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| scrapking said: No worries. :) I don't share all of Spencer's assumptions, no. But I shared his perspective as an FYI. It's impossible to know what to make of the PS5 (optical drive edition) being profitable after a year or so, because we don't know how much of a loss they were taking up-front. It's a big difference if it goes from costing $525 to make down to $475, than if it goes from $600 to $400, for example. We don't know enough to draw strong conclusions from that. I remain curious why you think Microsoft made the wrong call, when this is the strongest start to a generation Microsoft has had yet. Seems like the market is embracing their decision. It's entirely possible that Sony and Microsoft *each* made the right call, as perhaps each of them made the right decision for their respective market segments and brands, in fact. COVID was a double-edged sword, increasing demand but reducing supply, so I'm not sure it had a huge net effect. As for long-term pricing, time will tell. Perhaps in several years one of us can come back to this thread and comment. However, I don't see why a PS5 slim would drop as low as $250, yet you think the Series S is only likely to drop down to $200? Can you explain why such a small delta between them? I'm skeptical of any PS5 variant dropping as low as $250. Heck, the PS4 slim's MSRP is still $299.99, and it's been over 9 years. |
I'm pretty confident they meant no longer selling at a loss with being 'profitable'. No way did they reclaim R&D costs already and I doubt hardware sales ever become net profitable during a generation.
Covid's net effect was to push the Series S ahead as the available alternative, while also slowing down the generational transition keeping the Series S relatively close in fidelity to the Series X and PS5. Covid also pushed gamepass ahead which is all you need on Series S.
So yeah, it's the strongest start to a generation MS has had yet, but everything Covid has been in MS' favor. The big currency swings also made the Yuan more expensive against the Yen yet less expensive against the Dollar which drove the PS5 price up first, while MS could compensate by paying less for production.
Hardware sales: Series S was the most available, PS5 the hardest to get.
Software sales: Gamepass offered the best selection, new game releases stalled/delayed/had problems.
MS certainly made the right call considering the circumstances.
Sony made the right call as well, selling everything you can possibly produce, nothing wrong with that.
And now we have some competition between the two.
A $250 PS5 is not gonna happen, I doubt it will even go under $350. That $299.99 ps4 slim MSRP from 2016 is already $372 in 2022 after inflation. More likely a slim version will go back to its original launch price :/ US just got lucky with a strong Dollar to Yen conversion keeping up with the inflation rate. Everywhere else the ps5 has increased in price.
