Can Sony afford to make PS5 more expensive than PS4 launch price?

[Bofferbrauer2]

Pemalite said:

 

Errorist76 said:

Be assured Sony has very close ties to AMD (they even developed some Vega features together)...

That is a bold claim. Now prove it.

That I would love to see, too

dx11332sega said:

Xbox One X and PS4 Pro have been battling positions back and forth in january and February

Overall I don't think it really matters. The Playstation 4 Pro hasn't exactly been smashing the base Playstation 4 in terms of sales rate.

I expect the sales of the Pro to go up while the ones of the base model to go down, as the Pro is slowly becoming the better model in terms of value for money, plus an increasing number of those who upgrade from the base to the Pro model. So while it's still not going to beat base PS4 sales it should come closer and closer over time.

Errorist76 said:

You also forget, that the Pro‘s GPU is indeed more advanced, as it even uses Vega features the X1X is lacking. Optimisation can do a lot if developers take their time.

...Like...?

Basically everything. Just check what Nintendo can manage to get out of their hardware even though in raw power it's massively lagging behind since the Wii. This doesn't only count for graphics directly, but also other things like texture compression and anything hanging on recurring algorithms.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Thus the GPU part needs at least 10-12 TFlops of raw calculating power to stand out visually over the Pro, and that doesn't come cheap.

Why does it need it? And how does it relate to how expensive it is?

Less than that and it won't have enough to differentiate itself from the PS4 Pro or the XOX. Even in 7nm that will need a pretty big chip, and the bigger the chip, the more expensive it gets, nearly exponentially so in fact.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Graphic cards in that power range cost more than an entire console right now, and even by 2020 it doesn't look like their price will be under 200$ by then.

Yeah. GPU's right now aren't representative of actual costs though.
DRAM prices have artificially inflated prices... And then they have additional pressure from bitcoin snapping up GPU's left, right and center.
I suggest you don't take the current price dynamics as something representative of chip costs.

While it's not representative of the actual costs, it shows the trends on how much it will cost in the end.

DRAM is not artificially inflated, the prices are high because there's simply not enough production capacity worldwide for those chips. Hopefully this will change next year when some fabs come online, but it might still not be enough if demand keeps growing like it does right now.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Add to this the need for more RAM and a stronger CPU plus the price of all the rest of the hardware and I hardly see how a price of 399$ can be achieved without resorting to an unhealthy heavy amount of subventionning

Good thing higher density RAM released this year... And stronger CPU's have been around for the good part of a decade.

@bolded: Did you mean DDR5 with that? If yes, you got something mixed up. DDR5 is getting specified this year. Until commercial release it will take a couple more years, probably 2021 or 2022 if it takes about as long as it took for DDR3 and DDR4.

But a PS4 will most probably use GDDR, not simple DDR Memory, based on DDR4. Such a memory is sill not out, though a GDDR6 is probably coming any time now and will probably be used in a PS5.

About the CPU: Yes, from Intel, who doesn't produce custom designs or better than entry-level GPUs. Plus they tend to be pricey, making then unavailable for consoles. AMD only now could catch up again with Ryzen, and will probably ask more from any chip based upon this than on Jaguar a) because it's a bigger chip at same core number and b) because AMD doesn't need the console money that badly anymore, giving them a better negotiation position. All in all, the main APU chip will get bigger compared to the one in the PS4 at launch and thus more expensive, and the RAM will most probably still be relatively expensive and comparatively certainly more as it did for the PS4 during it's launch. Which means either higher price or strong subventionning.

Errorist76 said:

I game on PC, thank you. Problem is PCs are also held back by those weak CPUs. The Jaguar was already outdated at release 5 years ago.

My 7 year old i5 is faster than the CPU in the X1X! That’s why it’s still sufficient for 99% of games.

My 10 year old PC's Core 2 processor is faster than what's in the Xbox One X. So not really saying much. :P

In singlecore, sure. But would that still be true in multicore with it's 8 processor cores? Unless it's a core 2 quad, I doubt it. Jaguar is weak, but not that weak.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 04 March 2018