Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
I think they do the redesigns to save money. The 6nm version already has leftover space in the current unit after they shrunk the heat sink. If they've moved to 5nm or something they could likely save even more space. A more compact console costs them less to to store and ship and so on.
I just don't think Jim Ryan is looking to cut prices anytime soon. I don't think you sell 25-30 million units at full price and decide you're going to cut prices and get into a price war with Microsoft when you don't have to. They never cut the price of the PS4 Pro even when the PS5 digital came out for the same price. They just discontinued the PS4 Pro. They could have priced the PS4 Pro at the same price as the XSS at 300, but they kept the original PS4 at 300, meaning they don't see the XSS as real competition. Similarly, I think they're willing to let Microsoft drop the XSX to 400 and stay at 500.
The difference in dropping the price 100 dollars and they sell between 20-30 million units between September 2023 and September 2024 is 2-3 billion dollars.
If I'm Sony, I rather keep the price at 500 dollars, use that extra profit to buy a major publisher and sell even more units based of the increased production of software studios. Two more years at 500 dollars and maintained sales goes a long way towards paying for companies like Bungie or FromSoftware/Kadokawa.
Given inflation, I don't think dropping the price makes sense and it's not something Nintendo would do. Everything we've seen from Sony suggests that they're trying to operate more like Nintendo these days.