That's not even bringing up the price of Xbox 720 which could end up $299-399 as that proved very successful for MS this round. If Sony ends up with the most expensive console again, they will fail most likely. The "superior" hardware in PS3 like the Cell did little to make it better than Xbox 360 graphically for most games.
Even if hypothetically Sony has 50% more powerful hardware than Xbox 720, developers won't take advantage of this for 2-3 years and most gamers would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between Xbox 720 and PS4 graphics, but if PS4 costs a lot more, they wouldn't understand where the price premium is coming from because "untapped potential" is not a selling point when one has to pay $100 more in hopes it would be tapped at some point.
