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curl-6 on 31 August 2023
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zorg1000 said:
curl-6 said:

Controller prices are already a ripoff to be honest. And console wraps too. 

zorg1000 said:

I assume Sony knows it’s a relatively niche product so are selling it at a comfortable profit margin.

Also I’m not sure the price of those other devices are relevant because this device is aimed at a specific audience of people who want to play the PS5 games they already own in a handheld format. Various Switch or Xbox models can’t do that and require building a whole new library of games.

That's the thing, it offers a relatively narrow range of use cases, much more so than a lot of other things that compete for our gaming dollar. For $200 you can buy multiple big new games, or get a Backbone, a new game on top, and still pocket $30 or more. In this economy, a niche novelty is a tough sell.

If one falls within its limited focus then cool, but even among core PS fans I expect that's a small minority.

True but the same can be said of pretty much all the accessories/add-ons Sony has released over the years, like PSOne LCD screen, Eyetoy, PSP Camera, PS Move, PSTV, PSVR, etc. they have ranged from failures to modest successes at best.

Remember in 2000 when Sony released a $129 screen add-on and car adaptor so you could play PS games on road trips? You could argue Portal is a modern version of this.

I just don’t think it being a niche product that only appeals to a small percent of PS5 owners is a valid argument. Look at PSVR, it took over 3 years to sell 5 million units (last official numbers) and PS4 sales were 106 million at the time so less than 5% attach rate and they seemed happy with this (enough to get a successor) so I think they are fine if Portal only sells 2-3 million.

I'm sure Sony will be fine, yeah, the investment here is fairly light so it's not gonna haemorrhage money, and if one falls within the specific target audience for this then great. I was speaking in more in terms of the general audience.