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SvennoJ on 05 September 2022
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Bofferbrauer2 said:
SvennoJ said:

I'll take your word for it, however aren't the PS5 and Series X chips not also pretty large? Hence the Series S sitting in a comfortable (available) position?

Anyway with inflation reaching double digits, I doubt prices will go down. The outlier is the US dollar which gained a lot of value compared to all other currencies. $500 last year is worth $642 today for Sony (converted to Yen, comparing Sept 5 2021 to today). Sony could lower the price in the USA as that increase is over double the worst inflation rate today. Yet people are already pissed the USA didn't get a price hike.

We got a 4% price raise in Canada for the ps5, while the CAD is also worth a lot more today vs the Yen. Not as much as the USA but still 500 CAD a year ago is worth 609 CAD today for Japan.

USA increased 28.4%, no price raise.
Canada increased 21.8%, 4% price raise bringing the price at the same level as the US price.

Components, overseas manufacturing, shipping likely all got more expensive for Sony since the Yen is not doing very well. The Chinese Yuan also increased 19.2% in value vs the Yen. So all that manufacturing in China got more expensive for Sony (while less expensive for MS)

Oberon (PS5) is 308mm2

Anaconda (XSX) is 360mm2

Lockhart (XSS) is 197mm2

During the  chip crunch, it made perfectly sense to prioritize the production of Lockhart, since Microsoft could get many more chips per wafer, hence more consoles to sell. But the chip crunch is ending fast, and production of the bigger chips got raised significantly now that there is the needed free production space at TSMC for them.

You can already see it when you check the sales of the PS5 and XSX, with the XS outselling last year while the PS5 has catched up again to last year's sales, and both certainly keeping an increasingly large stock at hand for Black Friday and the holiday season in general. Sony also gave a sign to this when they didn't lower their sales expectation for the current financial year, meaning they're expecting the sales to go up from here despite the price increase.

The only point which is really directly hit by the inflation is the shipping. And while this increases the costs, it shouldn't nearly be enough to warrant a 50€ price hike. I was expecting that due to the chip crunch and inflation price cuts would take a long while this gen, but a price increase should never have been on the table in the first place, as there's no real reason for one.

What about the 20% more expensive Yuan vs the Yen? Doesn't the PS5 get manufactured in China? On top of the inflation rate, Sony has to pay 20% more for manufacturing in China vs a year ago. Even worse if China prices their stuff in USD. (I have no idea).

Of course Sony gets a lot of that back by selling PS5 in the USA, yet the Euro only got 7% worth more vs the Yen, The Euro decreased in value vs the Yuan. More expensive manufacturing with net lower returns (vs increased manufacturing costs).

The adjustments are mainly because of exchange rates that have changed a lot, Inflation second, limited supply now third and becoming less of an issue.