I doubt it. They bumped their prices in Japan not that long ago, and controllers got a price bump too. Japan might be more about currency, but their costs haven’t decreased in the current economic climate for computer chips compared to the normal life cycle of consoles.
The Pro isn’t just $700 because they think they can get away with it. I’m guessing it costs way closer than that to make than you think.
Yeah I don’t think it’ll happen soon.
Everything is getting more expensive and it’s the first time ever I’ve seen a price bump for a console released a few years ago.
TSMC has been raising prices on their high-demand nodes but there are rumours of them finally cutting prices on their 6 and 7nm nodes which should reduce the manufacturing costs of the current-gen consoles. Whether it happens in time to make a difference this life cycle remains to be seen.
I’d say no and it’s mainly cause at present they don’t really have any competition so they know they can keep prices high.
Yeah some competition would be great.
I guess their competition ain’t Xbox anymore, but PC gaming.
Depending on what Sony does, they could make the jump to PC.
I wouldn’t need so much to jump to Linux gaming to be honest.
Why wouldn’t their competition be Xbox?
Because no one wants an Xbox.
Even during the early launch with Covid killing supply chains and PS5’s selling out in seconds every time a retailer added stock, Xboxes were gettable pretty easily and most people didn’t want them as a substitute.
Why doesn’t anyone want them? They used to be the most popular console on the market.
I can give you my reasons, but can’t comment on anyone else.
A. I would genuinely buy PS5 over Xbox just for the controller. Third party utilization is hit or miss, but Sony games pretty consistently feel amazing with the trigger feedback and precision vibration.
B. There are a bunch of system seller caliber games made by Sony. There weren’t many made by Microsoft before the Activision merger and even since stuff like Starfield hasn’t been as popular as they’d want. But I’d pick PS5 just for Horizon, just for the Last of Us, maybe just for God of War (over any single game Microsoft has, though I’m not as into it as some), and their catalogue last gen was way better and benefits from the faster storage making a huge dent in load times as well. As someone who likes playing punishing games, loading 20 seconds after a death compared to waiting several minutes breathes a lot of fresh air into them.
C. The low end Xbox along with their requirement for parity between the two made it a lot harder for third parties to support them.
D. There isn’t a lot that really takes advantage of it, but their built in hardware compression is still tech that’s really exciting to me in terms of how seamless you can make open world games without arbitrary limitations. There are brief loading screens when I die on current gen games, but never hitting them during traversal no matter how dense or busy a world is (without the elevator trick or whatever to hide loading) really adds a lot of immersion. I haven’t experienced it in Xbox, and I recognize that the actual speed of the drive is also a key part of the real world difference, but there are also hardware and software components of how fast loading is, to the point that PS5 games pretty consistently load well faster than PS4 games that don’t leverage the tech. Also, the PS5 lets you just use a regular nvme drive to expand storage easily.
They also have the same cost restrictions Sony does because they’re using very similar components, so they can’t undercut them.
Thanks for the reply. I personally have a PS5 and not an Xbox, but a lot of my choice for that was because I don’t like Microsoft. I’ve learned that I don’t like Sony either since purchasing, but I already have it, and at some point you’re not really left with alternatives. I just built a Linux gaming PC for my home entertainment system, so I’ve been using that above the PS5 lately.
Game Pass used to have occasional hits coming out like Hi-Fi Rush. They literally fired the development team for putting out a GOTY winner. Meanwhile, Starfield’s team is still around.
Microsoft’s gaming division is basically filled with investors now. No one is making fun games.
Because the Xbox isn’t selling and all Xbox games are also on PC.