The 80€ games are a bit of a shock. This makes deciding between all digital (hello permanent 80 euro prices!) and drive edition something to contemplate.
With this large price difference they are betting on a larger digital only share which will shrink the physical disk market.
Urgh I am not happy about N64 game prices making a return. Honestly most games these days are not worth that amount of money for their content. I, like many people, will most likely just wait until the inevitable 75% off sale on them a few years later. I still have a huge backlog to get through on the PS4 first anyway :|
Well, that is sort of inevitable. Although Personally I still much prefer to have the Physical Disc for Games.
You have at least 30% of the price from Retail as their Margin. That is covering wholesale, logistics, operation, shipping etc. By going Digital they could keep some of those 30% for themselves. Hence why the Digital Version of the Console is Cheaper, it is subsidised.
Game Development cost is at all time high. Despite having much better Engine and Tooling. Gamers demand better graphics, physics, sound etc.
And then people also expect the console price to be same.
The only thing that has helped was the increasing number of Gamers.
Sony has previously been quite clear and vocal about not killing the Retail market. Especially considering the Japanese value physical properties and still prefer to buy Disc whenever possible. So I am sure it isn't their intention to try and kill Retail, more likely being forced to do so by the market.
I am legitimately delighted to see prices go up. At $60, many AAA titles basically had to rely on micro-transactions in order to be profitable, which ultimately incentivizes game designers to create worse experiences. I'd much rather just pay what the game costs to create.
I realize it's very possible publishers will continue to expand the use of microtransactions anyway, but, well, at least now they'll have the ability to not do that. Before, it was basically a lost cause.
Also... game prices drop so quickly that if you're actually budget-constrained, there's a pretty easy solution, which is to buy everything on a ~3 year delay. This will of course likely require getting the version of the PS5 with a disc drive, which everyone should do, for exactly this reason.
(Note also here that $60 now is not equal to $60 fifteen years ago, due to inflation.)
> I realize it's very possible publishers will continue to expand the use of microtransactions anyway, but, well, at least now they'll have the ability to not do that. Before, it was basically a lost cause.
It was very much possible before too, just look at what the indie scene is capable of at much lower prices.
The indie scene makes games at lower prices, but at much lower budgets. I love Celeste, but I also really enjoy games like Tomb Raider and Quantum Break which just need higher production values in order to be fully realized.
Which, frankly, no one should buy. It's a bad investment long term.
A few years after release, physical copies of games are usually cheaper—often much cheaper—than what's available digitally. I picked up a new copy of Horizon Zero Dawn for $12 a couple of years ago. I got Uncharted 4 for $20, also new. I don't remember what the equivalent digital prices were, but I'm pretty sure they were closer to $40.
I honestly think it's a bit of a shame—and a problem—that game prices fall so quickly. It puts too much emphasis on the first few months of sales (even more-so than other media), and in turn forces companies to churn out new franchise entries that don't actually do anything new. But as long as this is the state of the world, I think you'd be crazy to get the model with no disc drive.
I have got all major titles digitally at super cheap rates on PSN sales. God of War at $10, Horizon Dawn Zero at $12, Spiderman at $20, Devil may Cry at $19. You just gotta check r/PS4Deals subreddit everyday to know when a new sale is up.
Sure, and power to you for doing that—but I've gotten these prices on physical games without checking a website every day; I'm not really one to chase down sales. Worst-case scenario, having a disc drive doesn't preclude buying digital copies, it just adds that many more options.
I guess it depends on if you are motivated enough to find discount games. I tend to buy 1-2 new releases a year and very few old releases. With new releases I like the bundled upgrades you tend to get with the digital releases, I also like not having to swap disks if I want to play something. Then I subscribed to the new Xbox game pass a year ago and love how many old games I can play for $15/month. Can't see myself buying physical games again.
I never buy discs because I just hate having to swap them out. Games aren't that expensive (at least, for me). I'll just pay the PS Store price. I mean, I deal with switch game pricing, PS store prices seem downright cheap in comparison.
I suppose if you're price sensitive or play a lot games or both then physical makes sense. Personally I'll play 1-3 new games per year and all bought on release. The few bucks difference doesn't make a difference for how much value per hour of entertainment I receive. On the other hand, not having to store and swap out the games each time I switch is actually a tangible benefit to me.
Depends where you live as well. In Taiwan I find that I never get the deep discounts on physical games which I became accustomed to in Canada. Prices seem to remain at the $40 level for about three years. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is about CDN$55 new, still. It’s on sale in the Xbox store for about $20.
I have an xbox one and I rarely buy new games. Once every three months, I get an offer to try Gamepass for a dollar.
Selection can be an issue as well. I was in the local game store yesterday and they didn’t have a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2. I already have it but it’s kind of funny that I couldn’t buy a physical copy here of one of the biggest selling games if I wanted to.
For me, saving $100 on a digital-only console isn’t such a terrible purchase.
Living in Taiwan as well, and physical PS4 games are much cheaper after some time. I buy most of my games at around 500-600 NTD (17 to 20 USD). But PS4 (and Switch) seems to be much more popular here than Xbox, so that might be a reason.
Yeah, in many ways I wish I got the PS4 instead, especially because of where we are living. The Xbox exclusives weren’t that great compared to PS4 and the people out here seem to strongly agree which is why it is unpopular. I do think it’s a much cheaper system to own. The Xbox store is very generous. Three free games each month (half the time they are pretty good ones) plus gamepass is a really good deal.
I had a Switch last year but sold it. The Nintendo store would be a very distant third in the generosity department.
Most of the people I know with PS4s share primary accounts for PS+ and games. (if you account is primary, any account on the console can play your games. You can play your own games on your own account, as long as you're online, and logged in.)
I'm waiting to see how this changes exactly, before I form an opinion on which one someone should buy. (on the PS3, you could have your account on 5 consoles, and each one could play all of your games)
For reference: I will only buy a console once it's hacked to the extent that I can run my own homebrew software and backups (morals aside, piracy usually gives you the best user experience for any kind of media.) on it, and even then I will only buy it second-hand, iff the price is right. Hence why I never bought an xbone: since you could load developer code onto the thing easily, nobody's bothered to find out how to totally pwn the console yet.
This pricing was inevitable and Sony very likely taking a loss to stay competitive with Xbox Series X. Microsoft had first mover advantage and set the price floor + ceiling with their earlier announcements.
The question becomes how large of a loss per console and how long will it take for Sony to recoup?
When it comes to console pricing, there is no such thing as "first-mover" advantage. In fact, it's much more advantageous to be the _last_ company to price your console.
My favorite “console wars” story that I came across a while back, and is relevant to pricing advantage, is when Sony more-or-less immediately killed the Sega Saturn before it’s US release.
Right after Sega’s E3 presentation announcing the Saturn, US release date, and it’s $399 price tag, it was Sony’s turn. The guy from Sony walked up to the mic, said “$299”, and walked off stage. [1]
Like what? They have very similar specs, with the Xbox appearing to have a slight edge in GPU performance, and the PS5 having a slight edge in SSD speed.
Their SSD is not just an NVME gen 4 drive, but includes hardware to decompress textures and other game assets as they stream in. It's going to let the PS5 do a bunch of stuff that the XsX won't be able to. Also, the controller with its haptic feedback is supposed to be a significant step up and Sony had originally had a huge in person marketing and promotion event around the controller that COVID messed up.
XsX has hardware decompression engines too (zlib + bcpack) along with sampler feedback streaming, though PS5 does still have the edge on maximum SSD bandwidth and can pull assets more quickly.
How much that increase in bandwidth will actually affect games is hard to predict. Some devs on twitter were claiming that it's a bit easier to hit 4K60 on XsX.
>>Their SSD is not just an NVME gen 4 drive, but includes hardware to decompress textures and other game assets as they stream in. It's going to let the PS5 do a bunch of stuff that the XsX won't be able to
Are you sure that's completely true? They've said they'll let you install your own PCIe4 SSD providing it meets some perf requirements.
I think its a bit of a wash personally, the PS5 runs faster and has proprietary storage. But the GPU only has 70% the CU's of the XSX meaning that the overall APU should be significantly smaller, assuming the CUs are similar in size. This would increase the number of usable APUs per wafer.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 87.6 ms ] threadWith this large price difference they are betting on a larger digital only share which will shrink the physical disk market.
You have at least 30% of the price from Retail as their Margin. That is covering wholesale, logistics, operation, shipping etc. By going Digital they could keep some of those 30% for themselves. Hence why the Digital Version of the Console is Cheaper, it is subsidised.
Game Development cost is at all time high. Despite having much better Engine and Tooling. Gamers demand better graphics, physics, sound etc.
And then people also expect the console price to be same.
The only thing that has helped was the increasing number of Gamers.
Sony has previously been quite clear and vocal about not killing the Retail market. Especially considering the Japanese value physical properties and still prefer to buy Disc whenever possible. So I am sure it isn't their intention to try and kill Retail, more likely being forced to do so by the market.
I realize it's very possible publishers will continue to expand the use of microtransactions anyway, but, well, at least now they'll have the ability to not do that. Before, it was basically a lost cause.
Also... game prices drop so quickly that if you're actually budget-constrained, there's a pretty easy solution, which is to buy everything on a ~3 year delay. This will of course likely require getting the version of the PS5 with a disc drive, which everyone should do, for exactly this reason.
(Note also here that $60 now is not equal to $60 fifteen years ago, due to inflation.)
It was very much possible before too, just look at what the indie scene is capable of at much lower prices.
Source?
A few years after release, physical copies of games are usually cheaper—often much cheaper—than what's available digitally. I picked up a new copy of Horizon Zero Dawn for $12 a couple of years ago. I got Uncharted 4 for $20, also new. I don't remember what the equivalent digital prices were, but I'm pretty sure they were closer to $40.
I honestly think it's a bit of a shame—and a problem—that game prices fall so quickly. It puts too much emphasis on the first few months of sales (even more-so than other media), and in turn forces companies to churn out new franchise entries that don't actually do anything new. But as long as this is the state of the world, I think you'd be crazy to get the model with no disc drive.
Saving $100 is just the cherry on top.
I have an xbox one and I rarely buy new games. Once every three months, I get an offer to try Gamepass for a dollar.
Selection can be an issue as well. I was in the local game store yesterday and they didn’t have a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2. I already have it but it’s kind of funny that I couldn’t buy a physical copy here of one of the biggest selling games if I wanted to.
For me, saving $100 on a digital-only console isn’t such a terrible purchase.
I had a Switch last year but sold it. The Nintendo store would be a very distant third in the generosity department.
I'm waiting to see how this changes exactly, before I form an opinion on which one someone should buy. (on the PS3, you could have your account on 5 consoles, and each one could play all of your games)
For reference: I will only buy a console once it's hacked to the extent that I can run my own homebrew software and backups (morals aside, piracy usually gives you the best user experience for any kind of media.) on it, and even then I will only buy it second-hand, iff the price is right. Hence why I never bought an xbone: since you could load developer code onto the thing easily, nobody's bothered to find out how to totally pwn the console yet.
I thought they might have been selling a digital version of the whole PS5. Both stupid of me, but will happen at some point I guess.
The question becomes how large of a loss per console and how long will it take for Sony to recoup?
I wrote a bit about the dynamics here: https://www.stevenbuccini.com/console-wars
but I would also recommend playing MIT's simulator to develop an intuitive feel for the forces at play: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/LearningEdge/simulations/platform-w...
Right after Sega’s E3 presentation announcing the Saturn, US release date, and it’s $399 price tag, it was Sony’s turn. The guy from Sony walked up to the mic, said “$299”, and walked off stage. [1]
[1] https://youtu.be/ExaAYIKsDBI
How much that increase in bandwidth will actually affect games is hard to predict. Some devs on twitter were claiming that it's a bit easier to hit 4K60 on XsX.
Are you sure that's completely true? They've said they'll let you install your own PCIe4 SSD providing it meets some perf requirements.
- Sony's CPU + GPU are slightly higher clocked than Microsoft's, which typically means special binning required and increases costs (Bloomberg story collaborates on this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-15/sony-is-s...)
- Proprietary storage system, super fast but R&D dedicated to design and implement it
Ultimately both companies losing money on these initial sales but it seems Sony losing more than Microsoft.