PAOerfulone said:
I wouldn't be so sure about the PS5 catching the PS4, even with GTA VI coming out.
This holiday season, especially the month of November, showed that the current asking prices of this generation of consoles is just too much for the casual audience. There's a reason why the PS5's Black Friday deals ended up lasting all the way through Christmas, why retailers were discounting PS5 and Switch 2 at $50 off, much to the chagrin of Sony and Nintendo, and why the PS5 Fortnite bundles on Amazon are STILL going for $50 less than MSRP. $500/550/750 for a 5-year-old system is just too big of a pill to swallow for a lot of the casual audience, who at this stage in a console's life, are the ones who still haven't jumped in and bought the system yet. And with seemingly no end in sight to the RAM price surge, (plus the tariffs), it's not out of the question for Sony to raise the price of the PS5 AGAIN. Microsoft has already done it twice. Nintendo already did it for Switch 1 and they're considering it for Switch 2. There's no reason to think Sony won't do it twice themselves. If that happens, then the system will REALLY have a tough hill to climb.
At this point, GTA VI is just about the only thing the PS5 has going in its favor to drive sales and demand. But there's only so much that one game can do in the face of all these detrimental factors.
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PS5 is guaranteed to beat PS4 even with these challenges.
1. Sony keeps adjusting up their operating profits forecast despite these crazy deals in Europe. So they're not really losing much money on hardware. They're about to break their annual profitability record again. Granted RAMifications aren't at play yet, and we don't know anything about Sony's contracts.
2. Sony may release a stripped down PS5 with reduced storage (512 GB like Series S).
3. This generarion will no doubt last much longer than PS4's. PS4 saw a production cliff early in its 7th year. PS5's 7th year boosted by GTA6 should crush PS4's 2020.
4. The gap between shipped and sold through may be smaller than VGChartz estimates.
5. PS5 may remain in production post PS6.
6. The price gap between PC and console hardware is increasing (due in part to contracts and system RAM/DDR). Consoles are looking to gain a new selling point against PC.
