From the reveal thread:
Price is taking the biscuit; standard edition at $200 extra...without the disc drive...!? $300 extra when looking at Digital vs Digital.
The BoM on this thing probably amounts to $40 extra for the different APU, $10 extra for PSU and Cooler, $20 extra for 14Gbps>18Gbps RAM chips & $30 extra for [some retarded reason] 1TB extra effective storage in SSD chips. Add in R&D recoup over the course of the next 3-4yrs on ~12-15m units (which they're probably going to struggle a little to hit now given the absurd premium) and they could easily have made a little extra profit per unit relative to the base unit while still addressing a larger audience.
The money men at Sony are very much in charge and seem to have gotten nervous on everything, they're all about recouping cost up front as fast as possible (see PSVR2) rather than trying to cast a wider net and trust the process.
Chips on higher nodes are not dropping in cost like they used to; but this is way, way beyond that. I don't buy for a second that they have ~$1.5B in R&D to recoup on this specifically, probably ~$200-300m. This is just greed, arrogance & anxiety. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's ~$150 of pure, extra profit here.
I could order one asap, (I sold my PS5 2yrs ago and have taken a long break from gaming) but just on principle I'll be waiting til the absolute last minute before Death Stranding 2 or GTAVI release; and getting one off eBay. I'd very much like to support the concept of a "Pro"; yet at the same time I don't wanna give them an extra sale when it comes to this bullshit. I legitimately hope this thing fails to take off at this cost and they re-adjust. The only hope being they readjust on price and not mid-gen refreshes in general.
Also, much as I like Cerny, the presentation was naff. "Technical", lol..
Finally, 2TB would've made more sense for a special/anniversary edition and 1TB for the normal Pro, folks would be far more receptive to a ~ $50 cheaper unit that can be upgraded rather than one that is cost-prohibitive up front. Total misread of the room (...and on the subject of misreading; it'd be one thing to only have a digital base and digital pro unit with a readily available universal disc drive, but having the base unit skus available as both, but the pro only available as digital sku/package is bizarre, enthusiasts weigh far more towards physical).
PlayStation may've veered into the Semi-Premium space; but they're not and never will be primarily Premium. They've lost the plot.
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This really should've been the renewed lineup imo:
$349 - PS5 Digital 1TB
$449 - PS5 Disc 1TB
$499 - PS5 Disc 30th Anniversary 2TB
$549 - PS5 Pro Digital 1TB
$649 - PS5 Pro Disc 1TB
$699 - PS5 Pro Disc 30th Anniversary 2TB
$59 - Universal Add-On Disc Drive
Just remember the PS4 Pro was $399 (with a disc drive), now they're asking you $300 more for this gen's Pro and you then have to spend an extra $79 for the disc drive. That's practically double the cost. There's inflation, there's poor node cost; and then beyond a large gulf, there's whatever the hell this is.....
I scoffed at the ol' "Arrogant Sony" claims going into this gen. I was wrong.
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Let me postface this by saying I'm the target audience for this. I want the best experience and I'm normally willing to pay for it. I'm an enthusiast whether it be movies, TV, music (see my username) or games. I want the best, I have disposable 'income' and I'm often willing to part with an outsized amount of money (and in some regards time) for just a moderately better experience. However, there's often a degree of reason and logic behind the extra cost in many of these endeavours, there's no doubt going to be markup in most of them, but there's a point at which you have to question things and this one just doesn't add up to anything but the aforementioned, greed, arrogance and/or nervousness [of the money men].
No doubt there will still be folks more loose with their cash than me and I'd normally be right there with them, heck, I spent most of my life broke and just want to enjoy things, but this one just hits different on principle. I think a lot of folks are gonna be priced out of adequate image quality and performance on any half-decent 4K display by a large margin given some of the sub-1080p, FSR shitshows we're seeing on the base system.
I think crossing that $599 price-point for the barebones unit is gonna turn a significant number people off.