
Following the reveal of the PS5 Pro earlier this week, one of the talking points that's been cropping up has been about whether the next generation of Xbox and PlayStation may be adopting a much higher price point in general.
There's obviously been a lot of criticism over the $699.99 price tag for the PS5 Pro, but speaking this week, analysis firm Ampere pointed out a variety of reasons why Sony will have chosen to go so high - and one of those is because Xbox didn't decide to make a like-for-like competitor. Here's a bit of what the firm had to say:
"PS5 Pro pricing reflects Sony’s adjusted strategy to protect its margin, general supply chain inflation and a lack of direct competitor to its mid-cycle upgrade compared to last generation (where Microsoft was preparing the Xbox One X). The lack of competition means it is an easier decision for Sony to run with a higher price point to protect its existing margins."
This might sound like Ampere is placing the blame on Microsoft for the PS5 Pro's extortionate price, but ultimately the statement makes sense - if there was an Xbox Series X Pro, would we have seen a lower price across the board?
We'll ultimately never know (unless Microsoft springs a late surprise on us), but the success or failure of the PS5 Pro may well have a big impact on what kind of pricing we see with the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles in the future.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source ampereanalysis.com]
Comments 44
I think it is some what true a little bit.
But Sony are making the most of it.
And the amount of PS5 disc drives that have been sold in the UK, like thousands and out of stock since the PS5 Pro digital announcement.
Will absolutely delight Sony and give them even more confidence at that price.
Not really Xbox news is it.
There's been more PS5 articles on here than PushSquare the last two days. 🤔
Absolutely, not just the pro but in general all Sony strategies this gen are a clear example of what it means for consumers when there's no competition. Sony tried to do the same with the PS3 but at the time there was the x360 that was like a tiger. The result was a huge price cut, multiple sku with a clear goal in mind - price reduction to bring on board more gamers - and the start of a first party output that will probably go down in history as the best ever.
Current Microsoft looks like a scared kitten instead and this is what we get. Laziness and greed from all sides.
Who cares? The market will decide.
@GADG3Tx87 That's because they've been the most popular of everything we've posted. Just going where the demand is!
Just really don't see the point in getting one...and I won't at that price....people saying they are getting it for GTA 6....but GTA 6 will be CPU heavy and the pro has the same CPU as base ps5...so all seems rather pointless....i will just wait for the ps6 and Xbox handheld if they release one
@StylesT It will still almost certainly be the best place to play GTA6 on console, whether that is a frame rate boost or not. But I think 40fps might be possible on PS5 Pro and a sensible compromise.
@themightyant I should hope it's the best place to play it....but for £700 for most likely marginal improvements.... ludicrous to basically get a console just for one game ...one game we know will most likely be on the ps6 and ps7 lol
@GADG3Tx87 Xbox games on PS5. PlayStation news on PureXbox finally its the exchange we were all hoping for.
I kid. I completely understand chasing the latest news.
$700 (or $780 to play all my discs…) is too much. But then again, so is $600 for the Series X refresh with just more storage and some speckles. Looking at that, $100 more for a considerably more capable machine actually doesn’t sound so bad. But it’s still, as the meme goes, ‘Too d*** high’
@StylesT Imagine GTA6 releasing locked at 30fps for all models😂
I really thought with the series x and now all the studios Xbox have, they would have gone back to the xbox360 days and gone at Sony and given them a run for their money.
But it’s too late now Xbox studio games are becoming publishers. The Indy reveal on PS5 said it all and Doom. Which they could have left until later or after Xbox consoles had the games.
So we have got the beginning of the Sony domination console era, god help us next generation.
To me this is proof that we need more than one high powered console it the marketplace to keep the major vendors in check with each other. If Sony were to rule or Microsoft then we would see pricing skyrocket. The fact that both are in competition keep prices from rising dramatically.
It wasn't too long ago that the target price for consoles at this stage of the generation was about $199 and $299. A $699 console is ridiculous.
@StylesT The media is trying to convince everyone to do just that. Even some of the "Xbox" media.
Anyone who thinks Xbox should leave the Console market, here’s your future
If anything. The PlayStation Pro is probably £699 because of Microsoft. They probably added an extra 1TB SSD to compete with the new Xbox Series X & reconned if Microsoft can price it £599 with nothing new. Then we will get away with a refresh for £699.
@themightyant I doubt gta 6 will run better on the ps5 pro as gta games are usually cpu limited which is a problem as the ps5 pro has the same cpu.
@OldGamer999 your acting as if Xbox doesn’t have a solid lineup of games coming out later this year and the next.
Even if these games go multi-platform, they are still coming on gamepass day one- hopefully…
@ZAHMED Not quite true. Its the same CPU but has a mode to clock it up to 3.85Ghz, 10% more than PS5's 3.5Ghz. That could in theory be enough to enable PSSR and other upgrades, on top of the 45% more powerful GPU, increased memory and faster memory bandwidth.
Regardless if previous Rockstar games are any guide it will run at an uneven sub-30fps on base consoles, so perhaps just running at a more stable 30fps will be the improvement.
@ZAHMED
It has a solid few games coming out.
But for me they have to big AAA like 90 plus meta.
Up there with Nintendos and Sonys best.
Not a Starfield for comparison.
So GPU which I have until March 2025 I will not probably renew unless there is a miracle.
Then again Indy and Doom the best place to play will be PS5 Pro. Like all other third party games.
Not my fault Microsoft are killing the Xbox console.
@themightyant oh right thanks for the correction.
The thing is, it now looks as if the next generation PlayStation and the NeXtBoX's will be releasing at different times in the future. The PS5 Pro should be trumped in terms of performance by the next Xbox in 2026, and thus the Pro's price point is a convenient marker for the NeXtBoX, meaning Microsoft could easily argue that as they are giving us more (than the Pro) that they can at least charge the same, if not more. This then could lead to a spiral with the PS6 costing more than the NeXtBoX and then the NeXtBoX2 costing still more than that, and so on.
The only reason the PS5 cost the same as the Series X is because Microsoft announced the price a week before Sony did. Rumours at the time were that Sony were looking to charge up to £600 for the PS5 before Microsoft forced their hand. Couple that with the only reason that Sony were the first to increase the price of their consoles was because they were selling far more consoles than Microsoft, and they were confident that they could sell them at a higher price, which proved to be correct.
Thus, in an ideal market environment, we would see both Sony and Microsoft release their respective consoles at the same time in order to keep their console prices the same and, crucially, lower. This staggered release that it seems we are about to experience could very well be detrimental to our wallets...
@OldGamer999 I don’t see Microsoft killing the Xbox console given the scale of recent acquisitions and changes to the structure of the Xbox management hierarchy.
Even if the AAA games they release are not 90 plus metacritic, it doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun or enjoyable as I really liked starfield (to an extent)
The can put the price they want I don't care, I won't buy this console just for 60fps gameplay with better résolution ai upscale ***** that you don't even see when you play a game.
@OldGamer999 You mean Sonys once a year single AAA exclusive release that last 4 week tops and then your back to playing 3rd party games for the other 48 weeks of the year, Yer that's really showing the way forward.
@ZAHMED
We shall have to see with Xbox and future consoles. Outside of the USA they don’t sell very well and Xbox latest almost see to give you more reasons to buy a PS5.
Starfield was ok, enjoyable and good as much as a pain in some places. Very old systems operating wise and GUI wise and slow for a modern game and not snappy, loading etc.
Could have been so much more and put Xbox back on the big map, like a true classic or legendary game.
That’s why I keep my expectations in check with Indy and Avowed. Time will tell.
@Rog-X
Sony and Nintendo have been very quiet this year on the big AAA front.
But that is what is missing from making Xbox the console to have. I still have my series x and GPU until March 2025.
Let’s see if Xbox studios games the next batch Indy and Avowed are up there with Sonys and Nintendos best and have that big AAA wow factor.
If they do great I will play them if not I won’t.
Though Avowed at 30fps is already a let down.
They need to produce games above Starfield good average quality and get up there with the best NEW games.
As for third party games we all know not many third party studios take advantage of the series x power as the game sales are not large enough on Xbox consoles.
And once the PS5 Pro comes along that will be the best place to play third party games and probably including Indy and Avowed, maybe at 60fps.
Xbox needs to give me a good reason to keep my series x, not keep giving me reasons not to.
@OldGamer999 The best place to play Doom and indie will be on PC, and you also now have Digital Foundry telling IGN "if GTA is 30FPS on PS5 then it will be the same on the Pro" .
As for Sony being very quite this year they were just as quite the previous year with only one AAA First Party in 2003 as well, that's 2 AAA First Party games in Two years, nowadays their console is nothing more than a 3rd party playing games machine.
@Rog-X
You know I mean consoles not PC.
Xbox studios need to step up and make legendary games not just above average. That suits the game pass market.
I don’t see a console war anymore taking Nintendo out. Xbox is a publisher and you play their games on what console suits you best.
My seems to be learning towards PlayStation now as I get the PlayStation exclusives, the third party games and now Xbox games.
And console wise only with the PS5 Pro will be the best place to play them as well.
@munstahunta It won't be playing all new games at 60fps, it's got a PS5 CPU, if the next GTA is 30fps on PS5 then it will be 30FPS on the Pro.
It's all looking very similar to last gen where the PS Pro and One X could only make the game look nicer but were stuck with standard base model Framerates in most games because of the CPU.
I read as much about the PS5 on this site as on Push Square.
Though it is a lot of money, I think it will still sell. No where near as much as the PS5 and I know there’s plenty of stock now, but back when people were trying to get their hands on a PS5, they were buying them for more than the Pro price. I personally won’t be buying one, but it’s going to sell.
Sony is pretty much helping the doomsaying with XBOX, after they managed to force Microsoft's hand with how much they were pushing for ABK to be a failure.
In an ideal situation, Sony would have been laughed out of the court for their claims that Microsoft would destablise the market, yadda yadda yadda, by buying ABK, and they managed to weaken xCloud and get Microsoft to commit to publishing far more on Sony than they'd have liked.
The amount of concessions that Sony squeezed out of Microsoft meant that they could make the bullish statement that they could sell a console for $700... $800... $1000 and people would have to pay it 'because there's no competition' is a sign of the reality, and the various groups that went for Microsoft a year or so ago are realising only now what they were being conned about.
Hey, regulators...
Care to explain why the 'weaker' company after the acquisition is releasing a eye-wateringly expensive console and trumpeting about a lack of competition, while the 'stronger' company is being forced to go multi-platform by your demands?
Xbox has been saying for half a decade now that they don't consider Playstation to be their competitor, they are moving beyond what Sony is capable of doing and it's sad the fanboys and gaming media cannot accept that. Tribalism is a mental illness; the mental gymnastics people do to fit their fractured shards of reality into a tiny box are so alien to me. Reality will always be more interesting than that terribly confined space.
Microsoft Game Studios are in a better position for the future of gaming than Sony by a longshot and if you cannot see that I wouldn't trust anything you have to say about anything.
For me personally if I didn’t already have a series x and a ps5base and only wanted one, that price would make me skip PS5pro (I feel like the base 5 will be discontinued eventually at this rate) and pick up a series x. I think the new price (plus increases of bases ps5) are going to push people to make different decisions.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner The current PureXbox mantra seems to be 'if you can shoehorn the word 'Xbox' into the headline, it's Xbox news'.
Nobody wants mid mid mid upgrade mid mid mid Competitor.
@OldGamer999 MS Flight Sim 24 will get a 90+ on Metacritic. It's the main reason I'll be buying a Series X digital and not upgrading my PS5 until GTA 6.
I really had hopes, that this gen, would be the big comeback for Xbox, 360 style...
Sony needed that competition, but now it's too late, and those greedy ***** got a monopoly on the market.
Just like Nvidia on the GPU market, where they can price their hardware at insane prices...
I’m disappointed Xbox is not offering any equivalent model. I would’ve been willing to pay a decent amount for something that more reliably offers 60fps. If PS5P offers 60fps where XSX only offers 30fps then that’s going to be a really bad look for Xbox. Hopefully we will still have the option for decent 60fps modes going forwards on Xbox.
If the PS5 Pro actually had a new CPU it could slightly justify its existence. The fact that it doesn't means that most sub-60 FPS games are going to remain that way, because in most cases it's a CPU bottleneck that constrains higher framerates on these consoles. You'll just get a slightly prettier 30 FPS slideshow lol. No thanks. I'll stick with my PC.
@Steel76
That’s what I was hoping for Xbox to give Sony a good go this generation. But they started very slow.
But now they have many studios and some big games they probably could.
But it’s not their strategy anymore.
@OldGamer999 yep. This generation has gone much like the last, except Xbox is finally on its last legs as a brand instead of somewhat trying to regain a foothold.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...