Demand and inflation must be through the fucking roof for sie.
Gotta give Jim credit, the guy does what HE wants to do, and whatever he needs to do to position the brand towards profits which they will need considering they are competing against a trillion dollar company that can give 2 shits about money.
Have to respect that type of leadership.
To a limit.
It's just so odd to me that they're increasing the price. Was not the introduction of PS+ Extra and Premium meant to help generate more revenue from the userbase, and maybe to also appeal to gain new subscribers? Was not the increase in games to $70 meant as well, to generate additional revenue from the userbase?
Their digital sales ratio has increased significantly and Sony retains 100% of the revenue from 1P sales digitally, and a bigger cut from 3P digital sales. These are things that are supposed to offset the losses usually taken on console sales, so what's going on? I think pursuing more bundles, maybe with some choice 3P games, would've been the much smarter option.
Basically, take what Microsoft are doing with Series S promotions ATM (if you buy a Series S in certain markets you get to choose from various games to include for free, one of them is Elden Ring) and do that with PS5. Increase the ratio of bundles even further if you feel you have to.
Typically you drop bad news at the end of the day on Friday, and drop some good news to soften the blow. Its weird how they decided to drop this thursday morning in the middle of gamescom.
This. They've always managed to deliver bad news well by having some good news to go with it. Not the case this time. Do they think a new DualSense controller is enough to ease the disappointment and frustration many (well, not us in America, we got off easy) are going to feel hearing this news?
Some strong "we're raising the cost of Xbox Live Gold by 100%" vibes here. In that scenario, MS were forced to walk it back, they had to figure some other ways to generate extra revenue from Xbox. There are surely alternatives for Sony outside of these price hikes, but those alternatives require more work, and these companies always want to take the easiest option first.
It will still sell out no doubt
Hmm...maybe. You very well could have a portion of would-be customers in non-American markets who were set on buying one this year, seeing this increase, adding that on top of any subscriptions and games they'd need to buy, weighing the rise in utilities, food, rent etc. and just deciding maybe they don't need a PS5 in the meantime after all.
I don't know how big that slice of customers is going to be; it's probably a rather small one in all honesty. Still though the optics of the announcement aren't great, not helped by the fact there was nothing else announced simultaneously to deflect away from it.
