The internet reacts
Yesterday we were treated to the latest in a line of Mark Cerny presentations about a new piece of PlayStation hardware. It’s safe to say it went down badly, with most polls showing 80-90% of people were dissatisfied with the showing. You can watch it yourself:
Although definitely getting a mostly negative reaction, some were clearly onboard with it:
Including getting Community Noted for a post about inflation. I wonder why Geoff was so positive about something that went down so badly?
Did we need a mid-gen refresh?
The increase to the graphical performance of the PS5 Pro sounded relatively impressive, but actual visuals were somewhat hard to ascertain from the poor quality YouTube stream. Somewhat unlike we saw with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, the PS5 Pro has been solidly placed as an enthusiast’s machine and something which will primarily appeal to existing PS5 owners. When the Xbox One X launched in particular, it solved a lot of issues with the base machine and actually captured some of the audience that had not yet moved to that generation. We see a huge number of people still using Xbox One consoles, and it’s likely they are playing on that SKU. PS5 Pro doesn’t have the same draw, and there are a couple of reasons.
Price is the main one, but before we get to that, it simply isn’t (yet) clear how big of a jump we can expect from the machine. PSSR has the opportunity to truly revolutionise certain games, but until we get more detail it could land anywhere along a spectrum of “meh” to “incredible”. The other elements are certainly not transformative, while talking about no longer needed fidelity vs performance modes and simply having max graphics at 60fps was somewhat undone by Hogwarts being shown at 30fps.
Is PS5 Pro too expensive?
So, the price. This is interesting in particular because with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, the launch prices matched the initial launch pricing of the base consoles. That clearly hasn’t happened here – we have to compare the PS5 Pro with the digital launch PS5, which is a difference of $699 / £699 to $399 / £359. Weird currency conversions aside, that’s a horrific increase. This is, however, set against a backdrop of spiralling consumer electronics pricing, where graphics cards regularly cost way in excess of £1,000. In fact, we’ve not seen significant discounts to the base consoles this generation, with unprecedented price increases even happening. PS5 (and Series X to a lesser extent) was plagued by stock shortages, while Sony will have enviously seen scalpers selling their consoles on eBay for double the RRP (or more).
The PS5 Pro is clearly expensive, but up against an environment where even the base PS5 has seen increases and not price cuts, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. To be honest, it’s the extra things, like messing up the conversion to Euros and GBP, it being digital only, and not including the stand that really rub salt in the wound.
What can we learn about the Next Xbox?
The fact we haven’t seen Series S price decreases yet is a bit of a weird one, as the components in Series S consoles weren’t in such short supply. But for Series X, it seems as though they are still not able to make a decent profit on the consoles, while the pricing of the Galaxy 2TB version at $599 / £549 is no better really than the PS5 Pro for what you’re getting (though at least has the drive!). This doesn’t bode well for next-gen pricing.
Ideally, when releasing a Pro console you would discount the base unit and sell the Pro at the same price as the base model launched at. Because Sony can’t do that at this stage, even deep into the gen, I think we have to assume the top-end model of the PS6 / Next Xbox will be $599-$699. A $599 launch would be a decent price, which seems like a strange thing to say given prior generation pricing, but inflation has happened and things have changed. I think this would also be a realistic price for a Xbox handheld, given you can get the 1TB OLED Steam Deck for £660 at the moment. With Sony apparently willing to cut the drive out of their flagship model for an audience that has traditionally been more anti-digital, a physical drive included with either console next-gen is far from a sure thing, which will help keep prices down. At this point, I would be surprised if the next Xbox has a disc drive.
I think we can expect Microsoft to have a Series S style SKU for around $449-$499 and a Next X discless console for $599-$699, with a dockable/native handheld matching the Next S specs for the same price as the X. I can’t see them going higher than that. Considering Microsoft have been so negligent in looking after their European consumers this gen (in terms of marketing, mainly), getting the currency conversion right would itself be a huge win. If PS5 Pro was coming in at £549 or even £599 (which is a realistic conversion to $699 right now), that would have been far more palatable. It’s a big miss.