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[Azurro]

Explained in more detail 2 posts back from this.

Your explanation makes no sense, it's just mental gymnastics on how a device that struggles to capture its intended audience will somehow do great at capturing it in the future.

As far as I know, MS is selling the Series S as a loss, how is a $200 price point even a possibility? Might be better at that point to go to each town square and begin to give them away.

 

[THE DUCK]

Your explanation makes no sense, it's just mental gymnastics on how a device that struggles to capture its intended audience will somehow do great at capturing it in the future.

As far as I know, MS is selling the Series S as a loss, how is a $200 price point even a possibility? Might be better at that point to go to each town square and begin to give them away.

The only mental gymnastics going on here is that you think a 4tb machine designed to be the low end loses money at $299.

It's ridiculous at this point that the S, which has sold well, is now being positioned as massively overstocked and not selling, despite the absence of any real sales figures.

In addition, for all any of us know, know ms managed to produce more units, and the reward for that would be speculation that it doesn't sell, can't win either way I guess.

 

[THE DUCK]

Further to this, they even expected this going in, from Phil Spencer in November of 2020:

"We built more Series Xs than we did Series Ss. I think when we go into spring and summer, we'll probably moderate that a bit. Over the long run, in most cases, price wins out."

Wow, that sure sounds like they expected to pick up series S production right about now, and that price was definately expected to play a role.

 

[Azurro]

The only mental gymnastics going on here is that you think a 4tb machine designed to be the low end loses money at $299.

It's ridiculous at this point that the S, which has sold well, is now being positioned as massively overstocked and not selling, despite the absence of any real sales figures.

In addition, for all any of us know, know ms managed to produce more units, and the reward for that would be speculation that it doesn't sell, can't win either way I guess.

Mental gymnastics? Most estimates I've read put it above 300 dollars. Think about it, the SSD isn't cheap, the CPU is mostly the same, there are 10 GB of RAM in there and you get a controller. Most estimates also put the Series X as being sold at a loss, so that's a bom of > 500.

You think they are saving $300+ in fabrication costs just by cutting down in RAM by 6 GB, a smaller SSD and a smaller chip? It's nowhere near enough.

The Series S Is confirmed as having been manufactured less than the Xbox Series X and yet it's comfortably in stock everywhere and no one is in a hurry to get one in market where people are willing to pay $1000 for a PS5 and more than $2000 for an RTX3090. You don't see the discrepancy there? Really?

 

[THE DUCK]

Mental gymnastics? Most estimates I've read put it above 300 dollars. Think about it, the SSD isn't cheap, the CPU is mostly the same, there are 10 GB of RAM in there and you get a controller. You think they are saving $300+ in fabrication costs just by cutting down in RAM by 6 GB, a smaller SSD and a smaller chip? It's not enough.

The Series S Is confirmed as having been manufactured less than the Xbox Series X and yet it's comfortably in stock everywhere and no one is in a hurry to get one in market where people are willing to pay $1000 for a PS5 and more than $2000 for an RTX3090. You don't see the discrepancy there? Really?

It's way to early to jump to the idea that it's failed, or that it won't sell. For a lot of people (casuals, for second room, to compliment a PS5, etc) the magic price point isn't $299, nor will it ever be. I bought one for the bedroom, but even then I only did it as I could get it for points at shoppers, so it really only cost me $199.
That's the price point (and I have always said this - feel free to check my posts I have stated many times) that the S was meant to be at, where it offers the best value, and where it will see the best sales. MS knows this (even if it's at a loss), this are just dragging their feet on how much cash flow there is.
Maybe the price point is $249 instead of $299, but either way, $299 is too high for what it is - only the shortages/covid allowed this to happen. And only rich people are spending $1000 for a PS5 and $2000 for an RTX3090....not sure how that really affects if Joe Smith casual gamer buys a Series S on an impulse while at best buy.

 

[Captain Toad]

Ok I'll dumb it down for you, it's really not that complicated. To hit the true casual mass market, you need a lower price. (Lower than $299 U.S.) This is why the S was designed and created, so MS could service this market early in the generation, as apposed to 3 or 4 years into it. This isn't rocket science.

The only reason ms launched at the higher price was the shortage of hardware - they saw they could sell millions of units without launching at the lower price - which happened, this is a fact.

And why not $150? That's easy, they will lose too much money at that price. $199-$249 is probably acceptable, and within the target range when they were designing the S.
No posts have moved whatsoever.

Well, I agree with the part where you "dumbed it down". You dumb down a lot of conversations on here.

 

[Magnific0giganticus]

Mental gymnastics? Most estimates I've read put it above 300 dollars. Think about it, the SSD isn't cheap, the CPU is mostly the same, there are 10 GB of RAM in there and you get a controller. Most estimates also put the Series X as being sold at a loss, so that's a bom of > 500.

You think they are saving $300+ in fabrication costs just by cutting down in RAM by 6 GB, a smaller SSD and a smaller chip? It's nowhere near enough.

The Series S Is confirmed as having been manufactured less than the Xbox Series X and yet it's comfortably in stock everywhere and no one is in a hurry to get one in market where people are willing to pay $1000 for a PS5 and more than $2000 for an RTX3090. You don't see the discrepancy there? Really?

Exactly. I continually roll my eyes at the present supposition that the Series X is "sold out" everywhere. Yes, it's hard to get an XSX, and just like with the PS5 they can't manufacture enough of them to meet demand just yet. That doesn't mean PS5 and XSX have the same demand or even have the same exact manufacturing hurdles.

In my country (Dominican Republic), retailers buy their stock from US distributors and stores. You can't find a PS5 (disc) for less than US$900 (converted to national currency), while an Xbox Series X can easily be found for US$600 including 2 years of Game Pass Ultimate. You'd think Series X are flying off shelves here, but they aren't, even with the HUGE price difference people want and buy more PS5s.

 

[Mr Moose]

It's ridiculous at this point that the S, which has sold well, is now being positioned as massively overstocked and not selling, despite the absence of any real sales figures.

How do you know it sold well if you have no real sales figures?

 

[Azurro]

It's way to early to jump to the idea that it's failed, or that it won't sell. For a lot of people (casuals, for second room, to compliment a PS5, etc) the magic price point isn't $299, nor will it ever be. I bought one for the bedroom, but even then I only did it as I could get it for points at shoppers, so it really only cost me $199.
That's the price point (and I have always said this - feel free to check my posts I have stated many times) that the S was meant to be at, where it offers the best value, and where it will see the best sales. MS knows this (even if it's at a loss), this are just dragging their feet on how much cash flow there is.
Maybe the price point is $249 instead of $299, but either way, $299 is too high for what it is - only the shortages/covid allowed this to happen. And only rich people are spending $1000 for a PS5 and $2000 for an RTX3090....not sure how that really affects if Joe Smith casual gamer buys a Series S on an impulse while at best buy.

The flaw in your argument is that you are saying it's designed as a $200 dollar machine and yet the BOM is higher then 300. That is without taking into account warehousing, shipping, packaging and so on. It screams as being designed for the $300 price point, it's already selling at a pretty nice loss. They can only get close to the $200 price point by moving to a lower fab node, which isn't cheap, btw.

The other flaw in your argument is that the PS4 has sold over 115 million units with the majority of them at around the $300 price point, which hey, look at that, that's the price point the Series S is designed for. Funny huh?

You still haven't replied to the point about the actual state of the market, where literally everything decent is sold out. CPUs, GPUs, PS5, you name it. Yet the Series S can be bought right away, no issues, everywhere.

I'm not saying it's already failed, I'm not Nostradamus, but given the original plans to have a mass market device, not selling all that well, in this market...let's just say it doesn't look pretty. It's like a bunch of people dying of hunger refusing to buy a tuna sandwich because everything else in the store is sold out and just prefer to wait until the chicken or beef sandwiches come back.

 

[skit_data]

How do you know it sold well if you have no real sales figures?

Schroedingers Series S sales figures

Depending on what side of the argument you are, sale figures exist or does not exist

 

[Renozokii]

Apply a little common sense here, if I told you that I was buying a Ford for "a fraction of the cost" of a BMW, would you really assume I was paying 75% of the BMW? Of course not, 99% of the time that phrase is used, it means the cheaper item is way cheaper, not just 25% less.

I paid a "fraction of the price" for my burger at McDonald's than the one at a sit down restaurant. Are you imagining I paid $7.50 for that burger or $2?
$2 of course.

You can laugh out loud for real if you want but maybe think for 2 seconds before implying someone doesn't know what a fraction is.

If I said I got a brand new Ford F-150 for a fraction of its original price would you assume I got it for a fifth or fourth of its normal price? A phrase can be used one way a lot but still not mean exactly that 100% of the time. Anyway gl with the crying.

 

[THE DUCK]

Well, I agree with the part where you "dumbed it down". You dumb down a lot of conversations on here.

I'll take that as a comment coming from you, I must be doing something right.

 

[THE DUCK]

How do you know it sold well if you have no real sales figures?

In North America, up until a week or 2 ago, everyone saw it was sold out everywhere.
It woukd come in occasionally and sell out within hours, then eventually a day or 2 each time it came in. Only now are we seeing stock available online consistently.

 

[Mr Moose]

In North America, up until a week or 2 ago, everyone saw it was sold out everywhere.
It woukd come in occasionally and sell out within hours, then eventually a day or 2 each time it came in. Only now are we seeing stock available online consistently.

That means nothing without numbers, how do you know they didn't have 5 Series S consoles in stock each time? Just like the PS5 digital.
As someone before said (could've been you, I have a shit memory), the digital PS5 basically doesn't exist even though they own one.

 

[THE DUCK]

The flaw in your argument is that you are saying it's designed as a $200 dollar machine and yet the BOM is higher then 300. That is without taking into account warehousing, shipping, packaging and so on. It screams as being designed for the $300 price point, it's already selling at a pretty nice loss. They can only get close to the $200 price point by moving to a lower fab node, which isn't cheap, btw.

The other flaw in your argument is that the PS4 has sold over 115 million units with the majority of them at around the $300 price point, which hey, look at that, that's the price point the Series S is designed for. Funny huh?

You still haven't replied to the point about the actual state of the market, where literally everything decent is sold out. CPUs, GPUs, PS5, you name it. Yet the Series S can be bought right away, no issues, everywhere.

I'm not saying it's already failed, I'm not Nostradamus, but given the original plans to have a mass market device, not selling all that well, in this market...let's just say it doesn't look pretty. It's like a bunch of people dying of hunger refusing to buy a tuna sandwich because everything else in the store is sold out and just prefer to wait until the chicken or beef sandwiches come back.

Time will tell who is right and who is wrong.
If they drop the price even to $249 for the fall, there won't be a series s left on the planet by Christmas regardless of if they build 2 or 6 million of them.

As to the ps4, you are wrong, it was chugging away at about 10 million a year until it hit 2016, which is when it exploded once it hit a price point below $299. So mass market pricing does matter, you can see it clear as day in the ps4 sales history.

 

[THE DUCK]

That means nothing without numbers, how do you know they didn't have 5 Series S consoles in stock each time? Just like the PS5 digital.
As someone before said (could've been you, I have a shit memory), the digital PS5 basically doesn't exist even though they own one.

That's a valid point. The moose is loose.

 

[THE DUCK]

If I said I got a brand new Ford F-150 for a fraction of its original price would you assume I got it for a fifth for fourth of its normal price? A phrase can be used one way a lot but still not mean exactly that 100% of the time. Anyway gl with the crying.

That's the way the phrase is used, yes, 99.9% of the time.

 

[skit_data]

That means nothing without numbers, how do you know they didn't have 5 Series S consoles in stock each time? Just like the PS5 digital.
As someone before said (could've been you, I have a shit memory), the digital PS5 basically doesn't exist even though they own one.

Yep, guess us Europeans got a big allocation of Series S that ought have been overseas, the Series S has been pretty widely available since launch here.

I believe Sony is taking quite a hit on the PS5 DE, they probably don't want to produce more than necessary when they can sell the Standard Edition for profit (If those BOM cost approximations that floated around pre launch are to believed) and looking at the demand situation, they are making a economically sound decision.

But I have one of those precious DE and got it at launch for retail price

 

[Azurro]

Time will tell who is right and who is wrong.
If they drop the price even to $249 for the fall, there won't be a series s left on the planet by Christmas regardless of if they build 2 or 6 million of them.

As to the ps4, you are wrong, it was chugging away at about 10 million a year until it hit 2016, which is when it exploded once it hit a price point below $299. So mass market pricing does matter, you can see it clear as day in the ps4 sales history.

We don't need to wait for an arbitrary point in time, your argument is that the Series S is made for a price point of $200 when all the evidence points to a price point of $300. So, on that side, you are wrong.

Also, mind supporting that point of the PS4 price point? Not to mention that the Xbox One S has usually been cheaper than the base PS4, and yet it never sold nowhere near as well.

There's a lot more to the market than price points.

 

[JTCx]

Some posters are having a hard time accepting reality. It was supposed to different this time dammit.

 

[jroc74]

Mental gymnastics? Most estimates I've read put it above 300 dollars. Think about it, the SSD isn't cheap, the CPU is mostly the same, there are 10 GB of RAM in there and you get a controller. Most estimates also put the Series X as being sold at a loss, so that's a bom of > 500.

You think they are saving $300+ in fabrication costs just by cutting down in RAM by 6 GB, a smaller SSD and a smaller chip? It's nowhere near enough.

The Series S Is confirmed as having been manufactured less than the Xbox Series X and yet it's comfortably in stock everywhere and no one is in a hurry to get one in market where people are willing to pay $1000 for a PS5 and more than $2000 for an RTX3090. You don't see the discrepancy there? Really?

The flaw in your argument is that you are saying it's designed as a $200 dollar machine and yet the BOM is higher then 300. That is without taking into account warehousing, shipping, packaging and so on. It screams as being designed for the $300 price point, it's already selling at a pretty nice loss. They can only get close to the $200 price point by moving to a lower fab node, which isn't cheap, btw.

The other flaw in your argument is that the PS4 has sold over 115 million units with the majority of them at around the $300 price point, which hey, look at that, that's the price point the Series S is designed for. Funny huh?

You still haven't replied to the point about the actual state of the market, where literally everything decent is sold out. CPUs, GPUs, PS5, you name it. Yet the Series S can be bought right away, no issues, everywhere.

I'm not saying it's already failed, I'm not Nostradamus, but given the original plans to have a mass market device, not selling all that well, in this market...let's just say it doesn't look pretty. It's like a bunch of people dying of hunger refusing to buy a tuna sandwich because everything else in the store is sold out and just prefer to wait until the chicken or beef sandwiches come back.

Hold up....do someone seriously think the Series S costs....less....then $299 to make? Wow...lol.

Every current gen console is sold at a loss IMO. Just like last gen. But the wild part is IIRC the Pro cost less to make than the PS4. While the One X was the same or went even higher than the OG Xbox One? If you remove Kinect the OG XBO is around the same price as the PS4. I wish I could remember where I saw numbers but its close.

If anything Sony might be doing better with the PS5, PS5DE in comparison just because its the exact same chip, only difference is the blu ray drive and 1 shell.

 

[THE DUCK]

We don't need to wait for an arbitrary point in time, your argument is that the Series S is made for a price point of $200 when all the evidence points to a price point of $300. So, on that side, you are wrong.

Also, mind supporting that point of the PS4 price point? Not to mention that the Xbox One S has usually been cheaper than the base PS4, and yet it never sold nowhere near as well.

There's a lot more to the market than price points.

What evidence points to an intended $299 other than a pandemic that has fueled a parts shortage and an overall increase in console sales?

To support the ps4 sales point, as you have asked:
If you look at the ps4 sales here:

PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 is a video game console made by Sony that competes in the eighth generation of video game consoles with the Xbox One and the Wii U. It held the record for fastest selling home console at launch, only beaten by its successor, the PlayStation 5 in late 2020. It is currently the...

vgsales.fandom.com

You can clearly see how the $249 price point in 2016 nearly doubled the number of ps4's sold through Christmas.
And yes of course there has to be some demand or price is completely irrelevant. But I think we can safely say there is at least some demand for the s, a buy or not buy may be triggered by price. (As is with anything)

 

[RoyalLaFlame]

Ay just go for the ps4. So much good shit to play by the time you get through most of it you'll be able to pick up a ps5 no problem and get a decent amount back for your ps4.

That's what I'm thinking. A second hand PS5 still costs 5000+ yuan here (638+ euros), and a new one goes for 7000. A PS4 goes for 1500 yuan, way way cheaper.

Either I wait a few more months or I'll just buy a PS4 next month, still deciding.

 

[Melchiah]

Time will tell who is right and who is wrong.
If they drop the price even to $249 for the fall, there won't be a series s left on the planet by Christmas regardless of if they build 2 or 6 million of them.

As to the ps4, you are wrong, it was chugging away at about 10 million a year until it hit 2016, which is when it exploded once it hit a price point below $299. So mass market pricing does matter, you can see it clear as day in the ps4 sales history.

Bookmarked for the fall. You're delusional if you think XSS will be sold out across the planet, when we've already seen there's no worldwide demand for the model, or the XB brand itself.

 

[zedinen]

Mat Piscatella

PS5 still fastest selling console in US history with 6 months in market

 

[jroc74]

Bookmarked for the fall. You're delusional if you think XSS will be sold out across the planet, when we've already seen there's no worldwide demand for the model, or the XB brand itself.

There was a Gamestop drop yesterday and the XSS was still available hours later. PS5 went in minutes, XSX lasted a lil longer.

We are getting insights already just based on stock drops and how long the consoles last.

Sony also dropped info that the disc version is about to not be sold at a loss starting next month. And there will be a slight increase in DE for the stock split.

Life is about to come at some folks fast with all the wild theories and narratives they have.