All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2020 Edition]

At then end it means people have less money to invest in non primary needs. People can live without a console and gaming. And it showed, the PS4 sales fall from a cliff because people who don't want to pay 299 euros for a console will not buy it. This is the worst Playstation sales of all time in France for 2020.

The people who buy a PS5 now and in the first 4 or 5 years aren't the same people who will buy a PS4 7 years after release.

The money made by Sony comes from games, MTX and service sales. They can lost some money on consoles but with process node begining to be pretty expensive it seems go 7nm with PS4 Super slim is not interesting and with a lower price 249 or 199 euros. The goal is not cost reduction only but for the PS4 to be a cheap point fo entry for late adopter but it seems this segment of market will not be reachable by Sony.

 

@chris1515 I'm not following your point. Inflation is the reason why 199 is pretty much impossible outside of super sales. Everything else you said are factors that are not relevant to what consoles cost to redevelop, revise and manufacture. What percentage of people get paid what, relative to ten or fifteen years ago don't change those absolute costs. Technology does not magically cost less because some folks are in jobs where pay rises fall behind inflation.

To repeat my first point, Sony cost reduced PS3 in it's prime and only because Cell was mostly a commodity part and IBM were doing that work anyway. Sony would have to commission AMD to cost reduce PS4 chips. Past year's piddling sales numbers of PS4 show zero reason for Sony to spend money doing this. Most people are not going to be thinking of buying a revised PS4 to accompany a PS5 because there is literally no need. There very must was this need moving from PS3 to PS4.

 

If Moore's law was alive it should comfortably beat effect of inflation.

 

Moore's law was about computational ability, not economics. It was revised over time but only survived at all for so long because of disproportionately expensive CPUs, which is contrary to the economic issue making a 199 console price point almost impossible.

 

Lot of regular people still relate moore's law to what happened late 90's, and early 00's. You get much better product every 2 years with same/cheaper price. Now it's you maybe can make a better piece of silicon but the cost, heat etc. has become giant issue. TSMC removing discounts being latest pain in consumer's butt.

 

Again this generation change all for Sony, the Playstation division is hugely profitable and the profit is mostly on PSN. Again the analysts were surprised by the slow down of PS4 sales. If the consoles was cheaper, they could sell much more consoles and if you follow the PSN sales every months, games sales have very long tail.



Not been able to go down a certain price means some people will not enter the PS4 ecosystem. It is an entry barrier and now with PSN, discount period and so on late adopter are more profitable than before when they were buying used games. The impact will probably bigger later when more people will buy a online console only PS5 DE or Series S.

EDIT: Maybe this late adopter will go with Cloud gaming later...

 

In theory, in practise the last five year's of Intel output has not delivered anything like that where you sometimes get a better performing product at a lower price. With some caveats.

@chris1515 we're going in circles, you keep posting the same sentiment that ignores inflation and the low number of PS4 sales in 2020. I don't know how to make my point any different so let's just agree to disagree.

 

Well, intel is kind of irrelevant when talking about sony. TSMC seems to have done progress. Cost reduced tiny ps4 soc could be made in 7nm or 5nm but I guess they are expensive enough to make inflation beat manufacturing technology. Considering the backward compatibility it might even be possible to design new smaller chip with higher clockspeed and have a new ps4 version that works about as well for BC in ps5. Higher clock speed to match ps4 performance would allow using less silicon. On the other hand all the io pins would become issue then. This new ps4 console could be digital only so users can only buy digital games that have been verified to work with cost reduced console.

 

The 299 euros MSRP of PS4 is THE reason of the low number of PS4 sales in 2020 in France. I am french and I read the full report. It seems and they probably do survey about it to be the main reason of this poor sales. This is a reality and it means a part of the market is now unreachable to Sony and Microsoft due partially to inflation and partially to increasing cost in process node process. Even with inflation if we could do like the the 90's I am sure we would have one day a 199 euros MSRP PS4 with the HDD not less because mechanical part have an uncompressible cost.

 

But not when talking about Moore's law because Gordon Moore was the co-founder of Intel.

It's one hell of a lead of faith to conclude that carving a third off PS4's RRP would result in significant spurt in sales sufficient to make is worthwhile. You also cannot carve off a third of the cost from a node shrink alone, At launch in 2013 the estimated APU was cost estimated to be $100. Where are they finding the rest of the cost reduction?

 

Covid happened. I think they decided to use those precious 7nm wafers for PS5 production. But yes sales are terrible mostly because the PS4 is way too expensive. 299€ the 500GB version (the only version still widely available today), and the bundled versions (Fifa and such) were still usually at 339-369€ for years. The Pro is sold out and sold at >€469 at resellers while PS5 is sold 800-900€ by scalpers (>1000€ if you want a direct purchase).

 

Are you saying Moore's law never applied to tsmc or that it doesn't apply anymore or something else. If something else, then what?

 

I know but again whatever 199 is ideal but 249 could be enough and they don't have the margin to do it. Sony estimate than reduce the MSRP without change of processing node is too costly and same for changing of process node knowing there is only TSMC able to be a partner and cost increase too.

This is not faith like I said they did some research about this.

Late adopter will probably been better served by Cloud gaming. Hardware price is a problem for them.

 

And again, as I posted earlier, you have to bear in mind that Jim Ryan has been saying since 2019 that Sony want to transition PS4 owners to PS5 as quickly as possible and they expect that to take around three years. Cost reducing, especially node shrinking the APU, is a significant undertaking and is certainly a gamble. Making more PS4 more appealing is also not in line with Sony's goal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If people are not getting Sony's objective, which they've been consistent in messaging for two calendar years, I don't know what to say.

 

TSMC wasn't even funded when Gordon Moore made his original prediction ('law'). Moore's second prediction certainly does, but that is about transistor density and this is just about keeping pace at the absolute cutting edge of fabrication which is not what ends up in consoles. You're talking about absolute cutting edge expensive fabrication and @chris1515 is talking about cutting costs. How is Moore's law even relevant to cost reduction? It's the absolute opposite - transistor density at any cost.

 

Again Sony is a company having a more appealing PS4 for late adopter would be good because if it was possible it means more revenue and more profit. But the problem it is impossible and probably not very profitable. Some people who would have been customer inside the playstation ecosystem and they will never transition to PS5 because they will never enter Playstation ecosystem. This is additional revenue.

I think for this type of consumer cloud gaming is probably much more convenient.

EDIT:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-05-08-capcom-posts-record-profits-on-sharply-down-sales

Backlog sales are more and more important for publisher and most of the sales long time after release are digital. Late adopter are probably much more valuable than before when they were buying mostly used games.

 

I get that this is your opinion but it's not Sony's. I only ever really took umbrage with your faith in a cost reduction from a further node shrink selling significantly more consoles to make it worthwhile. I don't know what the APU costs to manufacture now ($100 at launch) but I cannot see how you can get PS4 under 200. Where are the other cost reductions coming from?

 

Again this is impossible, first APU cost reduction will be very limited at 7nm and it is not an opinion this is not profitable at all. I never said than 199 euros MSRP is possible. Basically this is not possible at all. I just said than consoles can't reach this part of the market anymore.

And I think it is a good opportunity for cloud gaming.

 

Ok, first stop randomly bolding text, it's weird. Second, this has been my point.

 

It sort of is when they're doing cross-generation game releases. If they wanted to make the PS5 more appealing they wouldn't release on last-gen.