Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due to Costly Parts

Is there really an issue here?
If the PS5 performs as hoped, gamers will spend the money. Also, Sony has lots of experience cutting creative financing deals. In fact, Sony might prefer to get a lock in revenue stream a la smart phone financing.
In any case, at a time when the latest smart phone is hyped to sell at well over $1000, a $500 area price for a modern play station does not look excessive, rather the obverse. Sony may well want to set a premium price, especially given the current still worsening disruption to supply.
 
In overall compute performance... sure. But games generally like IPC and therefore high clock speed. A 3Ghz i3 is still going to be faster for gaming than the PS4 CPU. Also people got linux working on the PS4 Pro and ran benchmarks and.... no. In Cinebench 15 it gets a score of 343 in multi-threaded and 46 in single core performance.


The i3 definitely destroys the Jaguar in single-threaded results, clock-for-clock and especially with being clocked higher to boot.
That video you showed was definitely similar to the results I've seen as well, nice find.
 
Sony may well want to set a premium price, especially given the current still worsening disruption to supply.
I think Sony *does* want to set a $500 price, probably not more than that. But if the new Xbox is $400, they would have to reconsider.

Remember what happened with PS3, a lot of the issue was the price. Sony certainly doesn't want a repeat of that.
 
Fairly often the minimum requirement for PC ports is much higher than what base consoles are capable of and running at all low always looks significantly worse than console versions.
That's not proof, that's basing it on system requirements which depend on interpretation of performance. If a game runs at 30fps at 720P then do developers consider this bellow recommended system specs? Console versions of games often run that poorly.

Don't hold your breath. Emulators require an order of magnitude more power than the system they're emulating. Look at what it takes to get PCSX2 or Dolphin running at full speed compared to the actual hardware those systems ran. Even with Vulkan rendering CEMU and YUZU require a lot more power to work than their respective consoles.
The mistake that Sony and Microsoft made was using x86, which now opens up the idea of using virtualization instead of emulation. Just ask the creator of Orbital who has gone underground to rework a lot of the emulator code.


What kind of nonsensical argument is this? It's not the only physical media choice, DVD exists and is often cheaper, and even if it was that doesn't mean anything. It still sales in volume therefor it is not a dead format. Your blind hatred and desire to see it dead does not make it reality.
DVD is not 1080P capable. You could make it 1080P if you use H.264 or H.265 but then it won't work on traditional DVD players. I'm surprised nobody stepped in to try and do a better job than Blu-Ray, because we clearly need something better a very long time ago.
 
Honestly, I've watched Netflix at UHD HDR and it can look better than some 4K Blu-Rays I have.

I know it's not the full quality, but it looks great and more than a fair trade for the cost/convenience.
 
Maybe try not taking a thread into a flag carrying post about how good piracy is, i swear we can't say the sky is blue without you bringing up how good pirating movies is.
As it stands right now piracy is better than Blu-Ray and streaming. Which shows you how terrible our movie and tv watching experience really is right now. And yes Piracy is going up. Apparently it isn't people downloading movies but streaming piracy.

Maybe try not taking a thread into a flag carrying post about how good piracy is, i swear we can't say the sky is blue without you bringing up how good pirating movies is.
Not my fault there's a bunch of Blu-Ray die hards here who can't accept the truth. This whole thing started because someone insisted a PC needs a Blu-Ray drive because consoles have it.
Oddly enough you can't say what consumers don't want in a product because you have this odd vendetta against bluray
I argue that the PS5 and Xbox Series X are better off moving towards USB Thumb drives for physical media, as it would be better. Why does it have to be a disc? Could save on cost by removing the Blu-Ray drive and offer downloads to games that people own on a PS4 disc.
Look in device manager, you still have com ports as these are a software based port, but I assume you meant serial ports. Though this is the kind of thinking that Apple does with the legacy 3.5mm headphone port.
You know what I meant by com port. Unless it has a good use then there's no reason to keep it around.
Is there really an issue here?
If the PS5 performs as hoped, gamers will spend the money. Also, Sony has lots of experience cutting creative financing deals. In fact, Sony might prefer to get a lock in revenue stream a la smart phone financing.
In any case, at a time when the latest smart phone is hyped to sell at well over $1000, a $500 area price for a modern play station does not look excessive, rather the obverse. Sony may well want to set a premium price, especially given the current still worsening disruption to supply.
Any console that tried to sell for $500+ hasn't done very well from the start, or at all in the Xbox One's case. Yes the Xbox One is dead, get over it. So it's important to keep the price low like $400 or $450. Anything higher and you get a chicken or egg situation. In this case which comes first, more physical hardware sales so developers have a bigger audience to sell their games to, or games so more hardware is bought?
 
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This whole thing started because someone insisted a PC needs a Blu-Ray drive because consoles have it.
Not trying to go off topic, I'm just going to point out that most desktops, laptops, and workstations aren't even sold with optical drives any more, and haven't for the last 3 or 4 years.
Those are mostly an after-thought at this point, if even that, and normally have to be added to the purchase order, installed later, and/or just using a USB optical drive.

I think the only reason the next-gen consoles are even going to include it is because downloading full games in some regions isn't really an option due to limited Internet/infrastructures, thus the requirement for continued use of physical media.
It's more a "cover our bases for the maximum demographic" than "we need this so people can watch movies" - the latter is an after thought and more of a bonus for us, but certainly not the primary business reasoning from Sony or Microsoft.
 
Not trying to go off topic, I'm just going to point out that most desktops, laptops, and workstations aren't even sold with optical drives any more, and haven't for the last 3 or 4 years.
Those are mostly an after-thought at this point, if even that, and normally have to be added to the purchase order, installed later, and/or just using a USB optical drive.

I think the only reason the next-gen consoles are even going to include it is because downloading full games in some regions isn't really an option due to limited Internet/infrastructures, thus the requirement for continued use of physical media.
It's more a "cover our bases for the maximum demographic" than "we need this so people can watch movies" - the latter is an after thought and more of a bonus for us, but certainly not the primary business reasoning from Sony or Microsoft.
My suggestion is that they move towards usb flash. Look at the Turbo Graphic 16 where it had cards for games. The only reasons I can see to use BluRay is backwards compatibilty and cost but I'm not sure how much a Blu-Ray disc costs compared to flash storage.
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My suggestion is that they move towards usb flash. Look at the Turbo Graphic 16 where it had cards for games. The only reasons I can see to use BluRay is backwards compatibilty and cost but I'm not sure how much a Blu-Ray disc costs compared to flash storage.
Well if PS5 really can play all previous Playstation games, then that would be a good reason to include the drive, no?

I think you are both correct on this.
Moving forward, the PS5 main media should definitely be flash based disks, much like what the Switch is doing; admittedly, the cost of flash memory is more than a Blu-ray disc, 1:1.

However, keeping the optical drive on the PS5 would be a good idea, at least at the start, in order for PS4 (or earlier) games to be installed and/or played from the original discs.
It would also allow individuals to play said movies and media as well, which would be a nice bonus for some.
 
Since we're talking about Blu-Ray, the PS5 almost certainly ships with a 4K Blu-Ray player.

Standalone 4K players are like $150 at the cheapest, and some as much as $300 or $400. So a $500 PS5 which also doubled as a decent 4K player would be a good deal.

Yes and no. Yes it will almost certainly be a 4k Blu0ray player, I mean the Xbox 1 X is so you imagine the next gen will be as well. However that doesn't mean it really is that good a value. Reason is that 4k Blu-rays are just not very popular. The movie industry is dumb and charges quite a bit for them, and they aren't that common on store shelves as a result. So most peopel just won't care that much. Even if it is "worth" $150 in value add, it doesn't give any value to people who have no use for it. Those that are interested likely already have a player.

The movie industry's greed, combined with the convenience of streaming, has made 4k Blu-ray a really niche thing.
 
That's not proof, that's basing it on system requirements which depend on interpretation of performance. If a game runs at 30fps at 720P then do developers consider this bellow recommended system specs? Console versions of games often run that poorly.

Every developer uses sysreqs differently, but in most cases running below them requires running with all settings turned all the way down and sometimes below 1080p. Even if a game can run at 720p/30 under minspec, it's not going to do it at console equivalent settings. Which means, they're not running the game as good as a console.


The mistake that Sony and Microsoft made was using x86, which now opens up the idea of using virtualization instead of emulation. Just ask the creator of Orbital who has gone underground to rework a lot of the emulator code.


I'm really interested in seeing where emulation goes with these systems, but even x86 emulation requires more than the power of what it is emulating. This is even true for DOSBox emulation. For games that use protected mode, you need a 1+ Ghz CPU and that certainly wasn't something any DOS games ever required.

DVD is not 1080P capable. You could make it 1080P if you use H.264 or H.265 but then it won't work on traditional DVD players. I'm surprised nobody stepped in to try and do a better job than Blu-Ray, because we clearly need something better a very long time ago.

DVD not being 1080p doesn't matter. It's still a cheaper format compared to blu-ray and BD still massively outsells it. If BD was as bad as you claim and people were so up in arms about all this shit, they wouldn't buy it. You can bitch all you want about things you personally don't like, but you wishing something to happen does not make it reality. BD is not a dead format, no matter how much you want it to be. You do not get to be the arbiter of what is and is not a dead format. Your personal vendetta does not alter reality.

My suggestion is that they move towards usb flash. Look at the Turbo Graphic 16 where it had cards for games. The only reasons I can see to use BluRay is backwards compatibilty and cost but I'm not sure how much a Blu-Ray disc costs compared to flash storage.
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We're in the middle of a massive flash memory storage that is only going to get worse over the next few years and you want them to go with 100+ GB USB drives!? Do you have any idea what game companies ordering tens of millions of those per year would do to memory availability!?

Normal BD discs are likely less than a cent per at this point, maybe a couple cents at most. For UHD BD, its hard to say. Though, even if 100GB USB drivers would be cheaper right now, that would only last until they were hit by the shortage than prices would skyrocket.
 
Well, if PS5 (and Xbox SX) sell well, that could translate into a lot of new people with 4K drives.

Also, I remember a time when 1080p Blu-Ray discs were quite expensive. I think I paid like $50 for an HD-DVD movie one time.
 
Also, I remember a time when 1080p Blu-Ray discs were quite expensive. I think I paid like $50 for an HD-DVD movie one time.
All physical medias go through that process until the technology becomes cheaper and more efficient to manufacture and produce, not to mention supply and demand.
I remember in the late 1980s when movies on VHS tapes were around $80, or $250 today, and LaserDiscs were only affordable for the super rich.
 
Any console that tried to sell for $500+ hasn't done very well from the start, or at all in the Xbox One's case. Yes the Xbox One is dead, get over it. So it's important to keep the price low like $400 or $450. Anything higher and you get a chicken or egg situation. In this case which comes first, more physical hardware sales so developers have a bigger audience to sell their games to, or games so more hardware is bought?

If the specs leaks are even close to true there is NFW the consoles will be $400. If we assume this rumor is right even at $500 Sony could be losing money per console. Can Sony afford to eat over $100 per console? MS maybe could, but if the second console rumor is true there's no way they'll bother. Even if the second console rumor isn't true, with the XBX sticking around and MS not making XSX exclusives for a year there's little reason to price below $500.

The whole "no console has sold at" thing is a pretty outdated mindset. The PS4 was the first console ever to sell well at $400 (the $300, Arcade version of the 360 was the best seller of the two, by a significant margin if I'm remembering correctly). Other consoles selling poorly at $500 does not always dictate the future. We've never had a situation where both competitors were $500. It has always been a case where one cost more than the other.
 
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Like what games? My sisters GTX 970 runs nearly all games fine at high settings with a 6600K. Even Digital Foundry agrees with me.


I specifically said if you go with the $10 PER MONTH. It's $59.99 for 12 months, $24.99 for three months, and $10 per month. That is the cost of Xbox Live. Assuming you're a smart consumer then you go for the $60 for 12 months, which still means you spent $360 since the launch of the PS4 on something that's free on PC, and arguably worse than PC.


The video showed one, Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Frame rates would drop into the 30s easily, and that video showed frame rates as low as 42 ( I didn't bother watching the whole video). Syndicate was one of the games that really made me want to upgrade from the GTX 970 because the low frame rates in the 30s hampered gameplay.

No one buys console subscriptions for a month (unless they only plan to keep it for a few months maybe). You can easily grab them for around $50 regularly for a year, which is what everyone does.
 
There is an easy solution... offer the Disk reader as a USB device with Playstation branding. BOOM DONE. Now you can have the cheaper more inexpensive PS5 without a drive and a cheap external drive for customers that want it with a special notch in the case for it to go.
 
There is an easy solution... offer the Disk reader as a USB device with Playstation branding. BOOM DONE. Now you can have the cheaper more inexpensive PS5 without a drive and a cheap external drive for customers that want it with a special notch in the case for it to go.

UHD BD drives aren't that expensive. Let's not forgot that the $200 Xbox One S has one.
 
Just FYI the latest numbers from known leakers vetted are that both in rt perform similar to the 2080super.

Newest nextbox devkit seems to be slightly higher target than the ps5 but the difference is less than 10%.

Also new Rainbow 6 from studio Montreal may be coming.
 
UHD BD drives aren't that expensive. Let's not forgot that the $200 Xbox One S has one.

And the 'digital one' does not but is ~$50 less. Which is kind of a crazy price difference, I would imagine they cant be paying more than 15 for the drive.
 
However, keeping the optical drive on the PS5 would be a good idea, at least at the start, in order for PS4 (or earlier) games to be installed and/or played from the original discs.
It would also allow individuals to play said movies and media as well, which would be a nice bonus for some.
Grimlakin has the right idea in that offer an external Blu-Ray drive for the PS5. That way you can keep the price low for the PS5 while offering backwards compatibility for those who want to play their PS4 games on their PS5. Also Sony can offer a free download of the game you physically own.

Every developer uses sysreqs differently, but in most cases running below them requires running with all settings turned all the way down and sometimes below 1080p. Even if a game can run at 720p/30 under minspec, it's not going to do it at console equivalent settings. Which means, they're not running the game as good as a console.
Lets take Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, which requires a minimum of a AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB or a GeForce GTX 770 2GB. The Radeon R7 260X is bellow that requirement, but from the previous video I've shown, we can see the game runs perfectly fine. The Radeon R7 260X is also bellow that of the PS4's GPU. System Requirements are a vague guide, not an absolute requirement. Also for some reason the Nvidia GPU's are allowed to be of an older generation when it comes to system requirements, compared to AMD. I find that odd.

Also don't assume that a game running at low setting is bellow a console. I honestly can't find a comparison of PC at low settings vs PS4. Everyone compares PC Ultra settings to PS4 Pro.

I'm really interested in seeing where emulation goes with these systems, but even x86 emulation requires more than the power of what it is emulating. This is even true for DOSBox emulation. For games that use protected mode, you need a 1+ Ghz CPU and that certainly wasn't something any DOS games ever required.
Emulation always requires more hardware than the system you emulate, but virtualization will give a massive boost in performance.
We're in the middle of a massive flash memory storage that is only going to get worse over the next few years and you want them to go with 100+ GB USB drives!? Do you have any idea what game companies ordering tens of millions of those per year would do to memory availability!?

Normal BD discs are likely less than a cent per at this point, maybe a couple cents at most. For UHD BD, its hard to say. Though, even if 100GB USB drivers would be cheaper right now, that would only last until they were hit by the shortage than prices would skyrocket.
I can't imagine a BD disc that holds 100GB of data is going to be very fast. Red Dead Redemption 2 PS4 takes how long to install off the disc? Quick Google shows 1 hour and 30 minutes. Yikes, yea I think it's time to move on.

If the specs leaks are even close to true there is NFW the consoles will be $400. If we assume this rumor is right even at $500 Sony could be losing money per console. Can Sony afford to eat over $100 per console? MS maybe could, but if the second console rumor is true there's no way they'll bother. Even if the second console rumor isn't true, with the XBX sticking around and MS not making XSX exclusives for a year there's little reason to price below $500.
The specs that Microsoft and Sony are trying to push is something they decided on, and nobody else pushed them. To me it looks like Microsoft and Sony are trying their best to out do PC gaming, assuming the specs are true. Pretty clear this console generation had to contend with PC gaming, to the point when even Sony was considering porting some of their games to PC. So them pushing for hardware this hard suggests they don't want PC to have the edge of performance.
The whole "no console has sold at" thing is a pretty outdated mindset. The PS4 was the first console ever to sell well at $400 (the $300, Arcade version of the 360 was the best seller of the two, by a significant margin if I'm remembering correctly). Other consoles selling poorly at $500 does not always dictate the future. We've never had a situation where both competitors were $500. It has always been a case where one cost more than the other.
Facts are facts. The PS3 had a slow start until it released the PS3 Slim which was also cheaper than the original Fat PS3 $500. The Xbox One was $500 with the Kinect, then $400 without it but slower than the PS4, and then settled for $350. Raise the price too high then expect a slow start. Start too slow then few developers will make games that take advantage of the hardware.
 
Facts are facts. The PS3 had a slow start until it released the PS3 Slim which was also cheaper than the original Fat PS3 $500. The Xbox One was $500 with the Kinect, then $400 without it but slower than the PS4, and then settled for $350. Raise the price too high then expect a slow start. Start too slow then few developers will make games that take advantage of the hardware.

But facts without the appropriate context are misleading.

The PS3 struggled at $500 because it was 2006, and that was more expensive than both the Xbox 360 and any other mainstream console to date (3DO and Neo Geo were arguably niche). The Xbox One struggled in 2013 because it was both several years ago and because it included an accessory of questionable value that people knew was jacking up the price.

It's a tougher call today. $500 wouldn't be outlandish for a console given inflation, a relatively high-capacity SSD, a Blu-ray drive and up-to-date computing power. Not that it wouldn't affect sales to some degree, but it probably won't have the effects you saw in 2006 or 2013, either.
 
Grimlakin has the right idea in that offer an external Blu-Ray drive for the PS5. That way you can keep the price low for the PS5 while offering backwards compatibility for those who want to play their PS4 games on their PS5. Also Sony can offer a free download of the game you physically own.


Lets take Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, which requires a minimum of a AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB or a GeForce GTX 770 2GB. The Radeon R7 260X is bellow that requirement, but from the previous video I've shown, we can see the game runs perfectly fine. The Radeon R7 260X is also bellow that of the PS4's GPU. System Requirements are a vague guide, not an absolute requirement. Also for some reason the Nvidia GPU's are allowed to be of an older generation when it comes to system requirements, compared to AMD. I find that odd.

Also don't assume that a game running at low setting is bellow a console. I honestly can't find a comparison of PC at low settings vs PS4. Everyone compares PC Ultra settings to PS4 Pro.


Emulation always requires more hardware than the system you emulate, but virtualization will give a massive boost in performance.

I can't imagine a BD disc that holds 100GB of data is going to be very fast. Red Dead Redemption 2 PS4 takes how long to install off the disc? Quick Google shows 1 hour and 30 minutes. Yikes, yea I think it's time to move on.


The specs that Microsoft and Sony are trying to push is something they decided on, and nobody else pushed them. To me it looks like Microsoft and Sony are trying their best to out do PC gaming, assuming the specs are true. Pretty clear this console generation had to contend with PC gaming, to the point when even Sony was considering porting some of their games to PC. So them pushing for hardware this hard suggests they don't want PC to have the edge of performance.

Facts are facts. The PS3 had a slow start until it released the PS3 Slim which was also cheaper than the original Fat PS3 $500. The Xbox One was $500 with the Kinect, then $400 without it but slower than the PS4, and then settled for $350. Raise the price too high then expect a slow start. Start too slow then few developers will make games that take advantage of the hardware.


The PS3 was $600.
 
Grimlakin has the right idea in that offer an external Blu-Ray drive for the PS5. That way you can keep the price low for the PS5 while offering backwards compatibility for those who want to play their PS4 games on their PS5. Also Sony can offer a free download of the game you physically own.

Not likely to reduce the price enough to matter and we are nowhere near ready to have a discless console be the primary option just yet.


Lets take Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, which requires a minimum of a AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB or a GeForce GTX 770 2GB. The Radeon R7 260X is bellow that requirement, but from the previous video I've shown, we can see the game runs perfectly fine. The Radeon R7 260X is also bellow that of the PS4's GPU. System Requirements are a vague guide, not an absolute requirement. Also for some reason the Nvidia GPU's are allowed to be of an older generation when it comes to system requirements, compared to AMD. I find that odd.

Also don't assume that a game running at low setting is bellow a console. I honestly can't find a comparison of PC at low settings vs PS4. Everyone compares PC Ultra settings to PS4 Pro.


I don't think I've ever seen a game running at low look as good as a console. RDR2 is a bit weird in terms of console vs PC settings. There is no exact replica for any system as everything seems heavily customized. The Pro is under the X, and neither use max settings for most things. If I had to wager a guess I'd say the base PS4 is probably something like a mix of medium and low, with some settings customized to fit the console.

Emulation always requires more hardware than the system you emulate, but virtualization will give a massive boost in performance.
True, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out regardless.

I can't imagine a BD disc that holds 100GB of data is going to be very fast. Red Dead Redemption 2 PS4 takes how long to install off the disc? Quick Google shows 1 hour and 30 minutes. Yikes, yea I think it's time to move on.

The 5400RPM hard drive and slow ass IO bandwidth in consoles is also responsible for the slow install speeds. With both consoles going NvME that will eliminate a massive bottleneck. Even with drastically larger discs it should still lead to shorter install times.

The specs that Microsoft and Sony are trying to push is something they decided on, and nobody else pushed them. To me it looks like Microsoft and Sony are trying their best to out do PC gaming, assuming the specs are true. Pretty clear this console generation had to contend with PC gaming, to the point when even Sony was considering porting some of their games to PC. So them pushing for hardware this hard suggests they don't want PC to have the edge of performance.

They're both between a rock and a hard place in terms of specs. Using incredibly weak CPUs hurt all the consoles this generation. I imagine developers were complaining often and loudly about all the various bottlenecks they've had to deal with from the get-go on the consoles. They also need to make something that's going to be good for 5-7 years and with RT being pushed from all corners adding support for that just makes sense. They need the power to handle 4K properly this time. Using expensive hardware was really the only option open to them without severely hampering themselves again.

Facts are facts. The PS3 had a slow start until it released the PS3 Slim which was also cheaper than the original Fat PS3 $500. The Xbox One was $500 with the Kinect, then $400 without it but slower than the PS4, and then settled for $350. Raise the price too high then expect a slow start. Start too slow then few developers will make games that take advantage of the hardware.

The problem with those facts is that they ignore changes in the market. It's a single set of data that doesn't take other data into context. You could have made the same statement about $400 systems before the PS4 came out. Even at $400, the PS4 sold incredibly well. Again, we've never had a situation where both systems were $500, leaving customers no cheaper options if they want the next-gen experience. There is definitely a "too high" point, but I just don't think $500 is it. Well, unless they both royally screw up on making the systems appealing to customers.
 
The PS3 struggled at $500 because it was 2006, and that was more expensive than both the Xbox 360 and any other mainstream console to date (3DO and Neo Geo were arguably niche). The Xbox One struggled in 2013 because it was both several years ago and because it included an accessory of questionable value that people knew was jacking up the price.
I don't get the point of what you're saying. The PS3 struggled because it was released one year after the Xbox 360 for $100-$200 more and had worse looking games. It took years before the developers could actually make use of the hardware to catch up to the 360. The Xbox One also suffers from assholism because Microsoft tried to prevent people from buying used games. They scrambled at the last minute to remove this limitation but forgot they charged more for a feature that nobody wanted and had worse graphics performance than the PS4.
It's a tougher call today. $500 wouldn't be outlandish for a console given inflation,
People don't care about inflation. Extra Credits thought that games should be $70 based on inflation and their video got down-voted to hell. Inflation is a scam on the poor, and not something to be taken serious beyond housing and new cars.

a relatively high-capacity SSD, a Blu-ray drive and up-to-date computing power. Not that it wouldn't affect sales to some degree, but it probably won't have the effects you saw in 2006 or 2013, either.
The SSD might bite Sony and Microsoft in the ass when games are now over 100GB in size. How many AAA games can you fit onto a 500GB or 1TB SSD? Five to ten games will fit on those SSD's? I can see this being a huge problem. How did the $500 price tag effect the PS3 relative to the PS2 and PS4? Not particularly well as you can see from my graph. Eventually the PS3 price did drop but it was still more expensive than the DVD based Xbox 360. Also PC gaming today isn't the same stupidity from 2006 where we got Vista and DirectX10, which made gaming on a PC difficulty back then. Price your console too high and charge a monthly fee to play online and you might find adoption to be extremely slow.
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They're both between a rock and a hard place in terms of specs. Using incredibly weak CPUs hurt all the consoles this generation. I imagine developers were complaining often and loudly about all the various bottlenecks they've had to deal with from the get-go on the consoles. They also need to make something that's going to be good for 5-7 years and with RT being pushed from all corners adding support for that just makes sense. They need the power to handle 4K properly this time. Using expensive hardware was really the only option open to them without severely hampering themselves again.
Lets talk about 4k and Ray-Tracing for a bit. Why do you think consoles are now pushing for Ray-Tracing so hard, when it's clear that the technology isn't ready? Nvidia jumped the gun on Ray-Tracing and made it their main selling point of the RTX line of graphic cards, but they did this before the technology is feasible. So here we are with Sony and Microsoft promising their next generation consoles will have hardware Ray-Tracing in it, even though not a single AMD graphics card in the market has Ray-Tracing capabilities. Why push for something that is going to be expensive and taxing on the hardware? Because PC gaming has Ray-Tracing, that's why. They don't want another 5-7 years of PC gaming handing consoles their ass.

Lets be real here, the RTX cards can't do 4k Ray-Tracing. Nobody knows how AMD, Sony, and Microsoft plan to implement Ray-Tracing, but I'm pretty certain the performance hit using this feature won't be any different than Nvidia's RTX. If the PS5 and Xbox Series X can do Ray Tracing at 4k then it'll be at 30fps with low to medium settings. Most likely these consoles will implement a form of up-scaling like DLSS but worse because they'll just take a 1080p or 1440p image and stretch it to 4k.

So when you say 4k properly, you probably mean without Ray-Tracing, which most graphic cards can do today assuming you don't use Ultra settings. Ray-Tracing is a totally different situation, one that AMD, Sony, and Microsoft has zero experience at. Also this will be a trial by fire as AMD has yet to release a GPU on PC that can do Ray-Tracing.
 
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There's no yikes about the ps4 install times, you actually can start playing after a very short initial install and it will keep installing on the background. Xbox install times otoh yeap those are awful.


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Developers know how is the raytracing and the word is "similar to 2080super performance wise".
 
There's no yikes about the ps4 install times, you actually can start playing after a very short initial install and it will keep installing on the background. Xbox install times otoh yeap those are awful.

The PSN network though for download speeds are capped way too low IMO, but that doesn't seem to cause anyone to leave. I do have a better experience on the ps4 than xbox. I used to like xbox more but updates have made it have a terrible flow for the UI.
 
The PSN network though for download speeds are capped way too low IMO, but that doesn't seem to cause anyone to leave. I do have a better experience on the ps4 than xbox. I used to like xbox more but updates have made it have a terrible flow for the UI.


The cap isn't one per se, it is more of a "they have less centers in the USA than Xbox and thus your mileage may vary", lucky fellas next to one can get 800mbps on their Gb connection.
Unlucky fellas are the terror stories.
 
People don't care about inflation. Extra Credits thought that games should be $70 based on inflation and their video got down-voted to hell. Inflation is a scam on the poor, and not something to be taken serious beyond housing and new cars.

They do and they don't. Obviously $500 is still a fair amount to ask, but notice how no one is suggesting the PS5 should cost $300, and even $400 may be a stretch? And whether or not you think inflation is a scam, it's still true that things cost more. Sony can't sell the PS5 at $400 just because you don't feel like inflation should count.

The SSD might bite Sony and Microsoft in the ass when games are now over 100GB in size. How many AAA games can you fit onto a 500GB or 1TB SSD? Five to ten games will fit on those SSD's? I can see this being a huge problem. How did the $500 price tag effect the PS3 relative to the PS2 and PS4? Not particularly well as you can see from my graph. Eventually the PS3 price did drop but it was still more expensive than the DVD based Xbox 360. Also PC gaming today isn't the same stupidity from 2006 where we got Vista and DirectX10, which made gaming on a PC difficulty back then. Price your console too high and charge a monthly fee to play online and you might find adoption to be extremely slow.

Going without an SSD would also bite Sony and Microsoft in the ass. Games in this generation already take a long time to load, and that's only going to get worse with more visual detail; and if they don't upgrade to SSDs, that seriously limits the potential for the games themselves.

And like I said, the PS3 was more expensive than other consoles at a time when people hadn't even considered $500 consoles outside of niche models. It'll be another story if both of the new consoles are $500 and people practically expect the prices given the features.
 
The cap isn't one per se, it is more of a "they have less centers in the USA than Xbox and thus your mileage may vary", lucky fellas next to one can get 800mbps on their Gb connection.
Unlucky fellas are the terror stories.

I have seen people get faster speeds with vpn servers and changing where they connect from. They do need to up their game a bit though.
 
Maybe Samsung will invent some kind of backup power systems for their memory production facilities, so small outages wont hike up the RAM costs.
 
They do and they don't. Obviously $500 is still a fair amount to ask, but notice how no one is suggesting the PS5 should cost $300, and even $400 may be a stretch? And whether or not you think inflation is a scam, it's still true that things cost more. Sony can't sell the PS5 at $400 just because you don't feel like inflation should count.
The problem is wages have stagnated and people are predicting a recession 2020 this year. Assuming bad things happen, the PS5 and Xbox Series X couldn't come out at a worse time. You can increase the cost all you want but if nobody buys it then what?
Going without an SSD would also bite Sony and Microsoft in the ass. Games in this generation already take a long time to load, and that's only going to get worse with more visual detail; and if they don't upgrade to SSDs, that seriously limits the potential for the games themselves.
I had both a SSD and HDD in my machines and most of my games are installed in the HDD, and my loading time is just fine. People have put SSD's into consoles to get them to run faster as well. The issue is what do you do when the SSD is full? At some point you'll need to use an external drive, which will defiantly be slower than what these consoles will have. Or better yet, have a second M.2 slot so people can stick another SSD in the machine. Having a faster SSD is not going to make a huge difference but a bigger SSD will.

And like I said, the PS3 was more expensive than other consoles at a time when people hadn't even considered $500 consoles outside of niche models. It'll be another story if both of the new consoles are $500 and people practically expect the prices given the features.
If both new consoles are $500 then they both suffer from slow sales. People have the option to not buy new stuff. If Halo Infinite is coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X then you can certainly afford to wait for prices to drop. Same goes for Sony if both the PS4 and PS5 get the same games.
 
The problem is wages have stagnated and people are predicting a recession 2020 this year. Assuming bad things happen, the PS5 and Xbox Series X couldn't come out at a worse time. You can increase the cost all you want but if nobody buys it then what?

I had both a SSD and HDD in my machines and most of my games are installed in the HDD, and my loading time is just fine. People have put SSD's into consoles to get them to run faster as well. The issue is what do you do when the SSD is full? At some point you'll need to use an external drive, which will defiantly be slower than what these consoles will have. Or better yet, have a second M.2 slot so people can stick another SSD in the machine. Having a faster SSD is not going to make a huge difference but a bigger SSD will.


If both new consoles are $500 then they both suffer from slow sales. People have the option to not buy new stuff. If Halo Infinite is coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X then you can certainly afford to wait for prices to drop. Same goes for Sony if both the PS4 and PS5 get the same games.


Consoles have traditionally used 2.5" hard drives spinning at 5400 rpm (ultra-cheap, and small) Jumping up to desktop-class 7200 RPM hard drives (your experience) would cost you more money, and cost you more volume/power.

By that time, you might as well go m.2 SSD (even smaller). And that is exactly what they will do! You can compromise on build cost by going with DRAM-less SSDs.

If they can fit 1tb, I imagine it will be more than enough for most users. And for Sony, you should be able to swap the drive out for larger/drives with DRAM, if max performance means something to you.

And while we're talking about drive speeds, you folks keep shitting on 100 GB BD 4k drives, saying "I can't imagine they would be quick" Have you ever read the fucking spec sheet, where they have tripled transfer rates over 50gb bluyray?

You can't expect to make 4k Blurays work on the switch to HEVC alone - it takes faster drives as well.The higher density of the discs is responsible for SOME of that (35%), so higher rotational rates should improve transfer rates over the original (i.e. during game installs)
 
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Consoles have traditionally used 2.5" hard drives spinning at 5400 rpm (ultra-cheap, and small) Jumping up to desktop-class 7200 RPM hard drives (your experience) would cost you more money, and cost you more volume/power.

By that time, you might as well go m.2 SSD (even smaller). And that is exactly what they will do! You can compromise on build cost by going with DRAM-less SSDs.

If they can fit 1tb, I imagine it will be more than enough for most users. And for Sony, you should be able to swap the drive out for larger/drives with DRAM, if max performance means something to you.
So long as they include a way to upgrade or addon another drive then that's fine. Also keep the proprietary shit out, cause that's just price gouging.
And while we're talking about drive speeds, you folks keep shitting on 100 GB BD 4k drives, saying "I can't imagine they would be quick" Have you ever read the fucking spec sheet, where they have tripled transfer rates over 50gb bluyray?

You can't expect to make 4k Blurays work on the switch to HEVC alone - it takes faster drives as well.The higher density of the discs is responsible for SOME of that (35%), so higher rotational rates should improve transfer rates over the original (i.e. during game installs)
So how long would it take to install a 100 GB game onto the SSD? Red Dead Redemption 2 requires the game be completely installed onto the drive.
 
So long as they include a way to upgrade or addon another drive then that's fine. Also keep the proprietary shit out, cause that's just price gouging.

So how long would it take to install a 100 GB game onto the SSD? Red Dead Redemption 2 requires the game be completely installed onto the drive.

Assuming,the same max RPM, it will drop the 90-minute install time down by twenty five minutes. Not massive but will still be faster than the average internet connection in this country.
 
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To be honest, I love PC gaming and the freedom / open nature of building your own machine, but I feel like the heyday of PC gaming has past.

I mean, there are games on PS4 that look great and just as good as anything on PC (like Until Dawn or Detroit before it came to PC). Sure, at 30fps or not full resolution, but it's playable.

Most of the games I play on PC now are not the big multi-platform blockbusters but weird indie games that never make it to console.

So I will probably always have a PC, especially for development, but it's just not what it used to be.

And with the cost of GPUs now, it doesn't make sense financially unless you just like the building/modding/tinkering part. That's the fun part for me. If I wanted to play a game a console is just less hassle.

imo pc gaming is larger and more mainstream than it has ever been
 
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