Zippy6 said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:
This is especially true if the news report I read a couple days ago is correct. I'm there, they said that investors are shunning Nintendo because apparently even a $100 price hike could be not enough anymore to not sell the console at a loss. In other words, this would mean that a Switch 2 would need to sell at $600 to ensure profitability of the console itself, and the PS6 will be much more expensive to produce than a a switch 2. In fact, I'm mostly worried about the handheld variant of the PS6, as it's rumoured to come with a high-performance chip and 24GB of RAM, I don't see that one being sold at anything less than $600 already, and that would be selling at a considerable loss. |
Eh, I think that's far overselling it. The Switch 2 does not cost so much to produce, even now, that they would need to go up to $600 to make a profit. The $499 price will be profitable, even if not by the margins Nintendo are used to. Switch 2 and the upcoming PS Handheld at least have the price advantage of being lpddr5x instead of gddr7 which is about half the price. With Sony subsidising a $499 price for the PS handheld would still be possible currently imo. But $599 may be the more likely outcome depending how things progress over the next year. |
I can't find the article anymore, but as it says here, Investors wanted to raise the price of the Switch by $100 to raise profitability, as the rising component prices for the Switch 2 eat more and more of the profits that Nintendo makes from selling games.
Another source I found here. To quote: "Investors are increasingly pushing the company to raise prices to offset rising costs. Analysts suggest that even a US$50 to US$100 increase might only reduce the financial burden rather than fully restore profitability per unit".
So yeah, if it needed over $100 to break even again on the Switch 2, then $599 would have been needed to do so.
As for the Playstation Handheld, I feel like $599 is the lower-end target at his point. Those 12GB extra RAM already warrant most, if the all, of that price difference. Add a probably more beefy chip and storage and you're pretty much guaranteed to largely surpass that price unless heavily subsidized. And that is with premise that the $499 price of the Switch in September would be enough to be sold at a profit, which I doubt more than a bit.
The only grace that I give the Sony handheld is that it probably will not come with things like detachable joycons, IR scanners or other such things, so it would be simpler to build, which saves a couple bucks, but probably not enough to keep the prive below $600. I'm expecting $649 for the handheld if the rumours are true about it's beefiness.