How Much A Dollar Cost

Two weeks ago, Sony announced the PlayStation 5 Pro for a grand total of $700 USD. You want a disc drive? That’ll cost you another $80. That’s an almost $300 increase over the base model PS5s for a potential 45% improvement in graphical performance. I’ve had a over two weeks to digest the news and parse through my initial shock and frustration at the price.

I am still shocked and frustrated at the price.

Tell me now, why would someone go out of their way to purchase a PS5 Pro, when they could get a reasonable gaming PC for a similar price, or a much better one for a few hundred more? Why would someone get this instead of a smartphone or tablet? Sure a gaming PC can be (compared to consoles) difficult to setup and maintain, and the existing AAA games on an iPhone don’t look or run compared to their console counterparts. But these devices also do a hell of a lot more, and in the case of a smartphone/tablet, the smaller screens mask a lot of the graphical compromises.

What makes this price sting even more is that the existing PS5 has not gone down in price over the last 4 years. Instead, it has gone up in price for much of the world.^[1] Sony (and the videogame industry in general) are pricing out potential customers from their hardware and games. This is especially true for countries whose currency isn’t as strong as the USD -- i.e. most of the world. The price increase doesn’t affect countries like Canada and the UK as much as it affects countries within the Latin American or Middle East and African markets.

What’s more troubling about this is what it implies about the pricing of future consoles. Despite my (rightfully) harsh assessment of Microsoft’s Series X|S consoles, I do think that their commitment to not introducing a mid-generation hardware update and the Series S’ low cost of entry is important for a healthy console market. But how much will the PlayStation 6 cost? Remember, the PS5 Pro is a mid-generation upgrade that starts at $700 for a roughly 45% increase in graphical performance.^[2] The PS6 will arguably be a “generational leap” in technology... so will that result in a generational price increase? Is Sony aiming to create and capture a “high-end” of the console market, at least when compared to Nintendo and Microsoft? Will console prices over $500 become normal? I don’t have answers to these questions, but it is something to watch for.

It’s not just the hardware that’s getting more expensive. Prices for many games have gone up to $70, the first price increase since the Xbox 360/PS3 era in 2005. This itself is understandable, as salaries, cost of development, and inflation have risen. However, many games are even more expensive than this. To get the full experience, some games will gate content behind “deluxe” editions, season passes, and even microtransactions. Meanwhile, gamers are frustrated at games like Cyberpunk 2077 that are buggy and broken on release, requiring multiple patches over a span of months to get the game into an acceptable state.

On the other side, publishers routinely lament how expensive it is to develop a game. Both Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI failed to meet sales expectations, despite selling millions of copies.^[3] The critically acclaimed Titanfall 2 underperformed according to Electronic Arts.^[4] AAA development and marketing budgets continue to rapidly grow with every major game release.

Here’s the thing though -- no one is forcing developers to invest millions of dollars into their games. Do I enjoy a blockbuster game that pushes the boundaries of visual splendor à la Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Elden Ring, and Horizon Forbidden West? Sure I do. But does every major game that is released need to be a multimillion dollar production that sells tens of millions of copies? Probably not. Especially when games that sell many millions of copies fail to meet lofty and unrealistic corporate expectations.

Simpler, less hardware-intensive games can be successful. Hell, the two best-selling games of all time, Tetris and Minecraft, are literally built out of blocks. People care about creative and meaningful experiences, and you don’t need a massive budget to produce that. And in a console space where publishers are putting more and more money into games, allowing developers of major AAA titles to work on and release smaller, less financially taxing projects would balance out these risks. I’m sure the developers would enjoy experimenting with smaller games (and mitigate the insane pressures that lead to burnout).

As a personal aside, one of my recent favorite games is a small indie game called Peglin. It’s what happens when Peggle and the Rogue-like genre have a baby. The game is simple, and is available on everything from smartphones, to PCs, and recently the Switch. Vampire Survivors and Loop Hero, two games you can get for under $10, have provided me with more hours of fun than most of my PS5 collection. I have friends who used to work in the industry who express similar sentiments, and are gravitating towards smaller or older games that don’t require expensive hardware to enjoy.

If a $300 tablet becomes an entry way into videogames for people, then the importance of consoles will begin to become relegated to an entry-level high-end niche. And that’s ok -- a diverse market with multiple points of entry will only help to diversify and expand videogames as a medium. The PS5 Pro is an interesting experiment, but I hope that’s all it is. An outlier, and not an expensive, troubling trend which raises the question:

How much a dollar cost?