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Why do people believe the PS5 is SO expensive?

Bombolone

Gold Member
I figure at least $599 here in Canada.
I have no clue really.
Controller, design and what it is trying to achieve. 3D audio/ VR immersion whacka ma doodle. Sounds expensive.
 

Robochobo

Member
I wouldn't say it'll cost $599 but the controller itself has to be at least $80 alone unless I'm seriously mistaken. It'll probably be $499 digital while $549 with disc drive.
 

Dodkrake

Banned
High clock GPU that probably has yield issue's, Fast SSD that don't come cheap.

That's why.

And that's why i stated after the released specs that sony's next console is a mess even while everybody is praising it. It's way overenginered and costs way to much to produce which will result in a higher price and less sales and a smaller market as result.

Your first sentence debunks your whole argument and assumption. If yields were bad, they wouldn't double production, and the SSD is composed of 12 slow chips working in tandem. Xbox's SSD is both faster per channel and bigger, which means it's very likely more expensive. The difference is that PS5's SSD has a custom controller for 12 channels and several levels of priority.

That's all.

And please let us know how the console is overengineered since nobody has seen a teardown. You seem to be an expert, enlighten us.
 

Bankai

Member
After Cerny said in his Hour of Power "we have to be responsible in our choices towards consumers, taking cost/price into consideration" (or something like that), I knew: it will be $499.

They won't make the same PS3 mistake(s) again and wne tfor a well-balanced systeem at a good pricepoint.
 

supernova8

Banned
It lost in sales and in the end it lost in mind-share because they dropped the ball. Overall though? The 360 was the better console to play games on, even if the PS3 had better features.

Yeah 360 won that generation in my books. PS3 may have edged it in the end but 360 had enough awesome content + running all the third party stuff + having far better online infrastructure that I didn't feel like I was missing anything not being on PS3. I did get a PS3 towards the end of the generation and it was like "meh.. yeah pretty good".
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Yeah I have a hard time figuring that even an impressive SSD controller and extra cooling are more expensive than an APU that's 25% larger. The cooling was said to go from a part that usually cost a dollar in the PS4 to costing "a few" in the PS5, that's still not a lot, it doesn't cost as much as people think. The APU, the RAM, the storage and motherboard dominate the costs.
 
Yeah 360 won that generation in my books. PS3 may have edged it in the end but 360 had enough awesome content + running all the third party stuff + having far better online infrastructure that I didn't feel like I was missing anything not being on PS3. I did get a PS3 towards the end of the generation and it was like "meh.. yeah pretty good".
I skipped the ps3, by the time it got good and the 360 got crap, the next gen was pretty much here. I picked up a PS4 and played the PS3 games i missed in better graphics!
 

onQ123

Member
It's just another campaign that they are doing so they can claim that whatever price PS5 is only happened because they was scared of Xbox Series S / X
 

Aight

Member
It was $499 with a $599 model with extra memory.

599$ in 2006 is actually 752$ today if you factor in inflation. Thats how expensive it was. And thats what sticks in most peoples head that expect a expensive PS5.
 
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93xfan

Banned
But the SSD is very expensive, there is no way that thing is cheap!

According to who? Do people have insider information about the deals that Sony do with suppliers about the cost?

According to Sony who has to go for a sub 1TB console.
 
$600 PS3 was a long time ago. I don't know why people are still holding on to that.

Three days until we (hopefully) know the price of both PS5 consoles. Whatever the price, the reactions should be interesting.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
Can't you guys just wait three days? :messenger_grinning_squinting:

7b2e8eb3099d8e0d60ed9f28aa65fd7422de0ba8.gif
 

RCU005

Member
According to Sony who has to go for a sub 1TB console.

That's not about price. Also, SSD is still expensive anyway. There's no way anybody could make a console with more than 2TB max without being too expensive. It will take many years until we see prices drop.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Because the ONE time Microsoft and Sony were neck and neck, was because the PS3 was way more expensive.


(the 360 still lost the gen)
360 lost the gen? How so?
It was the better console and both sold almost the same qty by the end with 360 leading first few years.
Besides - multiplats looked and ran better on 360 and it had better exclusives (gears trilogy for example)
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Damn....beat me to it! Il post this one instead:


Hey, at least if they try to scam us with the price we´ll get some good meme material. xD

But now really, I hope the price won't go much higher than 400$. If I buy it it'll be mostly for the exclusives, and spending much more for just that would feel like a real pain.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Because fanboys.
This is basically what it feels like.

Said fans say the PS5 is the superior system, so surely that means better tech and a higher price, right?

Like I've said before, I've never understood fanboy mentality. Video games are video games. I'm happy with whatever path people take that works best for them as long as they're happy and we can even play together (so glad cross-platform exists nowadays). But the whole militant fanboy thing is crazy to me, lmao. Especially when it's an adult passed the age of 25.

At least it provides almost endless entertainment, lol.
 

deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
You guys have to remember that the PS4 was a "old hardware", but despite great sales, it was like $10 of profit at start. PS5 uses expensive stuff, so...

Microsoft has money, but Xbox is probably with a loss selling those consoles for $300 and $500. All Access for two years thou? Chances are that it's safe money for them.

PlayStation doesn't have their own All Access thing, at least until now. It's not impossible, but hard to see they revealing on the 16. PlayStation has money, but Sony itself don't. They can't loose that much, so maybe $500 they bleed too much.
 
There are 4 different reasons why people believe the PS5 could cost over $500:

1) Even with sweetheart deals, designing a new I/O system with a new cooling system backed by a new SSD introduces brand new costs that are unavoidable. So even though component makers will give Sony excellent prices on parts, those prices aren't going to be dirt cheap due to the entirely new system design.

2) While you're 100% right that companies design products with a target price years in advance, there are always internal and external factors that could lead to the price changing. Obviously, the biggest one this time around is COVID-19 and its impact on sourcing, manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, and marketing. So if Sony planned on the PS5 being $450 but the Corona has introduced $50 of unforeseen costs, they (Sony) will have to figure that shit out. One way of 'figuring it out' could be to pass the new costs onto the consumers by pricing the console at $500 or more.

3) You kinda said it yourself -- the PS5 could cost more because people are willing to pay more for the PS5 than the Series X. The people who think a $599.99 PS5 won't sell are the same people who live in the past who unsurprisingly say ass-backwards things like the DualShock 4 should be supported for PS5 games. As another poster mentioned in a separate topic, Xbox fucked up in the worst generation possible. They shat the bed right as service games (e.g. Fortnite) became a massive thing, they shat the bed right as digital purchases on consoles hit an all-time high, and worst of all -- and this is the most important one -- they shat the bed right as Sony came out with multiple 10M+ selling franchises. Through the PS4, Sony successfully regained invaluable brand recommendation and brand confidence that is carrying over to the PS5 due to them (Sony) not fucking up the PS4's beginning, middle, and end. What all of this means is people can and will purchase a $599.99 PS5 because all of their GaaS PS4 games carry over, all of their digital purchases carry over, and all of the heavy hitters on PS4 are going to be on PS5. If Sony's data shows (and it does) people are willing to pay more for the PS5 than the Series X, then they can ask for more money for the PS5.

4) Sony might not be willing to take a loss on the PS5. This is, of course, an unlikely and bad idea because they can make billions in profit from the PSN Store on PS5 -- and those billions only go up as the userbase goes up. However, stranger things have happened, and if Sony decides that profit > marketshare is more important for PS5 then the PS5 won't be sold at a loss. Obviously this is all dependent on how much it costs Sony to make the DE and the standard disc edition and I'm assuming it costs them >$400 to make each.
 
Just let's say, the SSD needs 12 flash chips, because of the way they designed it. One chip may be cheap, but 12 ain't.
The high frequencies. Every chip have to reach then with the given power target.
The big box. It wouldn't be so big if they could reduce the size. Every inch are additional costs (they produce millions of those things) . And it can only be so big because of the cooling solution. Because the Mainboard and the soc should quite small.

What some people are forgetting is that these machines were designed with a target price in mind.

The specs of the PS5 is the result of that target price. They chose to put 825GB of SSD for a reasonand not 1TB or more. 256 bit 16GB RAM made the cut instead of 24GB or higher bandwidth. 36CUs was chosen deliberately to maintain the target price. The current specs wasn't met without regard to the target price.

People at Sony are not out of their mind to target $600-$700. I could see them targeting $500 from the beginning because why not, PS brand is strong anyway. But I think the target from the start was $400 and maybe they went a little beyond their target and miscalculated the 2020 market price of memory chips (both ram and nand). Thankfully though, it seems that prices of memory are beginning to go down again because of the lack of demand from smartphones. Is that why they suddenly increased their supply from 6M to 10M?
 
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WakeTheWolf

Member
But the SSD is very expensive, there is no way that thing is cheap!

According to who? Do people have insider information about the deals that Sony do with suppliers about the cost?

When the Xbox Series X specs were announced and said it was a 12TF console, everyone was saying the thing wouldn't cost less that $600 USD. However, they are selling it at $499 (with people even believing that they could cut the price in response to Sony because they showed an ERP).

But Microsoft is so big they can afford to lose more money on each console!
According to who? Do people have insider information about how much money are companies willing to lose on each product they make?

Then, there's the fact that people ignore, which is that EVERY COMPANY that develops a product, they have to design each product based on a target price. They don't make a product out of gold and say, " Oh well, I guess we'll have to sell it at $10,000". They KNOW they need to hit a selling price point, and they need to design the product around that target. If the product goes higher than that, it will only be approved if they are willing to take the loss, they will never allow to build a product with the mindset that they will sell it at a higher price (unless the market allows it).

I'll make sure to edit and add the link when I find it, but there was an interview with Mark Cerny about the PS4 design, and he said that they were set on selling it at $400, and they had to make compromises to make sure they hit that target. Of course it will be the same for the PS5

There is no way that Sony didn't want to limit themselves to a $400. If they approved a $500 console, it's because, like I wrote above, the market allows it. How do they know the market allows it? They spend a lot of money doing market research.

Then, there's the fact that the PS5 Digital Edition exists. If they were willing to do two models, it had to be because they still wanted to hit a target price. If they knew they could go to $500, but still wanted to hit $400, they do a lowered SKU. Why did Microsoft make the Series S? Because they wanted a lower price point, but this time, they needed to lower the specs to hit THAT low of a price point. Sony might be able to take the cost of a Disc Drive.

Another thing that it's important to take into consideration, is that Sony could make a 50TF, 40 GB Ram console and sell it at $3,000 USD. Of course there might be people who says "Wow! 50TF at JUST three thousand dollars? that's a steal!, but is that something that Sony would want as a business? Is that the market they want to be in? The answer is NO!.

The market Sony wants is the market Sony has, and it's 100 million big. They want to keep as much as possible. They know that 100 million people are willing to pay $400 for their console. They are so willing to pay it, that Sony did NOT have any real price cut the entire generation! So, what makes you think they will say " whatever, we will sell the PS5 at $600!"

IMO, the most realistically price point the PS5 can be is $399 for the PPS5 DE and $499 for the PS5. If course they can say "Fuck it! and announce that it will be higher", but of course they haven't done anything that would point they'd do that.
I believe they could go as low as 399 and 349
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
I think it’s all about some weird connection to Price = Performance .
they still don’t think the XbX will be more powerful. That there is some kind of secret sauce that would obviously cost more to manufacture.

Or maybe we are all just stupid! 🤷‍♂️
 

Raonak

Banned
Sony's done an excellent job making PS5 seem more premium than the Xbox. That's why people will think it's more expensive.

Truth is it's perfectly balanced.

The GPU is smaller/cheaper than the Xbox, but it's running higher frequencies. Which means more heat, which means better cooling.... But that still makes it cheaper than going for a bigger GPU.

SSD is going for speed over size. Controller is more advanced I'll give it that.
 
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Dnice1

Member
Sony not coming in at $599 is just leaving money on the table. They are going to sellout at just about any "reasonable" price. There's a lot of exotic design decisions going to with the PS5. Whether its the SSD, the rumored cooling solution, and whole new controller design with some cutting edge features.

$399/$499 would just be an necessary loss when they are in a position to make major profit for day one. #classofitsown
 

blastprocessor

The Amiga Brotherhood
Look you remember what Cerny said on his PS5 presentation.....

"We have a responsibility to our gaming audience to be cost effective when it comes to what we put inside the console"
 
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