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We don’t know the price of the PlayStation 5, and neither does Sony. The calculation is currently contending with a number of known and unknown variables, and the most significant of these is the price of the Xbox Series X (via VGC).
Chief financial officer and senior executive vice-president Hiroki Totoki spoke in the company’s Q3 2020 earning call, and elaborated as to the pricing plan for its next-generation punt. Leaving the PlayStation 4 in the past is easier said than done, and the investor asked how the “smooth transition” will be helped along, taking everything in account between here and now. Totoki explained that the price is yet to be calculated as a result of these factors.
“First, we must absolutely control the labour cost, the personnel cost, it must be controlled,” Totoki said. “And the initial ramp up, how much can we prepare initially, we will work on the production and the sales and we will have to prepare the right volume as we launch this.” Sony is taking competitors very seriously when considering the success of the PlayStation 5. “It’s very difficult to discuss anything about the price at this point of time, and depending upon the price level, we may have to determine the promotion that we are going to deploy and how much costs we are prepared to pay.”
“So it’s a question of balance,” he said. “And because it’s a balancing act it’s very difficult to say anything concrete at this point of time, but when I said smooth transition, we mean that we will definitely choose the optimal approach and that we will try to have the best balance so that we will be profitable in the life, during the life of this product.”
The official PlayStation 5 website is now live. “We've begun to share some of the incredible features you can expect from PlayStation 5, but we're not quite ready to fully unveil the next generation of PlayStation,” reads the statement on the site. It was speculated that there would be a reveal of the product this month, but judging by that description, we’ll likely be waiting a little longer. Sony will be going to “hundreds of consumer events” throughout 2020, so though we are still hanging on, it won’t be until E3.
The PlayStation 5 launches in holiday 2020.
