“I think we have enough power in the machine. The innovation needs to come not from making PS6 for $1,200 - it’s to make another PS5 for $300. Now, that would be true innovation,” he explains. Layden’s comments are particularly timely right now as the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are much more expensive today than they were at launch, six years ago. “This is the first platform that I’ve seen that has gone up in price over time.”
As suggested, this is their setup to sell a console that is completely eviscerated and can only function as a thin client for a cloud game streaming service. They know the AI RAM prices are not going down before they need to refresh the PS5, and also that people will not en masse pay $1,000+ for a locked-down digital-only console.
That’s the only “innovation” that can result in a $300 or so price, so they hope that will change the optics enough for us to own nothing and like it.
A streaming service would run into the same issue, though. In the end, they would need remote high-end GPUs to power the games which are not going to be available to them cheaply enough to justify.
I think they will try to use older hardware (which would potentially fit the handheld idea) and push studios to design around that. He mentions the iterative nature of games which get more and more graphically intense. I’m assuming the thought is to break away from that.
Streaming does help with limited resources as you don’t need a GPU for every person, just every person online. But it does become a balancing act of how do you distribute your GPUs and how many concurrent players do you support.
A streaming service would run into the same issue, though. In the end, they would need remote high-end GPUs to power the games which are not going to be available to them cheaply enough to justify.
Yeah, but it would allow them to bury the cost in a subscription renewal instead of up-front price.
I would agree, but they’ve already done this and pulled the service for lack of subscriptions. This is exactly what PSNow was. They pulled it in 2022 for lack of revenue.
Because it’s a streaming service. Here’s a leaked photo of the announcement
As suggested, this is their setup to sell a console that is completely eviscerated and can only function as a thin client for a cloud game streaming service. They know the AI RAM prices are not going down before they need to refresh the PS5, and also that people will not en masse pay $1,000+ for a locked-down digital-only console.
That’s the only “innovation” that can result in a $300 or so price, so they hope that will change the optics enough for us to own nothing and like it.
A streaming service would run into the same issue, though. In the end, they would need remote high-end GPUs to power the games which are not going to be available to them cheaply enough to justify.
I think they will try to use older hardware (which would potentially fit the handheld idea) and push studios to design around that. He mentions the iterative nature of games which get more and more graphically intense. I’m assuming the thought is to break away from that.
Streaming does help with limited resources as you don’t need a GPU for every person, just every person online. But it does become a balancing act of how do you distribute your GPUs and how many concurrent players do you support.
Yeah, but it would allow them to bury the cost in a subscription renewal instead of up-front price.
I would agree, but they’ve already done this and pulled the service for lack of subscriptions. This is exactly what PSNow was. They pulled it in 2022 for lack of revenue.