Sony will increase the ps5 price again.

[Kyuu]

Soundwave said:

BraLoD said:

Explain to me how every single generation and other piece of hardware prices always dropped, but now they all remained the same since the Switch, and the only movement it up and never down? Stockholders did not exist up until 2020?

The pandemic went from mid 2020 to mid to late 2021 depending on where you live, sure that was a massive reason for that.

But it has been nearly 4 years since the pandemic slowed down and things went back to "normal" before this idiot started doing this stupid tariffs shit, where were the permanet price drops during this time?

Companies realized during the pandemic that when prices go up everywhere they never need to go down anymore, because people end up accepting it. What you are seeing globally now is what happens here in Brazil at least as long as I'm around. After some time there are so many companies doing shit that public backslash is mitgated and eventually doesn't matter anymore unless it's something mindblowing absurd done by just a single one of them. The pandemic showed in capital words that up to everyone else that didn't have realized it before.

Things will keep getting worse and worse, there will be not even attempt to give excuses soon enough, be ready.

Well that's an easy one ... game hardware prices don't go down the same way any more because advanced node processes aren't going down in price. 

In the past, no one really needed high end nodes day 1 other than some gamers for game consoles/gaming GPUs and that was a small audience overall. 

Today, AI spend is bigger than some entire large countries' GDP, and then on top of that you have the massive smartphone business with Apple doubling down on having to have the top design node every year ... this has sent process node prices through the roof. The modern nodes are at such a small size (8nm to 6nm to 5nm, etc. etc.) too that the complexity of mass producing  those chips has just stayed high. 

If you thought companies' were going to eat significant tariff costs on top of that, you were being naïve anyway. That was never going to happen. Tariffs are a tax the consumer pays largely. Plain and simple. 

You're mostly right, but you are ignoring that "eating the cost" is not without its benefits. For all we know, selling at a higher loss could be much more profitable to Sony in the grand scheme of things. Playstation gamers spend thousands of dollars per generation, so losing "$50 or $100 more" per hardware unit might lead to higher profits thanks to those who otherwise wouldn't buy an expensive PS5 (and don't have a PS4). It's a question of "how many new players can I get via a cheaper PS5?". Sony surmised that the realistic increase in players is not worth it, but other people will have different opinions.

I'm pretty sure Sony also commented that they significantly mitigated the US tariffs issue through similar means to Nintendo. And we have no clue what the orange clown will end up doing. As far as China, most of what he does/says seems like bluff and scare tactics. I hear he extended his "tariff pause" against China by another 90 days. I expect a lot of backtracking. But by the time it happens, many of us will have accepted the price hikes, and this is what those companies are betting on.

Nevertheless, I hope we'll get an alternative to TSMC and Samsung in the not too distant future. If the west wasn't hellbent on containing China, I imagine SMIC would be joining that race in less than a decade, and force everyone to lower their prices.