Same price, less storage. Shrinkflation at its finest.
Sony plans to release a new PS5 Slim All-Digital console with an 825GB SSD, reducing storage from the previous 1TB to optimize production costs amid rising expenses. The PS5 Slim Standard with a disc drive will retain the 1TB SSD, and the updated model is expected to launch in Europe first.
This is just classic shrinkflation. Your bottle of shampoo comes in 32 ounces, they shrink it to 24 ounces without changing the price, then later they come out with 32 ounce bottles again with a higher price and a sticker that says, “Now with 33% more!” to make it seem like they’re giving you so much shampoo; and then the cycle repeats.
No, it’s not. Consoles (and technology in general) historically trend cheaper over time. Demand lowers, manufacturing cost lowers, newer tech releases, costs adjust to accommodate.
It’s very abnormal that the current gen of consoles has not only not gotten cheaper yet, but has actually raisen in price. Like, very very abnormal.
Shrinkflation is a real thing, but historically it has nothing to do with consoles.
Source: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/how-low-will-the-price-of-ps4-go.1520289/
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/are-the-ps4-and-xbox-one-really-that-expensive-historically/
Yes, but Moore’s Law has broken down, and the things that used to allow for consoles to get cheaper over time, via new revisions, are not holding true anymore. So in lieu of those things, we’ve got classic shrinkflation.
A 1TB SSD is 60€. In a shop.
They’re like cheaping out 6 bucks here
Sure, on already thin margins (I don’t remember if PS5 is sold at a loss, but Xbox is), multiplied by millions more units.
PS5 is supposedly no longer sold at a loss.
That said, the margin per console is probably not good enough for their required profit growth, hence this.
In addition to what others have said about Moore’s Law slowing down, there’s also just the fact that console generations themselves are slower. The cheapest price cuts on old consoles were fire sale prices to clear out old stock when they were on their way out. Even though the PS5 has been on the market for about as long, it still feels like the generation is only beginning, we won’t be talking about PS6 for a long time yet.
Node shrinks drove a lot of this. Those have stopped being such large leaps.
Normally yes, but might as well blame it on something and raise the prices while everyone else.