Otter said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:
This sounds good on paper, but the reality is that once they see people buying overpriced hardware, they are going to continue overpricing hardware. For most of gaming history price cuts on consoles were the norm, but after the Switch launched, both Nintendo and Sony stopped cutting the price of the Switch and PS4. This all happened before AI drove up hardware costs. Sony and Nintendo simply made high profit margins on PS4 and Switch hardware, when hardware margins were slim to none in previous generations. Basically, they figured out they could get away with charging more for hardware, so they did. Same type of thing is happening right now with the PS5. Expect baseline prices for hardware to stay high even after the AI bubble bursts. If the console manufacturers can make money on hardware, then they certainly will. |
Both things are true at once but I think the reality is PS5 sales were in the pits for a while and a game like GTA comes across once every 15 years. You can't base hardware pricing on a game that will :
1. Only arrive at the end of a generation or not at all (PS4 didn't get its own GTA).
2.The audience driving current hardware demand make up a tiny portion of actually PS5 sales. If there are 10m people eager to buy a $600-800 PS5 just for GTA that's cute but you can't survive off a 10m audience. Sony wants the 50-80m people who will actually keep their ecosystem alive and invest in other games etc. That majority audience is still price sensitive, hence PS5 sales being down so much in Q1 and Q2.
What I think this teaches Sony (and they already probably knew this from existing data) is that they can get away with a premium/high margin product next to whatever is the entry price product is. The high margin product will sell to that 10-20m price insensitive tech or FOMO consumer, whilst they promote the cheaper entry point to the mainstream.
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Guys its not that complicated at all. All computing hardware has gone up massively. Sony is not special. They are gonna be effected by it like everyone else. For my business I have to buy hardware and yes the costs have skyrocketed. LOL, sitting here contemplating Sony releasing a high margin product is not realistic. They are gonna charge approximately the cost of the console minus 100 USD. And thats because Sony is gonna be paying the same exhorbinate prices as everyone else because they are not special. Same goes for Microsoft and the same has already happened to Valve. Companies have to function in the real world... not in gaming forums. If you think the prices are crazy (they are), you can thank the AI companies for that.
