Wondering why we still don't know how much the upcoming PS5 is going to set us back? You're not alone. Gamers around the world have been keen to know exactly how much the next-gen hardware is going to cost for a while now, but Sony has remained tight-lipped on that particular subject.
As it turns out, there are a few reasons for this. The first was revealed earlier this month, when Sony explained that it was waiting on the price of the Xbox Series X to be announced before setting a price for its own console. Fair enough... but there's a little more to it than that, apparently. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Sony is currently struggling to land on a price for the PS5 because of rising manufacturing costs.
Sources told Bloomberg that the the manufacturing cost for the PlayStation 5 has risen to "around $450 per unit" - that's roughly £345. Compare this to the PS4, which came in at around $381 per unit and sold for $399/£349 at launch, and it would seem Sony is going to have to make some tough decisions.
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While it's not uncommon for consoles to be sold at a loss, Sony designed the PS4 to be profitable from the beginning, after the PS3 suffered from a rough launch.
Assuming that Sony wants to make a profit on each PS5 sold, then we can assume we're looking at a potential launch price of considerably more than $450/£345. Bloomberg estimates that if Sony intends to operate as it did with the PS4, the PS5's retail price would have to be "at least" $470/£360.
That's an eye-watering $70 more than the PlayStation 4's launch price, and while it looks like it'd only be £10 more in the UK, it's worth noting that changes in currency values mean that the final UK price would almost certainly be more than a straight conversion of the US price.
It's unclear whether or not Sony could cut costs slightly by swapping out some of the previously-intended components for the PS5. Bloomberg hears that most of the parts have already been locked down at this stage, including an "unusually expensive" cooling system. There's also the matter of the next-generation AMD GPU with hardware support for ray tracing and, we assume, a lot of RAM that will inevitably drive up the price.
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Basically, either Sony will sell the PS5 at a loss and recoup on the money through services like PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now... or we're going to have to start saving up more than we expected. We'll have to wait and see, but you can check out Bloomberg's full report in the meantime.
Featured Image Credit: SonyTopics: PS5, PlayStation, PS4