Could 9th gen consoles be $500 USD?

[MrFox]

I think having enough power for PS4 level of graphics in 4K VR would make it worth a 499 upgrade in 2020. Along with a 2K RGB per eye headset. Still a niche market though.

I'd love real GI, which always feels far future hopes and dreams. CG renderers use hundreds to thousands of rays per pixel. I suppose gaming will always be better using approximations and shortcuts but how close are we from having a convincing realtime GI?

Mainstream doesn't pay that much for gaming, specially when 199 currently proves much more popular than 2 or 3 time more powerful hardware for 349 or 499. If it plays the same games, the premium sku remains niche. And if it doesn't, and it's a new expensive launch sku, it will fail vs lower cost competitors.

It remains to be seen whether there's any volume of sales for the expensive mid-gen beyond upgraders.

 

[mpg1]

Just to have some perspective. $500 in 2017 is the equivalent of ~$472 in 2013 and ~$408 in 2006. In 2020 $500 will go even less far in terms of value.

That's not to say $500 is within the broader market's willingness to pay for a console though.

 

[dobwal]

When the Atari went for $199 back in 1977 my parents were paying a $250 mortgage.

LOL.

In today's dollars the Atari launched at ~$700. That's why $199 remained a common launch price for a consoles well into the 90s.

Launch prices aren't for the masses, it's never been that way. The PS1 debut at $299 was considered too expensive for a new console especially from a brand with no gaming history. 10 years later the 360's $399 Premium Sku was consider too expensive by a lot of people too.

$399 has been a viable price point for launches since 2005. We are talking 2020-2022 for the next launch. If we estimate the next next gen launching in 2028-2032. That's a looong ass time for $499 to get a chance to become a common price point if next gen both MS and Sony choose $399

By that time Air Jordan's will be probably be $499. Every-channel cable bills with super duper high speed internet will probably be $499 a month. A pair of tickets to Disney land will probably be $499.

 

[MrFox]

Well they need to reach 100 million people, and they don't sell all 100 million the first year then sell nothing for 5 years. It always launch at a higher price and it's lowered throughout the next 6 years to progressively reach the mainstream. Otherwise they would not have sustained hardware sales. Overlapping a mid-gen is skewing this but it's still the same principle, just overlaping the generations. Or not. We don't know yet if mid-gen was a one time experiment. At the end of this gen, the pro/xb1x will be only 10% of the user base.

 

[iroboto]

At the end of this gen, the pro/xb1x will be only 10% of the user base.

or not
hehe
I agree with the skewing, and honestly if mid gen refresh didn't exist, it would almost make tons of sense to release around 2019 or at least announce to release.

Comparing the release of the 2013 to 2019 hardware at the same price will be an interesting exercise (now that we know they are using the same technologies)

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

If the PS5 releases in 2019 and the XBoxTwo releases in 2020, I can see the former launching at ~$500. They'd have a year on the market, all to themselves and, if it was sold at a profit or break-even throughout this period, would give them room to cut the price when the XBoxTwo launches.

I'm still hoping for a two tier launch though: a ~$350 1080p focused model, and a ~$600 4K model.

 

[zed]

$399 has been a viable price point for launches since 2005.

I think you might want to recheck that, xbox 360 had only shipped (not sold) worldwide 10 million in its first 14 months, including 2 holiday periods, and this includes a $299 version!
Xbox 360 sales only really took off after it cut the price, esp when it hit the $199 price in 2010 and more so 2011 (that was its best year)

 

[milk]

Polygons isn't the problem. I'd say the next step is uniform global illumination. Games lit like CGI will look far in advance of the still shonky screen-space efforts we have now. Proper soft-shadows and secondary illumination on everything will add a clearly improved sense of realism that current-gen can't match.

This is getting off-topic but I too eagerly await for the day we can have high quality dinamic GI, but I'm not holding my breath for lauch window next gen games coming even close to delivering, if not ever. Yet, curved surface based models and distance base tessellation and displacement are a more plausible goal, and one that has been hinted at before. It's the kind of thing you can imagine becoming feaseble for most games and engines with the right generation jump. GI is not as straighfoward to implement.
Sure, we don't neeeed more geometry, but pixel-perfect geometry EVERYWHERE is an easy feature to show off. And all it takes is playing one game with it to suddenly NEED IT in every other title.

 

[dobwal]

I think you might want to recheck that, xbox 360 had only shipped (not sold) worldwide 10 million in its first 14 months, including 2 holiday periods, and this includes a $299 version!
Xbox 360 sales only really took off after it cut the price, esp when it hit the $199 price in 2010 and more so 2011 (that was its best year)

The 360 was a successor of a console with a 25 million userbase. The PS1 sold just 13 million in its first 16 months at $299. A viable price point at launch isn't necessarily about selling 20 million consoles a year from the outset.

 

[zed]

mate, Are you ignoring your previous post
$299 in the year 1995 is equivalent to $480.26 in 2017.
It only really took off when it dropped in 1996 (a year later) to $199

 

[CSI PC]

mate, Are you ignoring your previous post
$299 in the year 1995 is equivalent to $480.26 in 2017.
It only really took off when it dropped in 1996 (a year later) to $199

But consumer perceptions change over such time along with technology and also how used and consumer demands ( also look at what general gaming consumers expect from AAA console gaming), I am not sure how well one can correlate this to the past, the height of consoles could be deemed to be 2001-2010 with models such as Xbox360, Sony PS2, Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii,Nintendo DS,
The biggest problem IMO is that the product cycle in the past for Microsoft/Sony was 5-7 years, but they are being forced to use ever more current and expensive PC components/technology going forward due to the cycle seeming to be now 3-4 years at best, part of which is being pushed by the AAA gaming and what they can offer to entice consumers such as visuals and immersion, which in turn drives consumer expectations for more.
Consumers have shown how competitive the console market is with their appetite/perception to look at the best console available to buy unless one can find their niche such as Nintendo; could be argued exclusives help but IMO that would had generally been more beneficial at the height of console demands and with studio-dev costs these days there is more pressure for AAA games to be multiplatform - yeah I appreciate there are some very well known exclusives still out there.

 

[Magnum_Force]

I wouldn't say MS and Sony have been forced by PC space to shorten the lifecycle and introduce mid tier upgrades, rather Sonys and MS decision to offer a comparatively lower spec machine at launch vs the ps3/360 generation due to their desire or maybe need to not sell at a loss.

Would we still see a mid gen refresh if the ps4/xbone launched with 3Tfops/ hd7950 levelnof performance? I'm not so sure.

 

[AlNom]

It doesn't make much sense to deviate too much from the $399 price point.

Spending 60% of $399 on your main SOC+RAM will afford you 3-400mm² of main SOC silicon and 12GB DRAM in 2020. That'll give you 8x 3.5GHz Zen CPUs and a 10-12TF GPU. That leaves you with $160 for HDD ($25), flash ($30)/optical ($20-25), support peripherals, PSU, controller, packaging and a small profit.

You can build a bigger SOC and add more DRAM, but all that does is make you more vulnerable to price wars and DRAM market price swings and for what ? 3-5TF more GPU performance which only makes a difference in DF technical analysis.

Cheers

Since early adopters are suckers -

$399 Base
$599 Beast

Top-tier GDDR6, cherry picked APU (4GHz Zen + 15-18TF). Base model with cut-down APU specs for yields (same chip). ​

 

[CSI PC]

I wouldn't say MS and Sony have been forced by PC space to shorten the lifecycle and introduce mid tier upgrades, rather Sonys and MS decision to offer a comparatively lower spec machine at launch vs the ps3/360 generation due to their desire or maybe need to not sell at a loss.

Would we still see a mid gen refresh if the ps4/xbone launched with 3Tfops/ hd7950 levelnof performance? I'm not so sure.

You need to take my whole post in context as it all fits together and I mention that time period what could be deemed the heights of console industry from a HW perspective vs cost.

I never gave a reason why, but they are forced to otherwise we would not see a product now, unfortunately TFLOPS is really not a good way to measure games otherwise you would say the Nvidia Maxwell GPUs were terrible gaming cards compared to AMDs at the time let alone when trying to compare consoles when specialised in the past.
Microsoft and Sony launched a product in the usual way; within component/pricing/performance budget but no longer using specialised component designs and critically also compounded by speed technology is moving along with expectations and demands driven between AAA developers and consumers.
In the past they could wait the full 5-7 years but no longer because tech is moving so fast (putting aside CPUs), and tech is not just what the consumer wants in a game but also technology such as resolution/HDR/etc that also drives higher performing specification.

The heights of consoles using best performance bespoke dedicated function processors are gone as the costs cannot be justified relative to the price/performance of computer components and especially GPUs.
Time will tell if the XBox One manages to last longer than 4 years before requiring replacement, and that machine is a reasonable design in terms of spec/performance/price although unfortunately still with a weak CPU side but then price budget comes into play.

 

[Shortbread]

If you go multi-tier I'd expect more of a $299 / $499 split.

I'm thinking more like $399 and $599. The PS4 was $399 when it launched, so I don't see Sony shying away from that price point, even if BOM was $250. $399 seems to be the sweet-spot on getting the vast majority of casual/moderate gamers into the door. $599 of course are for those diehard gamers looking for the best IQ/performance, outside of purchasing a PC. Personally, I would love to see a $700 system from either Sony/MS on catering to those folks like myself, wanting a more superior experience in a gaming console format.

 

[eastmen]

Nothing like. 20% of PS4 owners will upgrade to a mid-gen console if you're lucky. Everyone else is happy to sit with their years old console until the next real new generation. Even more so if they shell out on a 4K TV - traditional income families only have so much spending money.

you buy a 4k tv your going to want content to go with it. A xbox one x is that machine offers 4k streaming , 4k bluray and 4k gaming. not only that but the xbox one x will drop in price as we move foward in time towards the launch of a ps5 / xbox next

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A quick Google suggests many millions of 4K TV sets are being sold. Like 50 million+. How many are buying 4K consoles? What are the sales of the XBox One X again? And as the cost of XBOX drops, the new consoles will get even nearer. How many are going to want to buy a last-gen console for their 4K TV?

 

[milk]

I still see no reason for a muti-tier LAUNCH. You will always have few early adopters with or without a cheaper model available. The most price sensitive consumers won't buy a new console on year 1 even if its cheap (unless we are talking REAL cheap) because at lauch the lack of avaliable next-gen exclusive games lowers the percieved value. I bet 90% of the consumers that would buy the low end tier would shell out the money for the high tier if it was the only option.
It's amarter to introduce a highend tier later on, as by that time it can be even stronger, and you get to have many early adopters buyinf your machine again to get the PRO/X version, which would not happen had they had the option to buy just that from day one.
A multi tier only gets you a weaker base-level or a weaker high-end, depending on how you see it.

 

[BRiT]

A quick Google suggests many millions of 4K TV sets are being sold. Like 50 million+. How many are buying 4K consoles?

Arguably all those who bought Xbox One S at retail brick and mortar stores last year? At least they used it as a 4K UHD Player. No, it wasn't a true 4K console but it scratched an itch many had for their new 4K HDR TVs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's an argument in favour of the years old consoles instead of buying shiny new XBOXes.