Next year for these dates, you may unwrap your new PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series consoles and try out the new games created for them before Christmas Day starts. Both consoles will arrive in stores sometime in November 2020 or early December at the latest, after an undetermined period of pre-orders. But one of your New Year’s resolutions this year should be prepared to pay more money for the PS5 or new Xbox than current models.
We still expect both consoles to be affordable, but they won’t be, and they can’t be cheaper than the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X they’re supposed to replace. Sony and Microsoft may not be ready to tell us how much their next consoles will cost, but unofficial estimates already tell us they can’t match current prices.
Senior Nik Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad explained on Twitter that the PS5 and the new Xbox can’t be released below $400 because the bill of materials (BOM) for known specifications is much higher than that.
It’s no secret that both consoles will carry AMD-made CPU and GPU components, GDDR6 RAM, and NVMe-type solid-state drives (SSDs), which would make them powerful gaming computers capable of delivering resolutions up to 8K , ray tracing and eliminate loading times from games.
These components, however, are expensive, and there’s probably no way for Sony or Microsoft to sell their new consoles for less than $400. Both companies are expected to suffer a loss during the first year, as was the case with previous models, but that loss may not be too significant.
Ahmad himself said in the same thread that the cost of the bill of materials and the manufacture of an X Series console could be $460 to $520, which is not so bad. This is what Microsoft would pay to manufacture each console, but it’s an estimate from an analyst, who could see changes in the near future.
Still, a price of $499 for the PS5 or the new Xbox would make a lot of sense, especially if Ahmad’s assumption mentioned above is correct. Both Sony and Microsoft would suffer initial losses on their machines, but that $499 price would remain attractive.
Some leaks indicate that the PS5 would cost $499, but Sony has not yet revealed the price of the console. The company said it is looking to make the new PlayStation as affordable as possible, and plans to convince as many PS4 owners to upgrade to the new model as quickly as possible. These goals might be unreasonable if the PS5 were much more expensive than that.
