Is $500 too much?

[Chark]

KHlover said:

B1: Total smartphone sales in 2011 were 491 Million units (Source Source of the source), so no the majority definately prefers smartphones and tablets (At least 119 Mil sales in 2012).

B2: Remember the PS3 launch? Yeah...

The rest of your post sounds about right, but making the consoles more expensive to have a room for price cuts won't be working so well. From what we know (at least about the PS4) the costs to build it still exceed $500, the high ground would be  ridiculously high. Initial sales would be devastating. Also, since the compatition is already priced ridiculously low in comparison  (A new 8GB WiiU costs me 200€ in Germany) a price cut from "ridiculously high" to "still pretty high" won't have quite that much of an impact.

-> No choice but to subsidize the Next-Gen consoles, the mass market won't allow Sony (and Microsoft) to play it safe.

Careful now, I think you are getting ahead of yourself. No doubt smartphones sales are enormous, why bother telling me? I never said majority, I said decent amount.

The PS3 launch was not nearly as bad as some seem to remember. It sold 83k in Japan first day, 139k in the US with shipping issues, and 516k in Europe for a total of 738k. It went on to sell over 9 million by the end of 2007. Granted it had a price cut...which is kind of the point of my breakdown. It sold 3.8 million before that price cut in July.

The PS3 was also $500/$600 back in 2006. A console would have to launch at $550/$650 or more actually to compare. If the Xbox 3 is $500 or $300 with subscription it is around the same price as the 360 was at $400/$500 considering inflation. A lot of people are pinning PS4 at $400, not sure if there is a premium version or not. Who knows, maybe a subscription. If MS is going that route they are going to try selling their console at a substaintial initial loss, but end up getting an extra $40 (assuming a $15 a month sub) for those launch consoles. Meaning they actually lose less per console on the $300 one in the long run.

Anyway, things don't get cheaper due to inflation but these consoles have years ahead of them and cost reductions to have. The only console that is going to be cheaper than its predecessor will be the PS4, but really that's only reducing itself down to a better price point.

I find all the people who find these to be too expensive just want it to be cheaper because they want to buy it, so of course they are going to say it is too much, but this is the kind of price tag that comes with modern hardware.