Game Consoles Are Pricing Themselves Out of Relevance
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/game-consoles-are-pricing-themselves-out-of-relevance/1100-6539969/?utm_source=reddit.com
Game Consoles Are Pricing Themselves Out of Relevance
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/game-consoles-are-pricing-themselves-out-of-relevance/1100-6539969/?utm_source=reddit.com
39 Comments
Between price and the fact that you have to install games just like a computer there’s not much reason to buy one over just buying a higher spec PC
Best console is the Steam Deck since it is also a computer, change my mind.
I’ve been playing Wii U of all things lately with my 5 year old and I prefer it over any modern console. A lot of new games are lazy, bloated garbage that refuse to innovate
I specifically made sure to save for and buy a PS5 and Switch 2 as soon as I was able to in late 2024/early 2025 because I knew the price hikes would come eventually. Feel very glad for the investment in hindsight.
Another industry Tech data centers sre killing.
It’s not like they have a choice. If they price to sell, they’ll eat a major loss per unit and will probably just get cannibalized for parts anyways.
Completely unnecessary american tariffs and datacenter hell are doing this. These companies are completely aware of what this price increase does to sales
Thanks trump!
Doesn’t matter, GTA6 is coming out. People will pay whatever they it takes.
Just relaying my comment from another post about this article:
I think the long term strategy is consoles and gaming PCs become too expensive so everyone who isn’t rich will be pushed to subscription based cloud gaming. You won’t own anything, subscription prices will continually creep up, and ads will be injected into everything.
The enshittification will continue until morale improves.
The model more reliant on fees and margins on other expensive things will fail. Especially if there is a high entry fee.
I’m kind of amazed this model has lasted this long.
Emulators are your friend!
Ya and AI is killing journalism with bot like posts and articles likes this one.
Not sure why everyone keeps bringing up pc gaming like that hasn’t become prohibitively expensive in the last few years. The last few years going back till at least 2019 has been the worst time to build a pc. Not to mention the fact that the steam deck has just been sold out for the last 3 months and other pc handhelds have seen significant mark ups. Is it cheaper than console gaming in the long run? Yes, but good luck getting a whole pc gaming setup for the price of a ps5, xbox, or switch 2.
Not with how expensive gaming PC’s are to build.
Honestly, I’m more curious if any of these gaming companies ever thought of slowing down the release cycle of a new console for the sake of giving more people time to adapt.
To me, the graphics comparison between the PS4 and PS5 feel so minimal. I know the processing power is better, but it truthfully does not feel like that much of a visual difference.
That and I’m still enjoying a lot of older video games, even for online multiplayer. I’m playing Age of Empires 2: DE still as well as Halo: The Master Chief Collection for big team games. As for Halo, I’m still playing that on the Xbox One I got 12 years ago, used!
If these consoles jeep getting more expensive, there’s not going to be as many people left to buy them new.
I know that there’s probably a rumor mill around for the PS6/Next Xbox or whatever, but I just don’t see the point of getting another console, especially if the biggest thing that some of them tout is another remake of a game I already enjoyed.
lol no they are not, people will still buy them regardless of price hikes because we live in looney land now
Allowing the Trump regime to oversee the unregulated integration of AI infrastructure will go down as one of the greatest disasters in modern history. Reagan levels of generational ass fucking.
The hardware prices got so high, I don’t understand why people are buying new pcs.
It should be used market only..
Yeah because PC’s are famously very cheap
Me, wife and kid all have gaming PCs at this point and sadly our 2 PS5s turned into weird home decor items.
Games costs too much, no mods, less performance.
Why not just greatly extend the life-cycle of the consoles? I’ll gladly play another 6-8 years on my PS5 Pro, and beyond. Same for the Switch 2 and Series X. The games look fantastic – just make them fun.
Not really. Have you seen PC part prices lately?
Consoles have always been sold at or near cost. The PS3 launched at $599 in 2006 which is over $900 adjusted for inflation. If anything the pricing model hasn’t changed, everything else just got more expensive around it.
Starting to think tech is pricing itself out of the hands of the lower/middle class, perhaps they didn’t like what we’ve done with it for 2 decades and are cutting us out naturally with cost increases rather than forcefully taking it from us which would be obvious and inefficient. Tech for me, not for thee.
AI/Data centers and trump fucking shit over.
I’ve gone back to emulators and retro gaming. This whole generation fucking sucks and isn’t fun
The bread is stale and circus tickets are getting too expensive. We all know what comes next.
Yeah, I wanted to buy PS5 after few years because I thought that they will be cheaper. But no…
The alternative is PC if you want games. A mid-level GPU alone costs double an entire PS5/Xbox whatever it’s called now.
Trump’s tariffs
At the start of the gen I said on the Xbox sub that Xbox was best positioned because costs of games and hardware will rise but they are able to offer a service of many games on gamepass AND without selling a loss-leader box (possibly 1k+ in cost) and got downvoted for it because people don’t want to hear prices will rise.
The writing is on the wall here due to component costs, cost of development and other operation costs. Prices are going to continue rising, are people going to pay over 1k for these with stricter household budgets?
This retail model of selling an expensive console is breaking under its own weight due to the economy. The obvious is going to happen.
With the price of GPUs and SSDs going insane because of AI, ALL gaming is becoming irrelevant. The game producers who do more with less are the only ones that are likely to survive this.
This might deadass be the first sub thread I’ve seen finally attribute the rising gaming hardware cost on tariffs and the data center bubble. People have been making hardware price increases out to be incompetence on part of Sony and Nintendo, seemingly ignoring that they’re operating under the conditions created by genuine retards above them
Blows my mind that people have been able to buy a $200 Beelink and play most of the Steam catalogue on dece settings and but would prefer to spend deep in the four figures for the same experience for Sony and Microsoft
Nah man. Game console always has a bare minimum profit margin.
Because that’s not where the company makes money, it’s the exclusive games.
More and more games are being released on all platforms, this is what’s truly eating into the profit margin of console. And as such, it’s forcing them to make the console more expensive IN ADDITION to the rising AI and datacenter competition for parts.
I bought back my SEGA SATURN and Dreamcast incl. games and parts for 250€, after I sold it 15 years ago. I‘m more happy about them any other modern consoles and games.
Consoles getting too expensive … Gamepass and cloud gaming getting cheaper … hmmm
If you don’t have a console already at this point, just get a cheap Anbernic handheld or an AliExpress knockoff and embrace retro gaming. By far the best value around.