Study estimates PS5 price should be $229, as modern consoles defy history with cost increases

[Redaktion]

In past generations, many consoles became cheaper within a few years after release. Instead, gamers are contending with a PS5 price increase and more expensive Xbox and Switch systems. A new study reveals how much cheaper today's consoles would be if they followed historical trends.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Study-estimates-PS5-price-should-be-229-as-modern-consoles-defy-history-with-cost-increases.1101081.0.html

[opckieran]

Consoles up until about 10 years ago weren't x86-based powerhouses. The earliest consoles relied on simple ASICS or chips whose cost was negotiated well in advance and were cheap to source from the get-go. Those got cheaper because manufacturing costs improved significantly; video gaming being a new industry which was still figuring itself out AND dealing with the crash of 1983.

Even at the start of the 3D era you didn't immediately have SOCs built on expensive, highly advanced, highly contested processes like you do today. You still had many different accelerators which could be sourced cheaply because the chips were still relatively simple and fabrication was still cheap at the time, the PS3 being the notable sole exception with its Cell processor architecture.

The Switch was already comparatively cheaper than PS4/XBone at the time, yet far more intricate and involved (the console had modalities beyond just being a set-top box that Nintendo had to engineer too). In addition to this, it s was clear that Nintendo knew they had a winner on their hands with it so they refused to budge on pricing.

[indyp]

This doesn't make much sense...

If say Microsoft, sitting in the last place position, could release a console cheaper for users, they would.  They could potentially steal Market share from Nintendo(low end) and Sony(High End).  But they aren't.

Sony, risking alienation with such a high console price, would risk massive revenue loss if they priced too high.  But they haven't.  Their marketshare has INCREASED, even given console price increases.

Nintendo, serving the "low end" market, risks losing vast swaths of their userbase by pricing too high, and yet they also haven't, they too have had great success with their pricing strategy.

So I'm questioning this article's premise.  The market pays what the market will bear.  And it is bearing this price.

Also inflation is (in my opinion,) vastly under-reported, and cumulative.  So a price increase can have compounding effects for a console, given all the dynamics that goes into making a reliable and popular console.

Thankfully, games themselves are more numerous and the cheapest they've ever been.  I can populate my steam Deck with hundreds of really, really good games for $100-$300.   That is going to last me the life of the console.  That is far cheaper than the equivalent on Nintendo's first game system, which didn't really offer cheap games.

[JLThom]

Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft knows their products are far more than gaming consoles today. Consumers stream YouTube vids/TV, Netflix, Apple+, Amazon Prime, etc using their consoles as well. So games, tv, movies, sports is the general consumer addiction. Their newest devices easily offer all of that.

There's a ton of handheld emulator consoles flooding the market at the $100-$200-$300 ranges now. The (big) players see little reason to worry about the cheaper consoles when consumers continue to buy at the higher prices regardless of the increases.

[Talking Points]

Consoles up until about 10 years ago weren't x86-based powerhouses.

The OG Xbox was.

fabrication was still cheap at the time

There's no competition now, it's just TSMC. They're so far ahead that nobody can really catch up. A government subsidized trillion dollar Taiwanese company.

It certainly doesn't help to sanction China when to produce a lot of these SoCs and manufacturer many of the components you need rare earth metals. In addition, starting war with Russia and bombing multiple countries in middle east.

Then you've these massive AI companies (Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc) building their own custom silicon ASIC hardware for their specialized LLM workloads. These companies have near unlimited supply of cash. It would not surprise me if the amount of materials needed to build their massive cloud data centres is putting a serious strain on the the very supply chains that all other companies use to build electronics.

I would think all the above current events are having some effect on costs.

This doesn't make much sense...

It does though. None of this is even gaming specific because the price of everything outside of gaming has also gotten a lot more expensive too.

This means it's more a global economic trend issue. The solution to this isn't going to be a simple as sorting something out specific within the gaming space but something much bigger and outside of it.

If say Microsoft, sitting in the last place position, could release a console cheaper for users

They only care about having as many gamepass subscriptions as possible and being the publisher of every game / having every game on every platform store front. I don't think they have any interest in selling hardware anymore.

[Bob123]

Blame Trump and his stupid a** tariffs causing economic upheaval around the world. Costs for everything is going up everywhere.