Sony just dropped prices for its next-generation consoles and fans are not sure what to make of it. Although the prices are comparable to what we expected, there are still some things that need further explanation.
One of the big decisions console players will have to make this time around is whether to get all digital variant of the Bluray one or not. The current generation consoles have enough built-in storage that we can justify a variant with no optical drive. Surprisingly this variant is even considerably cheaper from the bigger one.
This lower price does make you think about Sony’s profit margins. Diving deeper into some details we understand the real thought process behind the new pricing scheme. First of all to understand this new price we need to discuss Sony’s profit margins from physical games and digital sales. Apparently the company has considerably higher margins on digital games and subscriptions than physical copies.
With the PS5 digital version, Sony will therefore get more profits which will ultimately justify the lower pricing of this console. If we take into account the statistical data. Sony gets about 50 present more when you buy a third party game from the digital store vs 30 percent when you buy it physically.
This fills in the confusion of a considerable price difference between the two consoles. Previously people were confused that the two consoles only differ by a disk drive if we look at the physical. This physical drive only costs about 20 to 30 dollars. So it doesn’t make sense for them to make the console about a hundred dollars cheaper.
Once we factor in the above facts it does make sense for sony to price the console lower. It is because Sony knows that they can make up this loss from the game sales in the future. you can easily do the math even if you consider a game as low as 60 dollars on sale.
The Sony Store:
Another interesting thing about the digital version of the play station is that the users on this platform will only have to buy games from Sony’s Play Station Store. For the Physical Version, people can buy discs from anywhere or even use the digital store however digital store is only limited to Sony’s own store which gets their margins even higher.
Players opting for this version also have to keep in mind that in this version you will not be able to get used games. Since there IS no disk drive option users will not be able to use the third party used games sources and will directly need to buy from the PS store.
Also Read: Sony having problems with SoC yield.
In terms of pricing and game availability obviously all the major AA titles will be available on the PS Store for this console. Sony mentions games like Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Call Of Duty Black Ops: Cold Wars. To get pricing in perspective sony also mentioned that Worldwide Studios titles will be prices around 50 to 70 US Dollars.
Coming back to the argument whether you should buy the all-digital version. In our opinion, the digital version offers much more value. If you do not plan on buying physical games and only have a limited set of titles you play. This is definitely the one to buy.
Another great plus point for buying the digital version is better storage space-saving. Not only does the console have a slimmer footprint. It also saves you the space for storing all the optical drives. Besides most of us only buy games from digital stores now. You can sign up for the pre-orders of these new consoles here.