Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due to Costly Parts

$399

So for 100 bucks more, you can get a not shitty, actual next gen console.
Yeah the moment that Series S was announced my mind went to $399 for discless PS5, kind of the most obvious place Sony was going to go.

Somewhere Phil Spencer is standing in a shower, head down low, just letting the water run over him.

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Smart presenation, no BS, no silly stuff. Ready to preorder.
 
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PS5 looks next-gen. No doubt.

I'm curious of course how many titles will be able to achieve 4k 60p. I imagine very few. Although I'm sure certain titles will prioritize FPS over fidelity - things like Overwatch 2 or Racing Titles will likely at least allow the option to have higher FPS over highest detail. This might be the first console I actually want to buy at launch for over 10 years. If this system supports KB/M natively though-out, then I might just pick this over updating PC - although my hand might get tipped the other way if I can get an absurd RDNA 2 card for $500 that exceeds my Radeon VII.
 
Eh. Depends. Sony is pretty good with sales. Base prices don't drop quickly, but things go on sale often.
This is also ignoring the entire used game market. In which it's possible to buy "discounted games" at a further fraction of the original price. If you can't see how you'd be able to "get your $100 back" over the lifetime of the system, I can't help you.

Yes. Discounts increase game sales.
Discounts increase break even points and also decrease profit on each unit sold. The point isn't necessarily to sell more: it's to increase profit. This is why Nintendo as an example rarely if ever wants or needs to give sales, because they're confident in their platform. In order for a game sale to be worth it, a significant amount of people that wouldn't have otherwise purchased the game need to then buy it in addition to the people that would otherwise buy it in order to offset the the reduction in price lost per unit sold.
 
Buying disc based games will save you more than $100.
With current gen disc based game have dropped in price pretty damn quick. $40 after a months is typical and a lot can be had for $20-25 after 6 months. Digital sales don't come offend enough either. Plus you can resell the game after a week and get most of it back on Facebook MP.
 
This is also ignoring the entire used game market. In which it's possible to buy "discounted games" at a further fraction of the original price. If you can't see how you'd be able to "get your $100 back" over the lifetime of the system, I can't help you.


Discounts increase break even points and also decrease profit on each unit sold. The point isn't necessarily to sell more: it's to increase profit. This is why Nintendo as an example rarely if ever wants or needs to give sales, because they're confident in their platform. In order for a game sale to be worth it, a significant amount of people that wouldn't have otherwise purchased the game need to then buy it in addition to the people that would otherwise buy it in order to offset the the reduction in price lost per unit sold.
Sales are for the people who would never pay full price and rather stick it out for a lower price. It's kinda dumb how even after 3 years Nintendo still doesn't budge one price. Everyone who brought the game at $60 already brought it. Give the cheapskates a break Nintendo! Also some companies feel having sales devalue their brand. Apple is another example that rarely puts their crap on sale. Even continues to sale 6 hea old outdated computers for the same retarded price.
 
I'm liking the pricing - and yeah, seems like the logical choice where to go after MS revealed their pricing. Loving the competition!

Curious to see how that $100 difference will affect sales. Sure, it's only $100, but for most consumers who can't see the difference between 1080p and 4k (or care), that's a lot.

Also, it seems like MS should release a disc-less version of their Series X and match Sony at all price points.

With all that said, God of War 5 for 2021 would be getting me to buy a PS5 over XSX.
 
Basically everything they showed will also be coming to the PC. I'm going to get one anyway, but I think that's fantastic news.
 
I'm liking the pricing - and yeah, seems like the logical choice where to go after MS revealed their pricing. Loving the competition!

Curious to see how that $100 difference will affect sales. Sure, it's only $100, but for most consumers who can't see the difference between 1080p and 4k (or care), that's a lot.

Also, it seems like MS should release a disc-less version of their Series X and match Sony at all price points.

With all that said, God of War 5 for 2021 would be getting me to buy a PS5 over XSX.

I think, at least right now, Sony has this. They're still bringing money to bare with exclusive content and shit for multi-plats, they put on one hell of a show, and they're actually showing the goods (gameplay). As long as Sony has stock I think the PS5 will be be big winner this holiday season and probably though Year 1 of the generation. MS needs to find something that they can use to sell their systems besides "$100 cheaper" and "teh strongest console evar" cause that's not going to do it.
 
Sales are for the people who would never pay full price and rather stick it out for a lower price. It's kinda dumb how even after 3 years Nintendo still doesn't budge one price. Everyone who brought the game at $60 already brought it. Give the cheapskates a break Nintendo! Also some companies feel having sales devalue their brand.
In economic principles yes - this is true. Which is why I stated in what you quoted that there has to be enough people that wouldn't buy it at full price in addition to the people that would, are necessary for sales to be worth it. That is also combined with the factor you brought up - at some point everyone that would buy it at full price has already done so, and the only way to continue actually getting units sold is to offer a discount.

tl;dr: We agree.

Apple is another example that rarely puts their crap on sale. Even continues to sale 6 hea old outdated computers for the same retarded price.
Apple literally doesn't do this on any product. Only on their latest hardware do they tend to not give discounts - however most of their third party official sellers do. It's not uncommon to see sales on computer hardware at B&H as an example. And obviously carriers discount phones and watches constantly as part of plans and promotions.

If this is 'commentary' that Apple hardware is behind, that is also patently not true either. As Apple currently has the best SOCs of any platform. And they more or less have updated their entire computer product stack within the past year with the notable exceptions of the Mac Mini, and MBA, which are both expected to either be discontinued or be updated first or near first in the transition to ARM.
 
Man, ... $399... that's like 2080 territory worth of GPU + the entire rest of the system. Honestly, that's a decent price, if only I could install full blown windows on this and run it as a computer instead it would have made a great portable gaming PC ;).
 
Until the disc-less version gets a price drop to $300, I'm not buying - but I think it's the better way to go than Xbox (rather than a significantly cut-down hardware revision).

I guess Sony are doing the same thing they did with PS4 (some failed units are built-in to the spec), while Xbox is probably going for fully-enabled for $500, and massive-cut for $300?
 
Who the fuck needs to upgrade a PC every 2-3 years? Stop spreading bullshit. You are on a hardware enthusiast forum. Of course more people are going to be talking about getting more value out of a platform they prefer and play more on than consoles. If you don't like hardware enthusiasts talking about hardware enthusiast things there are other forums you can visit.

There's a difference between simply saying you prefer PC gaming and what some people here have done, which is to trash consoles as a "lesser" experience and argue that you're a bad person if you like them.

Also, let's not kid ourselves -- if you want the full PC gaming experience for the overall life of a machine, you can't just hold on to a configuration as-is for several years. Newer games will choke on the GPU; you may run into RAM limits; hell, there's a chance some games will require (or strongly recommend) SSDs in a few years. Yeah, console games only really improve visually due to developer optimization, but there is a certain beauty to knowing the PS5 you bought on launch should still be playing games well toward the end of its lifecycle.
 
There's a difference between simply saying you prefer PC gaming and what some people here have done, which is to trash consoles as a "lesser" experience and argue that you're a bad person if you like them.

Also, let's not kid ourselves -- if you want the full PC gaming experience for the overall life of a machine, you can't just hold on to a configuration as-is for several years. Newer games will choke on the GPU; you may run into RAM limits; hell, there's a chance some games will require (or strongly recommend) SSDs in a few years. Yeah, console games only really improve visually due to developer optimization, but there is a certain beauty to knowing the PS5 you bought on launch should still be playing games well toward the end of its lifecycle.

Unless you're playing at the bleeding edge, no you really don't need to worry about upgrading often. I mean, hell, there are still people using 970s to play modern games and that card is older than a PS4. There are people still using Haswell or FX CPUs in gaming rigs.

Edit: The "full" PC gaming experience is whatever the person playing games wants it to be. There is no default "games have to be played this way, at these settings in order to be proper" for PC gaming.
 
I'm sure it is lower than the 100% markup, it usually is more things that are expensive, not large/heavy, and sold in large numbers... However it is still more than you'd think. While stores may not make much profit, there is still just a lot of costs. I mean you look at Target and their profit margins are usually about 3-4% after all is said and done. Business is just expensive. If you look at their balance sheet their gross revenue is $85 billion but it's gross profit is only $23 billion. Revenue is the amount of money taken in from sales, gross profit is what is left over after you subtract out the variable costs like the cost of purchasing the goods, credit card fees, shipping, etc, etc. Then when you subtract out taxes, interest on debt, fixed costs like mortgages, repairs, all that other jazz total actual "income" is $3.5 billion.

It is just a lot of money to run a business so while markup does vary per item (some like cables are waaaay over 100%) they still have to have a pretty significant markup for everything to pay all the costs. Goes double in this day and age of digital sales, where stores don't get as many sales on those. That aside they can't afford to take a loss on the product sold because they can't gamble on you making any additional purchases from them. Sony knows if you are buying PS5 games, you are, indirectly, paying their license fee. However you can buy a PS5 at Target and then never buy another related accessory or game there.

Regardless, just making people aware that if the PS5 really is costing Sony $450ish to produce, that a $500 sale price is a significant loss to them, despite how it might seem, because they aren't selling it to stores for $500.

I worked in retail, and it was generally understood that was no markup/minimal profit on consoles. That's why we were expected to push attachments so hard (controllers etc) where there is often a 50-100% markup
 
Just an FYI that multiple retailers in Canada have opened up their pre-orders for the PS5. Digital versions are sold out but disc drive versions are still open, got mine pre-ordered now lol
 
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i'm drunk, so mods might delete, but this type of shit is so fucking lame. There is 100% bots hammering every pre-order site buying up all the stock to scalp. I'm over it. This shit is infuriating. The amount of loyalty i've shown to Sony over the last 25 years is insane, and i can't even get that gratification of opening a ps5 on launch day. What kind of loyalty is this. I've spent over 20k just on projectors for my theater room, not to mention every sony console, (even that turd playstation tv) televisions, receivers, speakers. Hell i even have a sony effin credit card. No ps5 though.

Lame
 
Are there going to be any decent launch games for the PS5? I don't see a reason to get this right away. None of the good games are coming out in 2020.
 
Period. Sony corrected and yanked the trailer, etc. It was a human error, and NOT coming.

https://kotaku.com/demons-souls-remake-also-coming-to-pc-timed-exclusive-1845082896
It's not coming at launch, sweetie. But it'll come eventually - they just jumped the gun and announced too early, ala Death Stranding and Horizon. The information was a little too specific to just be a 'typo'. Understandably they want to sell as many launch PS5's as possible.

Further discussion here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/demons-souls-2020.2001360/
 
It's not coming at launch, sweetie. But it'll come eventually - they just jumped the gun and announced too early, ala Death Stranding and Horizon. The information was a little too specific to just be a 'typo'. Understandably they want to sell as many launch PS5's as possible.

Further discussion here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/demons-souls-2020.2001360/

Right, that's why they went out of their way to clarify its definitely not coming. The portion added to the video was generic Copy pasta bumpers. We can believe what we want and hope, but they were very quick to shut this down and very explicit with the only ps5. This is the only evidence we have at the moment.
 
Right, that's why they went out of their way to clarify its definitely not coming. The portion added to the video was generic Copy pasta bumpers. We can believe what we want and hope, but they were very quick to shut this down and very explicit with the only ps5. This is the only evidence we have at the moment.

They said the same thing about Death Stranding.
 
i'm drunk, so mods might delete, but this type of shit is so fucking lame. There is 100% bots hammering every pre-order site buying up all the stock to scalp. I'm over it. This shit is infuriating. The amount of loyalty i've shown to Sony over the last 25 years is insane, and i can't even get that gratification of opening a ps5 on launch day. What kind of loyalty is this. I've spent over 20k just on projectors for my theater room, not to mention every sony console, (even that turd playstation tv) televisions, receivers, speakers. Hell i even have a sony effin credit card. No ps5 though.

Lame

Same thing every time a new generation of hardware is released, whether console or PC component. I gave up on launch days long ago because you cannot beat the Chinese bots and scummy resellers. Even preorder windows are a fucking joke now since they are bought out instantly because there are morons who will pay for the preorder slot.
 
i'm drunk, so mods might delete, but this type of shit is so fucking lame. There is 100% bots hammering every pre-order site buying up all the stock to scalp. I'm over it. This shit is infuriating. The amount of loyalty i've shown to Sony over the last 25 years is insane, and i can't even get that gratification of opening a ps5 on launch day. What kind of loyalty is this. I've spent over 20k just on projectors for my theater room, not to mention every sony console, (even that turd playstation tv) televisions, receivers, speakers. Hell i even have a sony effin credit card. No ps5 though.

Lame
What's lame is crying over not being able to purchase something on release day.
 
The funny thing is that it's not really PlayStation versus Xbox, it's people trying to argue that a $2,000 gaming PC which needs upgrades every 2-3 years (not to mention considerably more software hassles) is somehow a better value for everyday gamers than a $500 console that might never need to be touched for 5-7 years.
 
Will they be after they have a bunch of people that can't purchase disc games?

For the same reason Nintendo Game Store has to mostly match Steam Sales. With so many Steam ports driving the platform, they have to keep pace (while offering smaller discounts on first-party games).

PS Store tends to follow those same sales periods, because the last thing you want to do is look like you only care about maxing your profits; the purpose of an online community+store like Steam is to provide you with the occasional unexpected bit of wonder, NOT just managing your AAA game library

If you can't begin to compete with Steam, then folks will forget you-even exist (see Windows Store). PS Store has the advantage of being a closed platform, but they still have to PRETEND to play the Steam Game if the want folks to buy into this long-term,

People who buy the system later in life will almost certainly get a better deal from going Discless (launch games will be cheap by then), but I agree that Early Adopters will have to run the numbers to decide.
 
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