Sony has still not decided on the price of the PS5? Well, looks like it

Sony seems to be debating on the price of the upcoming PlayStation 5. A ‘tip’ that they haven’t settled on a number yet comes from a screenshot shared by a Reddit user that looks like a survey from Neilson asking people what they think about two prices.

The survey screenshot shared by Reddit user youessbee has two random prices and asks respondents what they think about either. The two prices received by this Reddit user are quite low and seems implausible for all practical purposes though and it seems when Neilson said ‘random’ they really meant it.

The two price options given to youessbee is 349 euros and the digital edition of the PS5 going for 259 euros. That’s like $436 and $323. This pegs the price for the PS5 just $36 more than the PS4 Pro and $64 cheaper than the launch price of the 20GB PS3. While this seems borderline impossible, there could be something interesting here.

If Nielson showed very random low prices to one respondent, it is likely that others would have been shown very high ones to get their opinion on those. Sony might be putting together data on price opinions across a wide range to see exactly where people go from “I’ll wait for a sale” to “Yes, please!”.

However, this does not mean that Sony will go with the majority preference here, they also have their own sales targets in mind based on the number of units produced and the reduction in production costs over time.

The contention around PS5’s price exists since there has been a lot of discussion about this. A leak from IronManPS5 on Twitter claimed that the PS5 will cost $499 in the US and 449 pounds in the UK when it launches this year. The leak also indicated that the digital edition will be $100 and 100 pounds less, that’s $399 and 349 pounds.

People thinking the price is too off will just point to the hardware. If you just do the math, the closest thing to the console’s GPU specs costs $350 on its own, add a 825GB SSD that’s like another $100, add Blue Ray drive for another $100 - that’s like $550 already. Then you need the CPU, RAM, gamepad, mainboard etc. Even with bulk discounts or Sony being prepared to take a hit to make sure people buy the PS5, the price tag of $600 at least, or higher, seems possible.

A console can win or lose by the launch price. We’ll have to wait and find out.