They spent 18 months on research and development on it, they want it to at least make back it's money.

That's never been how the console business has worked. It's always been selling console hardware at a loss and making money on software/accessories. 

Then again, everything about this generation we thought we knew about how the gaming industry works has continued to be thrown out the window. Except Nintendo lol

I understand that it is a premium device, but with all the price increases it seems Sony is intent on becoming the HBO Max or iPhone of video games instead of the mass-market Netflix/Android they've always been when they're successful.

If even that, considering all the exclusives released for PC. This has probably all to do with short-term profits for investors and shareholders now that MS is basically out of contention but it doesn't bode well for the future, IMO.

What do you consider low tier mid range?

- "67% more Compute Units than the current PS5 console and 28% faster memory. Overall, this enables up to 45% faster rendering for gameplay, making the experience much smoother."

- double to triple Ray tracing performance

- AI driven upscaling

That's relatively small. A lot of these projects take several years.

And they're selling it at a high price. 

I'm not saying they don't need it to sell at all, just that they probably only "need" it to sell like a million.  

As per Cerny's specs its something like 40ish% more powerful in rasterisation (non raytraced games) which is roughly on par with an AMD GPU - 7700XT. Raytracing improvements at 2x may put it near a RTX 4070. Which is at the lower end of the mid range graphics cards, currently on the market.

The other stuff is nice like PSSR but this price is crazy.

Nintendo was the first one to not drop their system price, they even raised the price of just a single game because the prequel was a massive unprecendented success for the franchise.

Dunno where this except Nintendo comes from.

All companies, without a single exception, are always pushing as far as they can to screw consumers over for more of their money, I see no exceptions.

And 800 euros for us dirty europeans .this has to be one ofnthe biggest failures sony made.

It'll do better than Concord.

No disc drive and 700 bucks. I rather spend it on a new in-box Neo Geo. a 34-year-old console. No, I don't have 700 bucks but if I did that's where it would go in gaming than a fucking digital-only console.

They're not bundling in a disc drive to make it seem cheaper than what it is. You can still buy it separately but it'll cost you another 80 bucks or so lol. Fuck this generation.