One of the big questions resting on the tip of gamers' tongues is, just what will the PS5 price tag be? A new interview with Sony Interactive Entertainment's president and CEO Jim Ryan may have PlayStation 5's would-be buyers rattling their piggy-banks.
In a wide-ranging interview with GamesIndustryBiz, Ryan addressed speculation around the PS5 cost. While not revealing the price, Ryan suggested the PS5 price could be a significant hit on gamers' savings, and certainly not committing to beating the Xbox Series X on price.
Speaking on whether the potential for a Covid-19-related recession will affect sales of the PS5, a high-value gadget, Ryan said:
"I think the best way that we can address this is by providing the best possible value proposition that we can. I don't necessarily mean lowest price. Value is a combination of many things. In our area it means games, it means number of games, depth of games, breadth of games, quality of games, price of games... all of these things and how they avail themselves of the feature set of the platform."
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Price battleground
Ryan however stressed that gaming tends to be one of the pastimes that remains strong in times of economic hardship:
"Recent history has told us that gaming is one of the pastimes, and one of the businesses, that benefits in economically difficult times. It's quite logical, people don't have the money to go out so they stay at home. Now, who knows how this recession is going to look, how deep it will be and how long it will last. It could be that the historic templates, the historic models, that have applied in the past may not apply in the future."
Price is always a major battleground in the console ways, arguably more significant in a console's early days on sale than its game library or feature set. The PS3 lost out to the Xbox 360 on price, and roles were reversed in the following PS4 and Xbox One generation with Sony undercutting Microsoft by $100 at launch. It's a critical decision both companies have yet to reveal their stances on.
Could we find out the exact PS5 price this week? All eyes will be on the PS5 games reveal this Thursday – we'll keep you posted.
