I want to point out that a lot of these crackdowns on the big tech are coming from Europe, not the US. So anything that directly relates to American companies is not specifically targeted, more industry trends as a whole. And I don't see how Sony & Microsoft are all that different from Apple or Google. People don't need iPhones, they aren't legally protected products. All you really need is a basic flip phone, anything more is an extravagance.
the bolded is true for kids, but for adults, a smartphone is a necessity. for example, I need a smartphone to have Microsoft Teams on my phone for work purposes. for that reason alone, Apple and Google are vastly different from Sony & Microsoft in terms of cellphone industry vs video game industry. everyone needs a cellphone, almost everyone needs a smartphone;
flagship smartphones are an extravagance, and so are video game consoles.
Yes, but the economics were different then. It was economically feasible to adjust prices so that the Pro was only $400 and the slim became $300. That's not possible anymore. Like I said a few weeks back (and forgot to follow up on, sorry), consoles are usually sold at a loss, or at best at cost.
no worries
and I wasn't talking about pro consoles in that part of my post just yet. I was only talking about the tech inside of the launch 8th gen consoles; my understanding is that the tech in both were very similar just with different OSes which is something you'd suggest would happen in the future; my point is that it already has.
the Ps5 stopped selling at a loss 3 years ago. they've been profiting off of it for a while now and decided to be arrogant and not cut the price and lose out on sales continuing to get higher.
The idea is that they'll make up their losses in software sales, especially on their own services where they earn more per purchase, unlike with disc sales where they split the costs. Over time when new processes take over (the shrinking of die space) and hardware revisions are introduced the costs can go down, which allows the companies to then stop losing money on the hardware, and possibly start making some. Sony first revised PS5 less than a year after launch, which reduced the size and weight of the heat sink. They further revised it a year after that with a die shrink, which also meant decreased power draw. The final revision was the Slim model. which changed the overall production process and allowed them to switch from manufacturing two distinct consoles (digital and disc) to only one.
yeah I figured that the losses they suffer in hardware sales, they make up in software sales (I think they also make it back via accessory sales). even though digital sales are way higher than physical sales, it was recently announced that the Ps5 with the disc drive accounts for the vast majority of the console's sales. and that's the one that became profitable a long time ago. but they are still manufacturing two distinct consoles now; there is still the Ps5 slim and the Ps5 SAD, if anything they are now manufacturing three, accounting for the pro.
Surely Sony must know that pricing the PS5 Pro so high will hurt sales. I don't think the reason is just greed (though that is part of it), I think that's the reality of where gaming is, and supplies becoming more expensive as a whole. With the rise of crypto and AI, gaming is competing for the same pool of resources. As graphics hardware becomes more powerful and advanced it also becomes more expensive to manufacture, as well. And like I said in regards to Moore's Law, the rate of innovation is slowing down and the time it takes to innovate is increasing. It's just not feasible anymore to get double the performance two years later at the same cost. There's also inflation to consider. Inflation has increased by 20% since 2020, so $500 then is actually $609 now, so if anything you're actually saving money (assuming your wages also increased at the same rate).
I'm gonna have to disagree with you here. I think the pricing of the Ps5 pro is all greed, and nothing else. it's Sony going full on Ps3-era-arrogant again. first of all, one of the reasons the concept of "pro" consoles started last generation is because of how media and the industry as a whole constantly talked about how underpowered the Ps4 and the Xbone were for the first few years of their generation. it seemed like mid-generation refreshes were a reasonable offer to make for a slight bump in performance/fidelity.
however, for
this generation, I don't think the media or the industry were ever saying that the Ps5 needed an incremental upgrade. its tech is under
utilized if anything, but definitely not underpowered. this video does a good job of explaining it, and it came out way before the Ps5 pro was officially announced.
with that being said, and considering that Sony
does have the room to cut the price of the Ps5 and introduce the pro at the same as the current price tag, I'm inclined to believe is it is all greed, and nothing else.
The main reason why Xbox created the Series S and introduced it at the same time as X was because they looked at the economics and didn't believe they could create a cheaper alternative half way through the generation like last time. So basically, the S is their slim model and the X is their Pro, they just launched at the same time. That's why there is no Xbox answer to the PS5 Pro, because they don't have a user base large enough to justify a $700 machine (which is what it would need to cost).
going with the argument of the platform holders knowingly developing current gen hardware while the available hardware is underutilized but not underpowered, I think it is safe to assume that Microsft
was at some point going to come out with a pro model of the Series X and then scrapped the plans for it because the higherups forced them to cut costs. there were those leaks of a cylindrical "adorably all digital" Series X, which technically would not have even been a box. who knows? maybe the specs were projected to be higher for it, and instead they matched the specs of the eventual XAD release.
Switch 2 is also going to cost more, likely $400 instead of the current $300. And that's just for an LCD screen, a future OLED model (if there is one) will probably be an extra $50 or more.
I think you're right about this, too. $400 makes sense for a Switch successor; they don't even have to cut the price of the current console and it's relatively not that expensive either. The Ps4 sold gangbusters at that price, and so will the Switch 2.
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