There's something unsettling about all this.
They are selling ps5 pro at an insane price tag.
What's going to happen when PS6 is released? Are they going to sell it under the price of the pro? Probably not. So it means PS6 will probably have a starting price of, at least ps5, pro price tag. Are we going to see the next gen at prices over 1000€?
Will it? If they have no real competition, they could set the price they want. Because Nintendo is not an alternative and Microsoft seems to be aiming at other stuff that is not consoles anymore. And many people still think that a console is easier and less troublesome when you only want to play games (even though it's not anymore the case).
The next generation could go down. The PS3 was crazy expensive, and then the PS4 cost significantly less than the PS3 had. So, there's precedent. Adjusted for inflation, the ps3 was even more expensive than the ps5 pro.
This is what happens when a market leader abuses its position.
If Xbox didn't exist anymore, you can bet your bottom dollar that Sony would have started doing this the exact same day they gained total control of the console market.
No, Nintendo doesn't count. They removed themselves from competing by making cheap low spec hardware. People don't choose between Nintendo, Sony, or Xbox, people choose between Sony or Xbox, and also get Nintendo. Smart business move by Nintendo, bad move for consumers.
Don't call it next-gen. Thats just marketing bullshit for enhanced previous generation.
There wasn't any real improvement since ps1 release. It's only getting slightly better in graphics, fps, color management, AI upscaling. That's all, nothing more.
We are slowly hitting a roadblock of graphical evolution... The "real" next-gen would be something that will leave you jaw dropping, like it did with the first ps1 release. That was a next-generation release.
Right now they are just trying their best to sell some little improvement here and there calling it next-gen console... Humpf !
This is like when supermarkets put the short-dated food in the 'reduced' section: I kinda always expect it to be 'was £3, now 30p', but it's usually 'was £3, now £2.89'
£390 is so close to the retail price for new, that if was going to get one, I'd probably just do that.
I'm really happy now that I upgraded my desktop pc as a lifelong PlayStation player. Life gets on the way of having most of the time anyway, so it doesn't matter if I play games at release or wait a few years until it comes to PC. I also find myself loving mods more and more, which is impossible on consoles
I feel like this console generation has dragged on and on with so few exciting new games. I've been waiting to buy either a PS5 or a Series X and when I look down the exclusive lists I sigh with boredom. What happened? Was it games as a service that happened?
The previous generation wasn't anything super exciting, but it feels like we're just trending downwards. On consoles I want big, flashy experiences, not indy games. Nothing against indies, of course, but I can play those on my Steam Deck.
GaaS has made gaming so boring. Fun for like, two months. But with no story and tons of nerfs, they quickly become rather samey feeling. I miss the Halo 2 days where games had a story. Or genuine innovation, like Rocket league, and its ability to be cross platform. That was GaaS done right, until Epic bought them and fucked it all up.
Well, for starters Xbox was dead on arrival, they had no system sellers lined up and the series S has held this generation Xbox back since the beginning. Sony on the other hand started off well, but then got the GaaS hard on and almost all of their gaas projects are failing hard. That's why they barely have a library of exclusives.
Not to mention this generation has also been a technological flop (not just on the consoles side but also on the PC side). The next big thing to change gaming is ray tracing, but the tech is still too raw to fully utilize it. Because of that we're largely getting the same tech as last gen, just higher fidelity.
And considering console exclusives started coming to PC I think there's even less of a consumer pull towards consoles. A lot of PC gamers owned a console and now they don't need one because the get to play their console games on PC at higher quality with better performance.
The next generation needs to be marvelous or I think console gaming, as we currently know it, will be dead.