PS5 or Xbox Scarlet will probably price around 499 to 549 USD

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Shadow1980 said:

$550 might be pushing it, but $500 is a more reasonable high end. Adjusted for inflation, the PS4's $400 launch price is now at $440, and will probably be worth around $450 by Nov. 2020 assuming inflation stays about the same. A price only 11% higher than that is something I think early adopters can deal with so long as the specs justify the price.

I had a thread about this subject back in April, and I posted this chart, showing what a $450 PS5 and $500 Scarlet would likely look like on a price chart late next year:

That would put a $500 next-gen console about on par with the long-term average launch price of PlayStation and Xbox systems, only a bit above the PS2, PS4, and PS4 Pro, a bit less than the 20GB 360, and considerably less than the PS3.

I hear a lot of people making "inflation arguments".  The problem with these arguments is that the market does not respect inflation when it comes to electronics.  All of my life a low end computer has been around $500, a mid-range about $1000 and a high-end $2000+.  Those prices have still not really changed except maybe the range has widened, i.e. the low-end is even lower and the high end is higher.  The average price hasn't really changed though.  When it comes to electronics, people expect the quality to improve and the price to stay roughly the same.  This goes for TVs and stereos too.  Why should we expect consoles to be different?  Console makers try their hardest to get hardware prices up, and they've had some success, but the market still resists increasing prices according to inflation.  People don't want prices to increase for electronics.

$500 is too expensive a launch price for a console.  Will it sell?  Yeah, eventually...when the price drops enough.  Expect it to sell slowly for the first few years though.  Even the PS3 started to sell eventually when the price dropped enough.  It was a good machine, but it was just too expensive at launch.  Your chart has the Genesis as more expensive than the SNES, and that is because the Genesis launched 2 years before the SNES.  The Genesis sold pretty poorly for its first couple of years, but when the SNES came out the Genesis could drop its price to get a price advantage.  All of the sudden Nintendo and Sega had a serious competition, because the Genesis had a price advantage.  Any good console can sell eventually, even with a high launch price, but don't expect it to sell well for the first couple of years.

And that is the position PS5 and Scarlett are in.  Will they sell?  Yeah, eventually.  They won't sell well at first.  On top of that they are going to have cheaper competition.  Switch will be $200-$300 with a huge library of games.  Sony needs to be ok with selling poorly out of the gate.  Perhaps they are, and they are just taking the long view into account?  I do expect a lot of Sony fans to be disappointed during 2021 and 2022 though.  Be prepared for a repeat of what happened to the PS3.