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PlayStation (Games) Sony

Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due To Costly Parts (bloomberg.com) 88

Scarce components have pushed the manufacturing costs for Sony's next PlayStation to around $450 per unit, forcing a difficult price-setting decision in its battle with Microsoft, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing sources. From the report: The Japanese conglomerate is preparing to gradually replace the six-year-old PS4 console, releasing its PlayStation 5 the same holiday season its archrival debuts the upcoming Xbox Series X. Sony typically finalizes a console's price in February of the release year, followed by mass production in the spring. With the PS5, the company is taking a wait-and-see approach, said the people, asking not to be named because the details are private. The PS4, released in 2013 at a retail price of $399, was estimated by IHS Markit to cost $381 to manufacture. With the $450 unit cost and a similar gross margin, the PlayStation 5's retail price would have to be at least $470. That would be a hard sell to consumers, considering Sony's most expensive machine now is the $399.99 PS4 Pro and is often discounted, according to Macquarie Capital analyst Damian Thong.
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Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due To Costly Parts

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  • by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Friday February 14, 2020 @10:25AM (#59728084)

    Please Sony, please give us a powerful PS5 with ray tracing and awesome fast SSD goodies like AMD multi-this and that. Make a machine for the next 7 years. Or 4 at least. Do not enshitten this your flagship to keep up with Microsoft. Let them take the second-place. As for you, just stay awesome, my friends.

    • by Tomahawk ( 1343 )

      The issue here is that normal people will look at both consoles and see a price tag. Many don't really care about the specific specs.
      Given a PS5 and an Xbox X size by side with a $50 price difference, the XBox is going to win out, because that's what matters to most people first.
      So it's important that Sony can produce a box that can compete on price first, and specs second.

      • by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Friday February 14, 2020 @10:34AM (#59728116)

        By this logic Super Nintendo Classic retro machine for $79.99 will take over the world. I do not think that will happen.

        • The difference in graphics between an SNES and a PS5 is pretty obvious.

          The difference in graphics between a PS5 and an XboxOneX is going to be subtle, to say the least. So the cheaper box is going to win out. Even the availability of specific games on a given console doesn't matter much anymore, because all of the big games come out on all the consoles.

          In my opinion, a plateau was reached with the PS3/Xbox 360 generation. Yes, graphics have gotten better, but not THAT much. The limitation has really become

          • by Kjella ( 173770 )

            In my opinion, a plateau was reached with the PS3/Xbox 360 generation. Yes, graphics have gotten better, but not THAT much. The limitation has really become how much time/money a developer has to spend on game development. Seriously...is there anyone besides the usual "graphics whores" that are unhappy with the way PS4 games look? And how do you explain the success of the Switch, which has the "worst" graphics of any of the current generation consoles? Never mind that "Breath of the Wild" is prettier than almost any other game.

            I started out with the C64 and there's definitively a diminishing gain, but never really a plateau. All through the 90s was a whirlwind of upgrades but I still was impressed with ES3: Morrowind in 2002, ES5: Skyrim in 2011 and RDR2 in 2018. I'm sure they can find something to take it to the next level in 2025 too. That said, you can definitively make fun and great games in a cartoon format. I mean Minecraft is a huge hit now, but for things like a racing simulator or anything else that's in the "real world"

            • Realism doesn't save a bad game. Fun does.

              Graphics are a selling point but it doesn't keep you around playing if the gameplay is crap.

              There is a _reason_ Minecraft with its crappy 8-bit graphics has sold 180 Million copies.

              * Dynamic World
              * User-driven narrative
              * Automation
              * Mods

              Will this generation of console games look prettier? Yup. And most of them will continue to suck be -- be it glorified genocide simulators or some other obnoxious grind.

            • If you think the graphics difference between PS3 and PS4 isn't big, you really have some bad eyesight.. It's just as big as the difference between the PS1 and PS2, and PS2 and PS3... I've grown up with all consoles, starting with the old Philips Odyssey 2001 (which was basically PONG).. My jaw drops when I see games like Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4/Xbox One. Saying that there isn't much difference between PS3 and PS4 is really just dumb..
          • The difference in graphics between a PS5 and an XboxOneX is going to be subtle, to say the least.

            True.

            So the cheaper box is going to win out.

            Totally false.

            Sony could have a console that costs $100 more and still easily win. Why? Game ecosystems.

            Sony simply has an ecosystem far enough removed from the PC, that people are willing to buy that console for the exclusives and simply unique things that it offers.

            The Xbox is in a tactically bad situation, because while it also has a good ecosystem of games much o

            • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

              > Sony simply has an ecosystem far enough removed from the PC

              Do they? Because they've started getting ready to release Playstation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn for PC, and those that they don't port directly are still playable on PC via Now.

              • Do they?

                When is Dreams coming to the PC again?

                And while HZD is out for the PC, don't you think the PS 5 will have an exclusive on that for some time.

                Stuff that is exclusive for a year and then eventually released elsewhere, is good marketing material for the original release platform when followups come out.

          • OF COURSE you can choose between 1914 Chateau Lafitte Rothschild versus Two Buck Chuck. Wine reached a plateau decades ago. You can argue it's been downhill from there.

            But I still wouldn't play Fortnite on a PS3. I do like my games stupid fast and more bettter all the time.

            • OF COURSE you can choose between 1914 Chateau Lafitte Rothschild versus Two Buck Chuck.

              The thing is that a LOT of people could barely tell the difference in a taste test (if at all) and that goes for self-styled wine snobs.

              Look at some of the blind taste tests done and have a good laugh at all the experts who preferred a $20 bottle of truck wine over the $300 bottle of highly-rated name brand wine. Watching them wax poetic over something that is delivered by the pallet at Costco is hilarious.

              Yes, a true connoisseur can probably tell the difference but true connoisseurs are about as common as

          • So the cheaper box is going to win out. Even the availability of specific games on a given console doesn't matter much anymore, because all of the big games come out on all the consoles.

            There's two things that drove my choice in picking the PlayStation over the Xbox, and I'm sure there are many others that feel the same: Exclusive games and the controller. Sony's exclusives are much better (G.O.W, Uncharted, Last of Us, Spiderman, etc.) than Microsoft's, and the PS4 controller is much better than the Xbox controller. The Xbox controller has gotten better, but I just can't get used to the asymmetric joysticks. PSVR is also a big plus for me as well.

          • by Aereus ( 1042228 )

            If that is actually true, then why did the Xbone do so poorly? And the biggest thing people comment on is the lack of games? The Xbox is now essentially the realm of "kids who play Minecraft" and "dudebros who only care about sports games and COD"

    • The new Xbox is supposed to be right in the same $450-500 price range .... so as long as they the same or not alot more than M$ they should be ok.

      • by dstyle5 ( 702493 )
        Xbox has a cheaper Xbox coming in addition to the Series X. I don't think they have given it a name yet, but it could help them as not everyone can afford a Series X Xbox. Rumors were circulating last year that Microsoft was not going to make the cheaper Xbox, but it seems in the last few months sounds like they are going to make the cheaper Xbox. Maybe the rumors are false, but having 2 SKUs makes sense to me. I'm sure parents would love being able to buy the cheaper model for their kiddos at Christmas.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by hattig ( 47930 )

      If Sony are having to deal with higher costs for DRAM, Flash and so on, then Microsoft will be as well.

      Some/many rumours suggest the XBox Series X will have more RAM as well, so they will be affected even more. And it's rumoured to have a larger die (making it more powerful) which again will cost more.

      The hardware for the PS5 and the XBox 4 (Series X my arse!) has been set in stone for a year at least by now, so they'll be living with the outcome of their choice, lucky or not.

      But both companies will sell at

    • Hey, if a USB charger can run the Apollo command module I'm sure it can handle a Kerble space program first person shooter.

      • Yes, but will it run Linux?
        • Yes, but will it run Linux?

          Only at launch, and only the flavor intended by the manufacturer (which you have to purchase the disc for);
          They'll flash support out of the firmware soon afterwards.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • problem with Sony is Playstation is really all they have, quality going to shit

        Not sure what planet you are from, but on Earth here the PS quality has remained pretty high, and Sony was the studio that put out the best of the Marvel movies (Spiderman).

        Sony at this point really can't afford a price war with a monster the size of MSFT at this time.

        A "monster" the size of MSFT BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA!

        Both have enough money that any claims one has an advantage in that regard a

        • ahhhhh you do realise MS could buy Sony outright with plenty of spare change just from their cash on hand. In no way are both in similar monetary situations. MS could spend billions and it not affect their core business or financial situation at all. Sony would be bankrupt.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • you just spelled a recipe for financial disaster for them. I hope for their sake they take the sane approach to keep the playerbase.
  • The problem with any potential PS5 is that there's very few games that can benefit from the upgrades, so what new game could do something with PS5 that they couldn't do with PS4?

    • It means PS5 games can be what current PS4 games are on their PC versions... ie. look at GTA5 or Red Dead 2 on PC vs. their current console counterparts.
    • by rho ( 6063 )

      My last console was a Wii. Got a PS4 last Christmas for the family, everybody loves it too. We play a lot of co-op games, so "graphics" isn't really a big deal.

      I'm sure the PS5 will do fine, but I'm certainly not going to dump a perfectly good working console for the new shiny because the graphics are better. Heck, I'm putting together a retro box so the kids can play some of the old classics like Metroid and Zelda. Fun is priority one.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by JDeane ( 1402533 )

          Just spend a bit more and get a SNES Classic. I got one and it's so easy to "hack" but after playing with it for a few hours, I realized just using my Shield TV was a lot more fun for me (access to all the systems and 500GB's of storage...)

          For kids though I would totally recommend the SNES classic hacked to add more games. The reason for that is the ease of use once set up its a lot easier for kids VS emulation or those Chinese clones... My grand kids love the old games but to play emulation stuff it means

    • Most obviously, there are two benefits: faster load times due to a switch to an SSD, and ray tracing due to the use of a modern GPU.

      Do either of those enable entirely new types of games? Nope, and I'm with you in thinking that the PS4 is still a very capable machine. Even so, with Sony making it backwards compatible with the PS4, there's very little reason NOT to upgrade for those who can afford it, if only so that they can play new games as they come out. And the PS5 does have a few tweaks to its controlle

      • You can easily put an SSD in a PS4, or even a PS3 for that matter.

        • Sure, and many of us have replaced our existing drives with new ones, either to gain capacity or performance. It doesn't come with one, however, nor is it an upgrade that's supported by Sony, so it remains something that's a benefit of the PS5.

          • They could easily make new PS4s with SSDs.

          • Sure, and many of us have replaced our existing drives with new ones, either to gain capacity or performance. It doesn't come with one, however, nor is it an upgrade that's supported by Sony, so it remains something that's a benefit of the PS5.

            What do you mean it isn't supported by Sony? Sony has a web page showing you exactly how to replace/upgrade the drive on a PS4, and provides the bootable image to restore from a USB stick. I've done multiple drive upgrades on my PS4 Pro and it works fine. https://support.playstation.co... [playstation.com]

        • I've read the hard drive is connected internally to the USB 3 bus in the PS4, so swapping it out for an SSD won't make as much difference as you'd think. Hopefully the PS5 will have a regular NVMe slot for the SSD.

          • After the hard drive on my 2012 Mac Mini stopped working I replaced it with a SSD connected to the USB3 port (because replacing the hard drive inside would be a difficult and risky process) and the computer was vastly faster with an SSD over USB then HD over SATA. The difference was much larger then the difference when I upgraded the memory from 4GB to 16GB.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • I put an SSD in my PS4 Pro, and it does make a noticeable difference in load times. I noted the times with the stock drive on 4-5 games, then re-timed it with the SSD and it was around 30-50% faster with the SSD. It's not a "Holy Crap!" improvement, but it's noticeably faster than with the stock drive. And with 1TB SSD drives well under $100 it was worth it to me. I have heard that the improvement on the stock PS4 isn't as dramatic though, but never tried it when I had a regular PS4.
        • by samdu ( 114873 )

          The PS3 and PS4 aren't designed around an SSD, so the net result isn't quite as substantial as you might expect. An SSD in a PS4 does improve loading times, just not as much as it will in the PS5.

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        But ray tracing and HDR is good. The new 4K and 8K displays need something to sell them.
        The new games need a new display to fully show their creative content.
        Thats 3 things to sell: new game playing hardware, a new 4/8K display and games that are ready for next gen hardware.
        Its the hardware, 4/8K and new games that people have to crave to upgrade.
        A new display that understands its got a new game connected thats expecting advanced HDR support and has a display setting ready for that.
        Thats works with
    • A lot of games can benefit from better graphics.
      By your logic, all games should be able to run on the PS3 too.

    • The processing power is limited on these 6 year old systems, even the Pro doesn't get it much higher. This affects physics and animation quite a bit. RAM is a hindrance as well.

      In addition they are promising high speed storage that will affect how data is streamed in to the game allowing for much larger worlds with more going on.

      With VR, we're not seeing Half Life Alyx come to PS4 because of the requirement for more powerful hardware.

      When you look at many games that aren't able to reach 4k 60fps on today's

    • by samdu ( 114873 )

      Every. Single. Console. Generation. That's how often we hear this exact same thing.

      • You didn't hear that when the first consoles came out. For example, everyone could clearly see how much better the Intellivision was compared to the Atari 2600. Or how the SNES was light-years ahead of the NES.

    • I agree. I can't remember wishing any of my PS4 games ran better. Skyrim on PS3 was too slow, but it all looked good enough to me.
  • Can what to come out. Only another 58 years to release.
  • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday February 14, 2020 @10:48AM (#59728164)

    Wasn't the PS3 selling for $600 at launch?

    • That seems to be my recollection as well, but the PS3 didn't really take off until late in that generation (eventually passing the Xbox 360 in sales numbers VERY late in the generation), due to a combination of:
      - Needing a few price drops before it was affordable
      - Not enough must-have exclusives for the first few years
      - Needing a few years for the development tools to mature/exist so that they could properly take advantage of the difficult-to-develop-for Cell architecture

      Sony's hubris was on full display wi

    • by Anonymous Coward

      No, it was FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE U. S. DOLLARS [youtube.com]

      Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like yelling.

    • by fenrif ( 991024 )

      Yes, a Sony exec, when asked about the price made a statement to the effect of "the console is so good people will get a second job to afford to pay for it!" People did not.

    • Wasn't the PS3 selling for $600 at launch?

      Indeed and it had a very rough launch. It launched for the holiday season and the already mature at the time Xbox360 absolutely dominated it in sales that holiday to say nothing of the Wii which roared Nintendo back into relevancy.

      The following year after a big discount the PS3 actually saw similar holiday sales to the Xbox360.

    • go look up the launch price of the Atari 2600 adjusted for inflation. It was over $700. The Super Nintendo was actually the cheapest launch in history at just under $400 for the console, two controllers and Super Mario World (it beats out the Sega Genesis at $401, albeit the Genesis launch was 2 years earlier).

      And don't get me started on the 3DO. But that was sold at a mark up ala VCRS.
      • Lifetime sales to date (including all the rereleases of the 2600 are at 30 million. In the current environment 30 million for a console would be a fucking disaster for Sony
    • Wasn't that because they made them all blu-ray disc readers which was also costly in terms of parts at the time? It seems history does indeed repeat.

  • $399 in 2013 is about $450 today. Not exactly a deal breaker. The only reason to wait is for tactical reasons, they sell these things at a small loss if they need to - the revenue from game sales, particularly with online distributions, is still good enough to cover initial hardware losses - and I'll add that though those games might be release on older platforms for longer (therefore making it seem to mean less), you need to continue to be aggressive with hardware else lose market share.
  • It suffered badly at $600.

    Over the course of a few months, a price drop, and a reissue of the hardware with the PS2 Emotion Engine removed, and removal of Linux support made the PS3 more profitable.

    Anyone who got a PS3 post-Linux but pre-Slim were screwed out of good hardware potential.

    I suspect a launch PS5 is going to have innards that people getting one a year later will miss out on.
    • The removal of Linux support wasn't over cost of manufacturing. It was because that's how geohot [geohot.com] originally broke into the console and jail-broke it. It wasn't until later than the better jail break happened. Sony removed "Other OS" for the same reason they put root-kits on their audio CDs. Funny how they thought the rootkit was okay, but doing the same shit to their consoles wasn't.

    • Wasn't removing Other OS a knee-jerk reaction to someone working out that they could glitch the memory bus to do a hypervisor escape in Other OS?

  • Not only do you end up with better graphics, control of your games (not just Mouse and keyboard, but configurability), several cheap methods of doing couch gameplay and in-house streaming, but there's increasingly fewer console exclusives than ever.

    Oh, and the same games are cheaper, to the point where if you're a patient gamer, you can get the games on deep discount/bundle for $1-5 a game.

    All console games are now developed on PC, then limited to be able to be pushed onto the consoles. And the advantage c

    • $450 worth of PC will get you something that will play games, but not really beat a console - particularly at the start of a new console generation. Towards the end a budget PC will come in ahead, but at the same time at the end of a generation the consoles are generally cheaper too (ie, an Xbox One is available for around $225 new right now, and the PS4 around $250).

      Personally, I typically will get all of the consoles (basic versions - I don't have an Xbox One X or a PS4 Pro), and maintain a decent gaming

  • by FictionPimp ( 712802 ) on Friday February 14, 2020 @11:34AM (#59728366) Homepage

    Seriously, I'd expect a gaming console to be way more powerful than my cell phone. Doesn't' this seem backwards?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I could spend $15000 on a PC but I wouldn't be able to drive to work with it. Why would you compare a phone to a gaming console, by price vs power when the two are designed to do incredibly different things?

    • But games aren't important. They are third-rate entertainment, the culture-equivalent of getting dinner at 7-11. Right?
  • The PS3 launched at $599. And it was practically unobtainable at that price for a good six months or so, routinely commanding well over $1000 on eBay if you wanted to be an early adopter. Yet, it eventually... as manufacturing at scale brought the price down... went on to beat the xBox360 in sales, despite also launching a year later than gates' offering.

    Thing is though, the games that launched with the PS3 were underwhealming and unremarkable at best; with very little worth seeking out until GTA4 came out

  • Steam, especially in Big Picture Mode, has become so polished and usable that it replaces a console in simplicity. The only problems I have with Steam in Big Picture come from Windows 10 itself (yes, I prefer running Linux, but despite how well Proton works it's still better to put Windows on a gaming system - thank you lazy developers). Steam works so well, and automatically has "backwards compatibility" to such a degree that I am looking away from consoles.

    In fact, lack of backwards comparability are mu

    • Forgive my spell-check substitutions. comparability? Really? It looks right on my aging eyes until I lean in, sheesh.

    • Console games have never been distributed on disks though.
    • Yup. All this talk about backwards compatibility but a PC with Windows has the best backwards compatibility ever when it comes to games. If Microsoft has done a thing well with Windows is avoiding breaking backwards compatiblity unless there was a good reason. The result is that a current PC can natively run games going back at least 15-20 years. Most things older than that you can get to run on something like DosBox. I haven't tried Windows 9x virtual machines to run games that don't work on newer versions
      • Interestingly, the more expensive, in-depth, and graphically stunning games become, the more likely I am to go to an indie title that seems somewhere between modern and sixteen bit.

  • Guys, my family just started playing Zelda Breath of the Wild. It SMOKES everything on my PS4.

    My wife is even thinking about playing BotW.
  • by Dunkirk ( 238653 ) * <david@@@davidkrider...com> on Friday February 14, 2020 @03:58PM (#59729270) Homepage

    A few years back, I finally got so fed up with the care and feeding of Windows that I bought a PS4 Pro, and gave my gaming rig to my son. For me, it's been a great move. (I've since put an SSD in it, but that didn't speed things up as much as I would have liked.) I love the simplicity of a console, the exclusives on Sony (Horizon Zero Dawn has become an all-time favorite), and NO CHEATERS ON BATTLEFIELD. I'll be buying a PS5 on launch day, with the biggest hard drive, and as much stuff as I can't get with it, no questions asked, and no matter how much it costs.

    • Or. you know, you could just not use Windows? Gaming on Linux is pretty damn easy now, provided you don't care about DRM (which isn't any worse than it is in Windows) and provided you're not big into competitive real-time multiplayer. Anti-cheat software is the big obstacle there.
  • Not REALLY that expensive, if you plan ahead. I've been squirreling away spare cash for a PS5 off and on for a couple of years now, so even if it costs $100 more than expected it won't be all that painful.

    I bought my PS4 in 2014, use it quite often so maybe averaged out it's about 2 hours a day, maybe a bit less, so let's go with 700 hours a year. That's 4200 hours over the past 6 years. $400 to buy, works out to $0.09 per hour of entertainment. Pretty cheap, IMO.

    What gives me pause, this time, is

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