Sony increasing the price of PS5 by £30

[Siri]

11 minutes ago, dataDave said:

 

I've been overjoyed with my MiSTer, PS2 and Wii that I have set up besides my work space. 100% no nonsense - just straight into the games.

 

I know the Switch is good at that too, and I've got a handful of thoroughly excellent new RPGs to play on that, but all it took was a ten minute bash on F-Zero GX and now I'm hooked on that instead.  I'm pretty certain I'd live if I never got the chance to buy another games console ever again.

 

It's incredibly true - we're at such a saturation point with "luxury" videogame purchases that any capitalist shenanigans can be firmly fucked off into a bin. I mean, there's a lot of shit out there in both retro and independent games alike, but there's still enough that will last you a lifetime.

 

I had to give myself rather strict rules for a PC game buying challenge I wrote about because, frankly, I could have wrote 'look on itch.io and play all the free shit' and called it a day.

[Giddas]

11 minutes ago, SMD said:

 

Apparently Sony have been making a profit on each PS5 disk edition sold since last August.

 

That doesn't exactly say that, it could well be they're breaking even.

[Alex W.]

The cooler contains at least fifteen kilos of high grade copper, which is a tremendous hedge against further inflation.

 

[davidcotton]

19 hours ago, mikeyl said:

Actually bricking it (not really) at the thought of the annual iPhone upgrade. Also the PSVR 2. Put an extra £50 on that.

 

Have to follow currencies closer than I like and it’s a total joke how worthless the pound is. If this was a South American country we’d be calling it a failed state.

 

 

Rumoured £100 increase. 

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

Mentioned in another thread, but with 10% inflation for 2 years, the battle for the £60 pricepoint is probably lost, we'll be lucky if they stay at £70.

I would prefer not to but I can do £70 for a AAA new game that gives me hours of entertainment. It’s more that this is just a remake with nothing added but new graphics. I don’t doubt there’s some work involved in (re)making that but it’s clearly a much smaller investment than making a brand new game.

[Strafe]

43 minutes ago, ScouserInExile said:

It's been nearly 20 years since I worked in the games industry but when I did, consoles and games followed the "razor blade model" (this was literally the term used when I was at Sony). The initial purchase - the console - was a net loss to the manufacturer: once they retailer took their cut, taxes were paid, shipping costs were covered and so on, they were sold for less than they cost to make. Where the money was made was then the accessories - the games. Every third party game sold for a console has a portion of the sale price going to the console manufacturer (recently shown to be 30% for PS5 games) with absolutely zero risk or outlay involved. Every game sold is just pure profit to Sony.

 

Giving a game away with the console as standard would be an added layer of loss to them and would defeat the purpose of the price rise.

I listed first party games. I don’t doubt that it would cost them money but it would presumably cost them less to do it that way. Or something. I don’t know, just spitballing.

[Sumire]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

With these electricity prices they probably should.

 

”Britain Mode lowers the PS5’s power consumption to a mere 100 Watts, while still allowing a full-screen gaming experience.”

 

 

Aye, we might not be able to afford to turn it on soon.

[Hitcher]

Or it'll be switched off before you can get to a save point!

[dataDave]

They should do a coin-op variant alongside the discless, with some fella coming to empty it every fortnight.

[Sarlaccfood]

3 hours ago, Hitcher said:

Or it'll be switched off before you can get to a save point!

*hugs Switch*

[teddymeow]

[MattyP]

18 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

Videogames are such a blatant corporate entity these days that they don’t even hide ripping off the consumer anymore. I have a Series S for sea of thieves and rocket league with mates as well as the indie and old Xbox releases. But mostly I play on my Dreamcast and Megadrive and simply enjoy a more simpler era, I get more excited about a new homebrew release for a Sega console than something like Elden ring. This  winter I’ll be playing Life on Mars and Driving Strikers. 

Seriously thinking about digging my Wii out again and just playing on that. Modded it a while back and put all my games on a solid state disk. Fast loading and great games to dip in and out off... no updates/downloads/subscription services. I think I actually prefer "simplier" games of the bygone era. Have a 360 knocking about too....It's nice having a current gen console though to see what the current "state of the art" is in terms of gaming.. but... at the moment it all just feels.. very familiar...  

[Oh Danny Boy]

40 minutes ago, MattyP said:

Seriously thinking about digging my Wii out again and just playing on that. Modded it a while back and put all my games on a solid state disk. Fast loading and great games to dip in and out off... no updates/downloads/subscription services. I think I actually prefer "simplier" games of the bygone era. Have a 360 knocking about too....It's nice having a current gen console though to see what the current "state of the art" is in terms of gaming.. but... at the moment it all just feels.. very familiar...  

 

Definitely. I think that the 360 is the last console that was gamer focused.  

[SeanR]

54 minutes ago, teddymeow said:

they must mean “like Xbox one launch era Microsoft”… 

[teddymeow]

18 minutes ago, SeanR said:

they must mean “like Xbox one launch era Microsoft”… 

 

I dunno. 360 era Microsoft pissed it all away with the Xbox One.

[SeanR]

360 era Microsoft were raking it in, because of ps3 era Sony…

 

ps4 era Sony has continued success because of Xbox one era microsoft

[TehStu]

Some sort of Corporate Hubris vs Time plot.

[Sarlaccfood]

55 minutes ago, SeanR said:

they must mean “like Xbox one launch era Microsoft”… 

Nah the Kinect was wot done it. They pivoted to the Wii market towards the end of the 360 era.

[SeanR]

Hey, who remembers when the Xbox one Kinect was “a small box, an add-on to increase the performance of the 360 to parity”?

 

just me?

[DC]

 

[Sarlaccfood]

I’m still laughing about this Sony move today.
 

I can’t believe they’ve done it. It’s so misguided and tone deaf.

[the_debaser]

2 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

 

Definitely. I think that the 360 is the last console that was gamer focused.  

Switch is the same to be fair, straight into the games, no Netflix or anything like that, no interminable 50 gig patches, no £70 games, just incredible choice and fair pricing. 
 

No wonder it is still bossing the industry. 

[StumpyJohn]

9 hours ago, RubberJohnny said:

Mentioned in another thread, but with 10% inflation for 2 years, the battle for the £60 pricepoint is probably lost, we'll be lucky if they stay at £70.

And they'll be lucky if I ever buy a game from them!

[Hello Goaty ♥]

Well I bought a discless PS5 from Cash Gen in March  and that was only 389.99   

 

i'll probably hang onto this of course.

[Jg15]

4 hours ago, SeanR said:

they must mean “like Xbox one launch era Microsoft”… 

I think a better phrase would be "Mattrick era Microsoft". He came in around 2007, began pissing away all of Peter Moores work to establish Xbox further by focusing on Project Natal for the future and not on building a better first party output. The rot really did set in during the 360 years.

[HarMGM]

What is it with this industry and corporate hubris anyway? I wouldn't care so much were it not for the fact that this shit always seems to get in the way of building a better console experience then the last. Bah.

[SMD]

Most executives are useless chancers, that's why

[Vespa Alex]

10 hours ago, Strafe said:

I would prefer not to but I can do £70 for a AAA new game that gives me hours of entertainment. It’s more that this is just a remake with nothing added but new graphics. I don’t doubt there’s some work involved in (re)making that but it’s clearly a much smaller investment than making a brand new game.

Yep, agreed on all points. If I get 20 hours of enjoyment that’s £3.50 an hour which is still really good value. If you sell the game and get half your money back it’s amazing. 

[TehStu]

17 minutes ago, HarMGM said:

What is it with this industry and corporate hubris anyway? I wouldn't care so much were it not for the fact that this shit always seems to get in the way of building a better console experience then the last. Bah.

I read a fantastic book (it sounds really dry, but it was interesting) by Jim Collins a good few years back. It charted pairs of similar companies, each pair in different sectors, against each other and how one fell behind due to hubris and the other surged ahead. Examples like IBM, Hewlett Packard, Walmart, I think Radioshack, etc. All US based, obviously. But it was utterly fascinating. I think the book was Good to Great or How the Mighty Fall, but honestly the book was so good I'd recommend any of them:

 

https://www.jimcollins.com/books.html

 

I might have to grab those again actually, I had a copy through our work library.

 

On topic, the back and forth with Microsoft and Sony could probably figure in his analysis. As could the hardware collapse of Sega. It's all the same guff, different industries. The disrupters becoming disrupted, etc.

[Oh Danny Boy]

4 hours ago, the_debaser said:

Switch is the same to be fair, straight into the games, no Netflix or anything like that, no interminable 50 gig patches, no £70 games, just incredible choice and fair pricing. 
 

No wonder it is still bossing the industry. 

Switch is the closer thing to a proper old school feeling games console these days definitely and has a lot to answer for in bringing back my passion for gaming after a decade out and having me spend too much coin on the hobby since.