Best answer: Probably. Sony already sold the PS4 at a loss when it came to the market at $400 initially. Estimates from industry analysts put the PS5 between the $400 and $600 mark.
Base model: PlayStation 4 Slim ($282 at Amazon)
Why was the PS4 so cheap?
When the PlayStation 4 first released, it retailed at $400. This price placed it at $100 less than the $500 Xbox One, Microsoft’s competitor. Neither of those numbers may sound cheap, but Sony actually sold the PS4 at a loss on each system. The idea behind this was that they’d make up that money on software sales and PlayStation Plus subscriptions.
The company never outright stated as much, but it is believed that the price was a direct response to the higher cost of the Xbox One. What’s the best way to make your product instantly more appealing? Make it cheaper. A known reason that it cost less to produce was that the PS4 was built using standard x86 architecture, cutting down on manufacturing costs.
What will make the PS5 so expensive?
The technology that’s going into it will bump up the cost a considerable amount. Using an SSD instead of an HDD will raise the price alone, and that’s not even taking into account the latest CPU and GPU that’ll come with it.
How do we know it won’t cost $700 or $800 with all of the latest technology it features?
We can’t know for sure until Sony reveals the price, but putting out a console that costs that much would effectively make it dead on arrival. I don’t know too many people willing to pay almost $1000 for a gaming consoles upfront. Perhaps Sony might reveal some payment plans in place where people can pay monthly installments over a few years, similar to cellphone plans now. But that’s just speculation at this point.
And Sony already saw what a $600 price tag could do to the PlayStation 3. Sony racked up a $3.5 billion loss on that console in 2007 and 2008 because it was so expensive and the Xbox 360 was already available for much cheaper. You can’t make a mistake like that twice. The PS5 will need to be priced competitively, but don’t get your hopes up that it will be super cheap.
Sony’s own Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the console, said that the price would be “appealing to gamers in light of its advanced feature set.”
Our pick
PlayStation 4 Slim
$282 at Amazon
The cheapest PS4 on the market
The PS4 Slim is the base model you can get of Sony’s console, and while it lacks the power of the PS4 Pro, it’s still a powerful gaming machine that features 1TB of storage and a quality list of exclusive titles.
