| badskywalker said: This is an interesting idea, if I'm not mistaken the PS4 hit the 100 million mark 67 months in. So not only will the PS5 be able to shave 7 months off that, but add an additional 20% on top of it. The PS2 was able to make such a price drop due to Sony's, not Sony Interactive Entertainment's, position. Sony as a whole was doing quite well for itself in the early to mid 2000s, which allowed one of their divisions to take a risk by cutting the price of the system by such extremes in order to make a long term profit in the form of game sales. Sony today relies on its gaming branch, if I'm not mistaken aren't many parts of Sony shrinking in revenue? This would make a company more cautious about doing this sort of thing. Afterall many times the ones calling the shots aren't those who know the gaming industry, but those who see potential profits being lost due to uncertainty. Then there's the financial situation in the US (This really is more important than the world as a whole as that's where the most competition will be for the PS5 and XSX), the Bureau of Economics Analysis saw a 39% drop in consumer spending year over year for the second quarter. It is believed that families are currently saving up (also in the report), and while the gaming market is booming for now, the real question is how long can it boom for? With an unemployment rate steadily going down, its still quite high at 11.1 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm not saying this will cause the XSX or PS5 to have an advantage over the other, what I'm saying is that in comparison to 2013 there will be a decrease at some point. This of course can be resolved by COVID-19 numbers going down enough to where it is safe to go back and the unemployment rate continues to go down. However I'm not too confident in this, now I do believe the numbers will get better, but will people go out and back to normal life, I don't think so. |
I never quite understand this reasoning. As far as gaming consoles go, it has and will always come down to selling games. The best way to ensure you can sell the most amount of games is to sell as many consoles as possible. And there are a number of things that are hinting at the approach sony is trying to take with the PS5.
- Sony have themselves said that they are aiming to have the fastest transition to a new-gen with the PS5. The only way that is possible is if they are starting off at a reasonable price point ($399) and if they can aggressively slash prices.
- Rumors suggest that the PS5 has a BOM (disc version?) of ~$450. That would put the disc-less version at ~$420. That means they could just as easily be selling the disc-less version for $399 and taking a $60 loss and selling the disc version for $499 with a $10 loss. (estimates on loss based on the fact that there are more costs associated to the console than just the BOM eg.retailers cut, shipping cost...etc)
- Its in sony's best interest to push the disc-less version as hard as possible, because they stand to make significantly more money from having that SKU be the prevailing SKU on the market. People with that SKU can't buy used games and more money is made from them from every game purchase.
- It would be possible through revisions to get the disc-less SKU down in price faster. A disc drive is an inelastic expense, it would simply never cost sony less than ~$30 to have one in, but with the disc-less SKU, everything gets significantly cheaper over time. Due to a combination of demand/supply and fab shrinks. Eg, at some point, on smaller node, the same wafer than got sony like 200 NAND flash chips would get them like 600 chips.
Point is, its in sony's best interest to get as many PS5s out in people's hands as quickly as possible. And the only way they can do that is if hey can get its BOMdown as quickly as possible. The rulings I am seeing suggests this is the direction they are trying to go. Their ability to do this quickly means they start making a lot of money from selling games quickly too. With a larger base, every major (popular) game release can potentially become a 10M seller. And at least do 5M in its first year.
I can see sony getting the disc-less PS5 down in price to as low as $199 within the first 30 months, while at that time only dropping the disc sku from $499 down to $399. They would want people buying the disc-less sku and they would push it really hard. I even expect all game special edition consoles to be with the disc-less SKU and you just get a PSN redeem code for the game.
