| Random_Matt said: Hopefully next month prices will be dropped, either a X1 or PS4 during January sales. But seriously, prices will not come down for ages, PS4 sells at the current price, what's the point of dropping it. |
Prices will drop fast. especially for the PS4. Typically MS will follow suit to at least stay competitive.
This is due to 2 factors. First the cost of production. Even at $300 chances are that Sony are making a profit on every console sold. When the dies shrink, the cost of production drops significantly too. Basically, shrinking to 14/16nm from the current 28nm, the amount of silicon used to make one chip would make 4 chips. This whole process can happen a lot quicker because the chips in both the X1 and PS4 are APUs.
The second factor is the effect of a larger install base. Say in the fall of 2016, each PS4 cost Sony $200 to make but they choose to sell it at $300 and make a $100 profit on each console sold and sell 18M consoles in the calendar year. They would have made more money from selling software and accessories if they dropped the price to $200 and sold 25M consoles in the year. Simply put, there is more to make from software sold to a larger install base than from just skimming profits off the top of overpriced hardware.
What's really interesting, is that with an install base of about 52M which I expect the ps4 to be at by the end of next year, Sony could even afford to sell the ps4 for $150 taking a loss of $50 on every console sold knowing fully well that their install base would more than make up for it.
