Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due to Costly Parts

I'm thinking MS doesn't want to get beat on pricing this time and is waiting Sony out. Sony can't afford to sell at a loss, especially with COVID hurting their other divisions so badly, but MS could if they have to based on their earnings. COVID certainly has affected them far less. MS also got beat bad in sales last gen by shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly and I'm sure they are looking to change that.

My prediction:

Sony "$599"
MS "$499"
Sony "wtf bro!!!"

Just a total guess though, based on me being bored.
You're forgetting AMD "tactics" (that totally haven't be revealed to be desperate scrambling for position after their competitor lowered prices).
Sony: Jebaited! $499
MSFT: Double Jebaited! $399!

Now, for this cycle to continue until we start kissing the mid two hundreds :D
 
You're forgetting AMD "tactics" (that totally haven't be revealed to be desperate scrambling for position after their competitor lowered prices).
Sony: Jebaited! $499
MSFT: Double Jebaited! $399!

Now, for this cycle to continue until we start kissing the mid two hundreds :D

The reveal of discless PS5 came as a surprise to me.
It reinforces my prior that Sony is targeting prices starting from $400 - $1 (=$399), just like launch of PS4 & PS4 pro. Ofc it would be below cost, but they can think of recovering the retailers cut of games sales via playstation network

So the worry for Sony is how to price the PS5 disc edition. I think they will go with atleast $450 for the same (but not more than $50 greater than XsX)

I feel Microsoft might launch at $450 mostly or maybe $500 but definitely not more than $500 because that was the launch price of X1X

Microsoft has a huge potential to make money via add-in cartridges.
As of today only 1TB has been announced but upto 8TB add-in cartridges should be possible which means $$$ for Microsoft
Because of this reason they could adopt the razor-blade model & launch the XsX as low as $400(very unlikely) or $450(likely) too
 
You weren't impressed by prerendered trailers of games you won't be able to play for months after purchase? Not even by the GTA V rererelelease?
I would not be impressed even if all the shown games were available on release.
 
The reveal of discless PS5 came as a surprise to me.
It reinforces my prior that Sony is targeting prices starting from $400 - $1 (=$399), just like launch of PS4 & PS4 pro. Ofc it would be below cost, but they can think of recovering the retailers cut of games sales via playstation network

So the worry for Sony is how to price the PS5 disc edition. I think they will go with atleast $450 for the same (but not more than $50 greater than XsX)

I feel Microsoft might launch at $450 mostly or maybe $500 but definitely not more than $500 because that was the launch price of X1X

Microsoft has a huge potential to make money via add-in cartridges.
As of today only 1TB has been announced but upto 8TB add-in cartridges should be possible which means $$$ for Microsoft
Because of this reason they could adopt the razor-blade model & launch the XsX as low as $400(very unlikely) or $450(likely) too
I definitely agree on the PS5 targeting. $400 sounds the most reasonable. Regardless of the specs, $500+ seems questionable for a base model.

Here is my addendum to your guess:

Lockhart isn't a cut down XSX. It's just a XSX without the ODD. Without the ODD (and moving the PSU), the XSX actually loses its "tower" shape and can sit like a more traditional media center device (oh, the irony). This allows MSFT to hit the same two targets as Sony without risking too much, and taking the Xbox One X out of the market entirely.
 
I think you people are nuts to expect these at $400. Unless they're both looking to lose a shit load of money per system sold that just isn't reasonable. MS can afford that kind of loss but I really don't think Sony is financially stable enough to do so. Even with the discless PS5 I'm not sure if I'd expect $400. Maybe $450, if the other is $500. The drive won't cost Sony $100 and that system requires a different set of tooling to make and tooling is very expensive.
 
How does $565 sound fellas?

Leaker and concept designer Ben Geskin shared images of the PS5's store page on Amazon France. These images put the prices at €499 for the standard PS5 and €399 for the Digital Edition, which converts to $565/£447 and $452/£358 respectively. The store page for the PS5 currently lists the price information as "currently unavailable," but we still have Geskin's screenshots to go by.
 
How does $565 sound fellas?

Leaker and concept designer Ben Geskin shared images of the PS5's store page on Amazon France. These images put the prices at €499 for the standard PS5 and €399 for the Digital Edition, which converts to $565/£447 and $452/£358 respectively. The store page for the PS5 currently lists the price information as "currently unavailable," but we still have Geskin's screenshots to go by.

What was the price at which PS4 & PS4 pro launched in France ? €399 ??
 
How does $565 sound fellas?

Leaker and concept designer Ben Geskin shared images of the PS5's store page on Amazon France. These images put the prices at €499 for the standard PS5 and €399 for the Digital Edition, which converts to $565/£447 and $452/£358 respectively. The store page for the PS5 currently lists the price information as "currently unavailable," but we still have Geskin's screenshots to go by.

You can't translate the prices 1-to-1. The EU has big import fees and value added tax (VAT). If it's 499 euro it'll be 499 dollars also.
 
How does $565 sound fellas?

Leaker and concept designer Ben Geskin shared images of the PS5's store page on Amazon France. These images put the prices at €499 for the standard PS5 and €399 for the Digital Edition, which converts to $565/£447 and $452/£358 respectively. The store page for the PS5 currently lists the price information as "currently unavailable," but we still have Geskin's screenshots to go by.

It's likely a placeholder. I highly doubt Sony has told anyone the price yet. Most likely, places like this are posting prices based on rumors and speculation. 499 Euros/499 USD sounds believable, but until there is an official announcement take it with a grain of salt.
 
How does $565 sound fellas?

Leaker and concept designer Ben Geskin shared images of the PS5's store page on Amazon France. These images put the prices at €499 for the standard PS5 and €399 for the Digital Edition, which converts to $565/£447 and $452/£358 respectively. The store page for the PS5 currently lists the price information as "currently unavailable," but we still have Geskin's screenshots to go by.
European prices include VAT, which is 20% in France. Subtract the VAT, convert to USD, and you get $468.29 and $374.44 respectively. That is without considering import duties and other fees that is passed to the consumer.
 
This is what I'm expecting for the pricing, but it would be ok if they made them both the same price at $499 or so and give gave us more storage on the digital edition as a trade-off for the drive.

I remember Mark Cerney saying we would still be able to add additional storage to the console as well in his keynote a while back, so if we can still throw an external drive/SSD onto the console to store games on and swap out onto the internal NVME SSD to play as needed, that would be cool and I wouldn't be as concerned with internal storage size, which would also allow them to feasibly get by with only 1TB of storage initially.

He did state none of the drives out now are fast enough, but I think that the newly announced 980 Pro from Samsung should be fast enough. Also, the idea of extra storage for the digital edition would be excellent. I might be willing to consider it if they do go that route. I still prefer physical games when it comes to Sony because of their history with backward compatibility, so I think I'll most likely get the console with the disc drive.
 
Our understanding is that this component (UHD Blu-ray drive) would only shave $20 or so from the BOM (bill of materials)

— Digital Foundry (Eurogamer)

Based on information from our sources, the estimate is that a digital purchase yields the platform holder an extra $8 or so - so in theory, just three or four digital purchases plus the saving from removing the optical drive means that conceivably, Sony could offer a $50 saving on the cost of a PlayStation 5 console. Any more depends on how confident Sony is on how many games will be bought and how much it wants to take away from its profit-per-user across the generation.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-digital-edition-deliver-a-discounted-console

via Forbes

A $399 all-digital would be huge, overshadowing the disc drive and becoming the “default” version of the console. It would mean subsidizing a bigger loss, something Sony seems cautious about.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidt...ce-by-dropping--a-major-feature/#52e782a14c93
 
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He did state none of the drives out now are fast enough, but I think that the newly announced 980 Pro from Samsung should be fast enough.

Yeah, which is why I said the external storage would only be to store the games and swap back into the internal SSD to play when you wanted to. Would be a nice option at least, because you can't cheaply upgrade or add more storage to the console otherwise if they forced you to get high-end NVME drives to do so.

Realistically, given they don't give you more storage on the digital edition console, there should only be a $50 difference at most between the standard and digital PS5, but I wouldn't be surprised if they marked up the standard PS5 by $100 just to push digital sales and help soften the profit loss on the consoles otherwise.
 
Our understanding is that this component (UHD Blu-ray drive) would only shave $20 or so from the BOM (bill of materials)

— Digital Foundry (Eurogamer)



https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-digital-edition-deliver-a-discounted-console

via Forbes



https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidt...ce-by-dropping--a-major-feature/#52e782a14c93
The hardware isn't the only concern with Blu-ray. You also have licensing cost. The reason why Windows still does not support Blu-ray playback natively is because it would add $50 to the end user cost of the software license, if I remember correctly, and Microsoft does not think the demand on PC is enough to justify it.
 
The hardware isn't the only concern with Blu-ray. You also have licensing cost. The reason why Windows still does not support Blu-ray playback natively is because it would add $50 to the end user cost of the software license, if I remember correctly, and Microsoft does not think the demand on PC is enough to justify it.
And yet they have Blu Ray/4k support in the Xbone. Personally don't care about Windows support, since I own AnyDVD and use it or Makemkv to rip all my Blu Ray and 4k disks to my NAS and TBH 100ish for AnyDVD is probably more useful than 50 for a Blu Ray license. Back in the day, I did play movies on my computer, but these days everything is on my TV via my NAS either using VLC or Plex (though I really wish Kodi supported 4k HDR, since it's a much better experience over all).
 
With 800gb of storage, is sony keeping physical media alive? Some of the current gen games are over 100gb, think if next gen, you gonna have 3 games installed and fill up the drive.
 
And yet they have Blu Ray/4k support in the Xbone. Personally don't care about Windows support, since I own AnyDVD and use it or Makemkv to rip all my Blu Ray and 4k disks to my NAS and TBH 100ish for AnyDVD is probably more useful than 50 for a Blu Ray license. Back in the day, I did play movies on my computer, but these days everything is on my TV via my NAS either using VLC or Plex (though I really wish Kodi supported 4k HDR, since it's a much better experience over all).
You mean kodi on your xbone doesn't support 4k hdr?
 
It didn't sell that well. It lost that generation to the 360 in the states at least cause of it.

Yea it took a redesign of the hardware (PS3 Slim), a name/packaging rebrand (get away from that tacky Spider Man font), a price drop and the launch of Uncharted 2 to get it competitive.

I think Sony won’t show their price until MS does then just price match and have the digital version 100 dollars less.

I’m assuming they will be willing to take a loss on that model because of 7+ years of PSN purchases.
 
With 800gb of storage, is sony keeping physical media alive? Some of the current gen games are over 100gb, think if next gen, you gonna have 3 games installed and fill up the drive.
Good question. But I think part of the equation is what is taking all that space?
Textures are a pretty big part of it, and there is a concern that larger (8k) textures will take more space. I think however that texture compression is going up as the speed of decompression is also going up perhaps offesetting or mitigating increased texture sizes. Also asset duplication is no longer needed as assets can be streamed much more quickly.
Prerendered videos are another issue as well. If more game devs start using in engine rendering rather than prerendering that can also cause the size of games to go down. I find most PC games I'm playing average around 25GB with some outliers getting to 40~GB. I expect that most console games will continue to be in that same region. You might have outliers at 100gb. But I highly doubt it will be the average game.
 
Yea it took a redesign of the hardware (PS3 Slim), a name/packaging rebrand (get away from that tacky Spider Man font), a price drop and the launch of Uncharted 2 to get it competitive.

I think Sony won’t show their price until MS does then just price match and have the digital version 100 dollars less.

I’m assuming they will be willing to take a loss on that model because of 7+ years of PSN purchases.
Might have been too much for a gaming rig, but it was a great deal for a blu ray player (and the cheapest available too). My parents have been using theirs for about 13 years just as a BD player and for some streaming channels.
 
And yet they have Blu Ray/4k support in the Xbone. Personally don't care about Windows support, since I own AnyDVD and use it or Makemkv to rip all my Blu Ray and 4k disks to my NAS and TBH 100ish for AnyDVD is probably more useful than 50 for a Blu Ray license. Back in the day, I did play movies on my computer, but these days everything is on my TV via my NAS either using VLC or Plex (though I really wish Kodi supported 4k HDR, since it's a much better experience over all).
Blu-ray playback is baked into the cost on consoles, and the PlayStation 2 established game consoles as a viable platform for movie playback with DVD. The ability to play movies in a video game console is expected now. And as you say, as a PC user you're ripping your movies anyway.
 
Blu-ray playback is baked into the cost on consoles, and the PlayStation 2 established game consoles as a viable platform for movie playback with DVD. The ability to play movies in a video game console is expected now. And as you say, as a PC user you're ripping your movies anyway.
Don't forget about the Philips CD-i and it's capability to play VCDs back in the early 1990s. ;)
 
I always wanted to CD-i so I could play Voyeur. Only played the demo once, I really loved those old FMV games.
 
Good question. But I think part of the equation is what is taking all that space?
Textures are a pretty big part of it, and there is a concern that larger (8k) textures will take more space. I think however that texture compression is going up as the speed of decompression is also going up perhaps offesetting or mitigating increased texture sizes. Also asset duplication is no longer needed as assets can be streamed much more quickly.
Prerendered videos are another issue as well. If more game devs start using in engine rendering rather than prerendering that can also cause the size of games to go down. I find most PC games I'm playing average around 25GB with some outliers getting to 40~GB. I expect that most console games will continue to be in that same region. You might have outliers at 100gb. But I highly doubt it will be the average game.

Last two ps4 games i have purchased have both been dual disc.
 
Last two ps4 games i have purchased have both been dual disc.
Right. And PS4 is still subject to a lot of the issues I mentioned that PS5 and XSX will in theory not have.
To reiterate: no asset duplication. Hopefully less prerendered video. And better compression and decompression of textures.

For clarity what games did you buy that are dual disc? I would say that’s telling.
 
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Right. And PS4 is still subject to a lot of the issues I mentioned that PS5 and XSX will in theory not have.
To reiterate: no asset duplication. Hopefully less prerendered video. And better compression and decompression of textures.

For clarity what games did you buy that are dual disc? I would say that’s telling.
I think RDR2 was a 2 disk install.
 
For clarity what games did you buy that are dual disc? I would say that’s telling.

I'm betting FF7 Remake and RDR2, which are like 2 of 3 to 4 games that spanned across two discs. The only other one I know of is the new TLoU2 game that just came out and Google doesn't seem to know any other games besides those from what I see.

With the few exceptions of those types of games, I don't see average console games peaking 70-80GB in size still for a while. I have like 15 PS4 games installed across my 1.5TBs of HDDs on my PS4, with only a few over 60GB and most of them are under 50GB at the moment and some of them under 10GB.
 
Right. And PS4 is still subject to a lot of the issues I mentioned that PS5 and XSX will in theory not have.
To reiterate: no asset duplication. Hopefully less prerendered video. And better compression and decompression of textures.

For clarity what games did you buy that are dual disc? I would say that’s telling.

FF VII and Last of Us Two. Why would there be asset duplication though? Very confused.
 
FF VII and Last of Us Two. Why would there be asset duplication though? Very confused.
This is a very common "cheat" utilized in consoles. The short answer is so that these consoles that were dependent on CD's, then DVD's, then blu-ray, and now slow spinning HDD's (with current gen, until next gen launches in the fall) could utilize the fastest form of access: sequential read.
As an example a game could use the same "tree asset" over and over in different levels it might be common to have that asset copied multiple times on the same disk at different locations so that when it's loading as you're moving in the world the console doesn't have to try to read locations all over the drive to pull it up. It can instead as I noted use sequential read. Random I/O on CD-ROM or any disc system is REALLY bad. And although spinning HDD is better, still not great when you realize the size of the assets that have to be loaded.
If you can extrapolate from this example of a "tree asset" then you'll understand that this duplication happens for thousands of assets and textures. Enemies, weapons, vegetation, heck your own character model. As a result a lot of the data inside console games is duplicate data and this cheat has also been used on PC games as well, since it's not possible to ensure everyone has an incredibly fast HDD to play games on (although this happens much less often). Some of this stuff is already offset by cache inside of the consoles. So it was probably hyperbole for me to say that your own character model has to be kept multiple times, if it's a third person game your character likely stays in cache always. But for assets in a level? Like I say, a single asset could appear a myriad of times. However it's obvious that memory on consoles is at a premium and any specialized cache even more so. So all of these tricks were utilized in tandem to hide as many of these deficiencies as possible from gamers.

The PS5 and XSX eliminiate this problem by having NVME SSDs at their minimum spec so that these programming and loading "cheats" won't be necessary anymore. That's also why the Unreal 5 running on PS5 demo was impressive. Because all the textures and assets can essentially stream from the HD from anywhere without these developers "cheats". Still, these cheats were definitely an example showing how ingenuity can defeat limitations. Thankfully that won't be necessary anymore, at least for this particular issue. It'll be some other bottleneck now.

The other type of asset duplication can occur because of things like using prerendered video. The original FFVII from the PS1 as an example used literally identical discs between it's 3 discs (back when we only had 700MB available per disc). The only difference between the discs was that each disc contained different pre-rendered CG videos. So really that game was smaller in size than a 1 disc game. Which also adds to my point, that if the PS5 and XSX eliminate (or mostly eliminate) pre-rendered CG then that will also serve to drastically reduce game size.
 
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Also, PS5 games will ship on 100GB discs, so it stands to reason some developers will take advantage and use the space.
 
Also, PS5 games will ship on 100GB discs, so it stands to reason some developers will take advantage and use the space.
I would say 100GB will be more of a cap than an average. I will go out on a limb and say that most PS5 games will likely not even use half that. You can look at the history of other game consoles as well. As I noted FFVII was actually a game much smaller than 700MB. It was just pre-rendered CGI that took a glut of space. Games like Doom 2016 aren’t that big nor or other AAA titles like Control of Battlefield. There isn’t really any evidence that it will balloon that large except in games that have absurdly large asssts, which does happen (most notably in massive sandbox games) but like I say: will not be the average.

One of the things you’re not considering as well even as you say that is the disc-less PS5. That a whole other bag of worms. For that console all sizes of games will be arbitrary. And in theory would only be limited by the total space available. Just like PC. But just like PC, both the disc and non-disc version will really be governed by how much internal storage there is versus how big a BD disc is because both versions will basically require that the game is completely installed on the internal drive in order to run (except perhaps, and most ironically, pre-rendered cut-scene videos).
 
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If true, that's pretty interesting. I no-longer own a 4K Blu-Ray player...but I'm also not sure it's worth $100 for a drive I'll otherwise never use.
$399 is a good price for a brand-new high end system, too.
 
I believe it. Actually sold my 4K player recently in anticipation (only got $80, but it will go toward the PS5).

Have about 20 or 30 UHD discs but I almost never watch any of them since streaming is much more convenient.

Also have a decent size PS4 collection, probably like 50 games, many of them never played so I will want to catch up on PS5.
 
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I would say 100GB will be more of a cap than an average. I will go out on a limb and say that most PS5 games will likely not even use half that. You can look at the history of other game consoles as well. As I noted FFVII was actually a game much smaller than 700MB. It was just pre-rendered CGI that took a glut of space. Games like Doom 2016 aren’t that big nor or other AAA titles like Control of Battlefield. There isn’t really any evidence that it will balloon that large except in games that have absurdly large asssts, which does happen (most notably in massive sandbox games) but like I say: will not be the average.

One of the things you’re not considering as well even as you say that is the disc-less PS5. That a whole other bag of worms. For that console all sizes of games will be arbitrary. And in theory would only be limited by the total space available. Just like PC. But just like PC, both the disc and non-disc version will really be governed by how much internal storage there is versus how big a BD disc is because both versions will basically require that the game is completely installed on the internal drive in order to run (except perhaps, and most ironically, pre-rendered cut-scene videos).

Not just internal storage availability, but the cost of developing assets. Even if you went to a studio and said "Your target system has 128GB VRAM, 1TB system RAM and 500TB of nVME storage" they wouldn't develop a massive game because there isn't the time and resources. It takes artist time to make unique textures, models, etc. That's why you see re-use in games. There is just only so much you can make in terms of art assets, even given unlimited space. So while things may get a little bigger, we are already reaching practical limits of how much you can develop and there are plenty of people warning the AAA budget sizes are getting unsustainable.
 
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