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EricHiggin on 08 May 2019
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Mr Puggsly said:
EricHiggin said:

The OG PS3 models were expensive partially due to housing prior gen hardware. The first big price drop came when PS decided to remove BC, which meant they could remove that hardware. I don't see why you would think the PS3 got so cheap if you believe the cost to manufacture was $750-$1000 initially. If PS were selling PS3's at cost by the end of the life cycle that would be quite surprising.

PS3 SS wasn't a large benefit because it's price wasn't reduced by enough to really matter. It also only had a year on the market before the PS4, which was only $399. PS3 SS was $299 and remained so throughout the PS4 launch period. PS even made it clear themselves in advance that the PS3 price wasn't going to drop anytime soon after the PS4 launch. Since it wasn't that large of a price gap, it's not crazy to think that PS wanted to move on from PS3 asap, so they probably kept the price high to push consumers to buy a PS4, not even taking into account they may still have been losing money on every PS3 sold. You would have to also think with all the dev complaints about PS3, they probably wanted to focus on PS4 instead, and that doesn't happen if PS3 keeps trucking along like the PS2 did.

To have a $199 PS4 SS by late 2020, and a $399-$499 PS5, makes a tonne of sense in terms of profits and goodwill. PS4 is so much cheaper to produce than the PS3 was and the market can't get enough of the PS4, much like the PS2. Unless they decide to try the same thing again, and keep the PS4 at $299 and drop PS5 at $399, but then PS is basically saying they only care to try and hold onto the 120 million PS4 customers they have by then. You can't really expand your market much if you remain a closed ecosystem and you don't create more affordable physical access to your devices, unless you want to offer a compatible handheld or hybrid or Pro level console along with the PS5.

I can see why you might think PS may go with this same type of approach and try to push consumers to PS5, but I don't really see the need or evidence for it at this point in time. With x86 BC, and a slower cross gen exclusive transition, the need to get PS5 off the ground like PS4 did isn't there this time around, with XB being so far behind and Switch being a different type of device.

Well getting back to my original point, I can see $249 for 8th gen specs if the 9th gen consoles launch for $399.

But what if the 9th gen consoles manage to hit $299 at launch? Maybe something like a X1X in GPU power but with a modern CPU, more/better RAM, etc. Essentially 9th gen games simply aiming for 1080p or higher when possible. If that happens, there won't be much interest in pushing 8th gen specs. Instead they may just try to clear out 8th gen inventory.

A $299 base PS5 would make things interesting. As long as the XB1S SKU's didn't get too much cheaper than PS4, then PS could potentially wait for the base PS5 price to drop to cater to that sector of the market. Depends if XB Lockhart launches and how cheap it is. Also whether or not the base PS5 was subsidized at launch and how long it would take to get it down to $249 and lower. If it's like PS4 and sits at the same launch price for years and years, then I would guess a PS4 SS would still be worthy as long as it launches by late 2019, which I would then plan on a $199 price by late 2020 to go along with the PS5 multi SKU launch. This way in say 3 or 4 years, those cheap PS4 SS buyers would have the opportunity to upgrade to a $249 or lower base PS5 Slim.