Michael Pachter probably doesn’t believe that the PlayStation 5 will retail for $800 at launch, but he does think it will be very expensive. Asked to make a wild prediction as part of an E3 2019 interview with Geoff Keighley, the outspoken Wedbush Securities man suggested that he hopes the Japanese giant doesn’t make the same mistakes that it made with the PlayStation 3.
“Have you looked at the specs?” he gasped. “If they make the mistake they made with the PS3 and charge $600 or more, they’ve screwed themselves. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how you spec that thing out at $300 or $400 – I just don’t know.”
Sony’s yet to announce a price for its next-gen system, but it has said that it will be “appealing to gamers”, perhaps ruling out an astronomical sum. The company's also been clear, however, that the PS4 will continue to co-exist alongside its new console, and will be its main profit driver for the first few years of the new generation.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 55
I’d thought it be around $450 personally which I think is still a good price
399 it's only right and acceptable price
No way they don't sell it below $500.
450/499 euro's.
i don't see it being 399. but at the same time don't see it being more than 500 either.
I think it'll be $499.99.
@AFCC that's false. I take into account two things...specs and competition. It will be no more than 100 bucks more than the xbox if the specs justify it. But im honestly expecting both to be the same price at 500.
If the PS5 lands at $500 with the purported specs it has, it will still be quite expensive but I think gamers will snap it up in droves. Sony supposedly will be taking a haircut on each one sold for a while even at that price, but they probably expect to make back that money and more in software sales, new PS Plus/PS Now subscriptions, etc. The savings they made not showing up at E3 this year could probably factor into it as well Anything more than $500, like say $550, and they'll be pushing it.
@get2sammyb yeah....PS3 all over again!
@AFCC what?
ps3 was like 600 dollars.
this would still be 100 dollars cheaper. and again you have to be realistic and take the tech into consideration. 499 is not that bad of a price when you consider ray tracing,SSD etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony makes a slight loss out of the gate this time knowing components costs come down over time. Maybe turns to profit in second/third year with profits from PS+, digital store offsetting it.
It 's going to have to be pretty high for me not to get it day one. I think the £500 is likely.
Here's something worth considering, Jim Ryan said that later this year Sony will push PS Now harder and into next year and his predecessor stepped down full time to focus full time on the service side of the business. So is it possible that these services could off set taking a big loss on the console.
Surely Pach knows that Sony's probably willing to take a hit on the PS5 retail price? Sony knows it can make up the difference through PSN profit. Taking a loss on a console is no longer a massive deal like it was in previous generations.
If both are going to reveal their prices at E3 next year like for the PS4/Xbox, I wonder if Sony will see what Microsoft charge and then announce Ps5 10 dollars/pounds cheaper.
Sony is known for selling its consoles at a loss to keep an acceptable price and grow the user base quickly. Even with a $100 loss, they would get their money back with just a few games, so it's a win win.
I could still see a price over $500 on release.
Nothing to do with ps3. It looks like ps5 and Scarlet will be close in price too, I suppose?
@JJ2 yeah.
i don't think there will be a 100 dollar difference this time.
@jdv95
Xbox gave an interview after their conference and its funny they completely deflect questions referring to Phil talking about consoleS in plural last year. Its all about the premium console now.
could be very interesting if the US/china trade war kicks into full gear, because it could add 25% import costs to consoles, and i can't see sony/MS/retailer not passing it onto consumers. suddenly a $500 console becomes $600. i think $500/£500 is still a tough sell to be honest, even though the rumoured specs are better than a £1K PC at the minute.
Agreed. Considering the specs and the ssd drive, itd be a miracle if it costs less than $500.
It wasn’t as prevalent during the PS3/360 era, but a console’s installation base is becoming more and more important. As we move towards a predominately digital landscape, user accounts and libraries tied to a system will dictate the console you buy. It would take a major screw up to make a user base abandon their digital purchases. It makes the argument for Sony selling the console at a loss much more persuasive.
Don't think it's PS3 all over again at all. PS3 launched in 2006. Taking into account inflation The 60 gig PS3 launch at $600 which would be about $750 now.
If this come out at say $500 (which would equal about $400 in 2006 btw) and comes with an SSD, I think that's a totally reasonable price.
USD$449
PS5 announcement around March 2020, available to US/ JP market on June, then Asia and Euro after Olympics, Tokyo Olympics is a free ride of promoting the PS5, no matter Xbox20 will do, provide nearly the same experience to the player, PC as the base, all available tech and components on the market to build these 2 consoles are almost the same, it is about the game library.
Sony is on the right pace, everything going just a little bit earlier than MS, even the price reduction. Let see...
$499.99. i just don't see how they can get the proposed specs under that price and turn a profit.
Sounds like the PS5 is going to me a monster, specs-wise.
Sony saw what happened when they priced a console abnormally high at launch. They won't make that mistake again. $499.99 tops, and that's pushing it.
is he comparing Desktop hardware parts prices to the custom ones the PS5's gonna get?????
It's a long tradition that they lose money on consoles but make it back on games (and nowadays, sub services like PS+).
I wonder how much he thinks the next xbox is going to cost.
@Enuo $999 it eats monsters for breakfast after all
Yeah, $500 seems to be the most likely price tag, and with how successful the PS4 is, I can see Sony intentionally take a cut in profits to keep the price lower.
I think both the PS5 and the next Xbox will sell at £500 at launch then a permanent price cut the next holidays at £450. Think I’ll still be happy with both the Pro and X for at least a year after both next gen systems have released.
@MaccaMUFC with that sweet sweet BC, you're good with the Pro or the X
@eightdotthree they take the profit hit for the initial wave of the PS5s and we dont exactly know how much it is to build a single PS5 so maybe the loss is not as big as it looks. Maybe their getting those custom APUs on the cheap? who knows.
Yeah I saw that bit and instantly turned the stream off. Thing will be $500 max.
As long as its equal or lower than the next Xbox, it doesn’t much matter if it’s 450 or 500 etc. It’ll just lower out the gate sales.
Lot of good replies in here, I'm impressed.
I'm gonna go with $499. Even Pachter doesn't seriously think $799, he's an idiot, but he's not insane.
Do we know what disc drive it will have yet? 4k blu ray or just blu ray or something else?
Do we know what size the SSD will be yet? Maybe Sony will cheap out and expect us to buy pour own external HDD. See Vita.
X1X is still currently $499 I believe. Even is X1X came down to $399 next year that still makes Scarlett $499 so PS5 can be $499 as well.
We still don't know if Sony will try to keep PS4 Slim around at $199 and also PS4 Pro at say $299 to then have PS5 at $499 or if they'll drop Slim or Pro or combine them into one, PS4 Pro on the insdie, PS4 Slim on the outside for maybe $249. Only Sony knows hwo mch $ they'll expect to continue to make on thsi gen while they lose money selling PS5 at a loss.
Then there's PS+, PS Now, PS Vue. Who knows what else they'll come up with.
How much will PSVR 2 cost? When will that release? PS5 can't be too much more than $499 if they also expect people to buy a better PSVR 2 for $399.
18 months, lots can happen. But $499 seems like a hard ceiling to me.
patcher is a joke himself.but nah it's going to be 500$.word up son
Price is my biggest concern with the PS5. It has some good specs, and big enough SSDs aren't cheap.
Maybe if you were buying the 'parts' from a retailer and building your own, it may be $800 worth. However, Sony can go direct to the manufacturer and purchase from them in bulk cutting out all the middle men and retailer mark-up for their 'profit'.
We all know that a GTX2080Ti costs a lot of money, if we were to buy just 1 from a retailer who bought from a distributor who bought from the manufacturer - all of whom had to pay for transport too and add some mark-up for their profit as they won't work for free and have their own overheads too. Comparing the price of one of those, let alone the CPU (which also would have numerous steps to get to retail, all adding their little slice of profit) etc to make 'something' equivalent to a Console will be hard to do - at least in the first year. If a new Console costs $450, $50 of that could be for the controller, cables, instructions/warranty paperwork and the box too.
I think it will be $500 ps5, $300 ps4 pro, and $200 ps4, just like apple that still sold their old phone when the new one coming.
@crimsontadpoles I bought samsung ssd (evo 850 500gb) at about $175 price on aug 2017, now the ssd (evo 860 500gb) price on june 2019 is about $86, thats about 50% drop. Ssd price is still more expensive than hard drive but it’s slowly going down, maybe it will be even cheaper on 2020. Also remember sony will buy a lot more compared to personal buyer so the price should be way cheaper.
If is under $500 then they cut corners somewhere and I don't want to deal with another Pro so I hope they go all out. I would happily pay between $500-$600 on a machine I know won't be outdated in 2 years time.
It’s likely to be 18 months away, so you could assume those parts will cost less than they do now.
Still think around £500 is about right.
£450 /£500 is the most I want to pay. Patcher came off like someone a bit clueless in the interview & a tad up MS arse IMO.
Day one whatever the price. Many will struggle with a price point over £400 though.
You also shouldnt forget that the life span is at least 4-5 years and they sell a large bulk of total sales in the later years. By that time the hardware parts will have decreased in price because it isnt so state of the art anymore. So the amount of money lost on each sale will decrease over time. While profits from subscriptions and game sales will only increase. They are perfectly willing to take that initial hit given the large reserves they have build up with the crazy succes of the PS4
In UK terms, I'm expecting something like £499. Personally, I'd probably be okay up to £600... above that I might think twice, and it would certainly put a lot of people off.
It's sounding quite high-spec, and we're probably looking at a dual storage system... the new SSD they're developing plus an extra SSD/HDD. I'm guessing it's going to need a minimum 1GB storage which may be split between SSD and HDD. I doubt they'd go above 500GB on the new SSD due to the price, but it's possible.
Even if it's 1GB, we're looking at additional customer-bought SSD/HDD for extra storage, and if what they're saying about this new SSD is true - that it's faster than anything currently available for PC... and if indeed that spec does make it into the final console - then we're probably looking at some kind of brief delay when launching games while the content is copied from whatever medium the user has added, onto this superfast internal SSD.
As others have commented though, they may seek to reduce the retail cost to the consumer and take a hit, making up the difference via subscriptions to their other services like Plus and PS Now. That would make sense. In fact, if their figures for Plus memberships were accurate, they make so much money they could probably give the new console away! 🤣
Sony will have a target price for the console along with a target specification for each component. They will then take each component and assign a budget out of the total. Sony will then go to their suppliers and get them to build a business case to supply the component for the cost Sony needs to be at. The supplier will base this over the lifespan of the console. Most of the suppliers will be supplying at a loss to begin with before making their money later in the life cycle.
Whatever Sony decides they wish to sell the console at they will be able to within reason. However like the PS4 pro the console wont see much of a price reduction for years as suppliers claw back the money they spent.
There will also be lots of other complexities like any penalties if they do not sell enough and probably price breaks for Sony if they sell more than expected. The business model for the whole project will be crazy complex.
My guess like many others is we will see it come in at $499/£450 like the one x.
I don't mind paying 500, 600 or 700 if the machine has not only "top" hardware, but smart/custom design to allow devs to do wonders with it during the lifespan of the console. I think hardware custom design (which a PC of course cannot have) is key for a console, like having those smart "tricks" that every dev would love to have without spending too much budget from every frame (like ray traycing for example). PS4 had a bit of those, like the unified ram, some custom GPU commands and stuff...
Why doesn't he joke about the price of the next-gen Xbox to??? That sounds expensive to. Typical American and American media only joking about what SONY does.
@AdamNovice You have a good point, they may all push current gen and streaming as the budget route and new hardware as premium+ Will be worth watching the next years marketing with that in mind!
I'll only buy it if it costs exactly £467 and comes with glow in the dark Spiderman stickers.
£500 no less and Sony most likely will be still be losing on profit for a year or so until they do a new revision. Apart from making the console size smaller, but unless AMD can shrink the die even further to 5nm and SSDs shrink down at some point it's the only way I can see them cutting costs even the GPU can only go where innovation can take them.
@jdv95 it's not the matter of what the specs are etc...of course I understand that, but the general public will not. That's why I say they will only sell as much as PS4 with the same pricing
Michael Pachter Is a clown 🤡
@Raymondawk
Playstation Meeting 2020?
BTW, price tag changed, close to USD$600.
@Raymondawk
more “Official” Leak of the PS5 before Xmas, Oct?
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