A recent report from Bloomberg has attracted a lot of headlines - the suggestion is that Sony is struggling to control construction costs for the PlayStation 5 and that the $399 pricing sweet spot enjoyed by both PS4 and PS4 Pro may be out of reach for the next-gen system. Bloomberg says that the current cost for building the machine is around $450, suggesting that a retail price of at least $470 is likely - but is the analysis accurate? Will the next generation consoles really be more expensive at launch than their current-gen equivalents?
Pricing of console hardware has been a topic we've raised in the past on Digital Foundry because the fact is that the economics surrounding consumer electronics have been growing increasingly challenging for console manufacturers in recent years, while the pace of technological innovation has also slowed down significantly.
I genuinely believe that next-gen console hardware from both Sony and Microsoft will be superb - but inevitably, delivering a proper generational leap comes at a price. Solid state storage is a game-changer, we'll have a desktop-class high performance CPU component this time and while it can't hope to match the 8x increase in capacity we saw last-gen, 16GB of GDDR6 looks likely. In terms of graphics power, the arrival of the enhanced consoles - PS4 Pro and Xbox One X - has muddied the waters somewhat in terms of defining what a generational leap actually is, but I'd still suggest we'll get there.