A new PS6 report has surfaced online with information about the price point of the console, and it’s bad news for those looking forward to the Sony machine. The release date of the PS6 remains a big mystery, with reports all over the place. Some claim Sony will release it in 2027, while others insist 2028 or 2029 are more likely. What the reports do agree on is that it will be expensive, which is obvious. If the PS5 price increases over the course of the generation and the Steam Machine $1000 price reveal weren’t indicators, the PS6 is going to cost at least $1000, unless Sony wants to take a bath and lose money on every unit it sells, which is unlikely. It’s not unprecedented, but not common, and it’s not like a $900 or $950 price point is going to dramatically improve sales of the console, as this is also going to be out of the price range of many.
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The new report comes the way of Kepler_L2, a well-known source when it comes to hardware, but a source that does not have a bulletproof track record. In other words, take the following with a grain of salt. Even if the information below is accurate, it’s subject to change. Between now and release, the PS6 could get cheaper or more expensive. Unfortunately, for PlayStation fans, the former is very unlikely, while the latter is likely.
New PS6 Report
Earlier in the year, Kepler_L2 reported that the bill of materials for the PS6 was currently around $760. This was reported in March. For those that do not know, a BOM is everything a product needs to be manufactured, and doesn’t include additional costs, like shipping or sunk costs like research and development. In other words, $760 would be the start of costs for Sony, not the final cost. And the problem is, according to Kepler_L2, the BOM has gone up another $200 since then. For those out of the loop, component shortages have skyrocketed the cost of video game hardware manufacturing, with other things like the ongoing energy crisis and rampant inflation not helping either.
This puts the BOM of the PS6 at $960 and climbing. And it’s going to climb. The forecasts for 2027 show that costs are going to increase, which means a higher BOM, aka a higher price for the consumer.
If the PS6 shipped tomorrow, it would be lucky to be $1000. At this price point, Sony would certainly be losing money on every unit sold, but probably not too much. Of course, losing — hypothetically — $100 on every unit sold may not seem like a lot, but it adds up. You sell $10 million units at a loss of $100, and that’s $1 billion. The problem is that the PS6 is not shipping tomorrow; it’s going to ship in what will likely be an even more hostile market in 2027. If it waits until 2028 or 2029, it may wait out this period, but there’s no indication that anything is going to improve on these various fronts. In fact, there’s reason to suspect things could be worse. Alas, this appears to be the new normal for video game hardware, which may be a massive problem for PlayStation and others.
All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the video game conversations happening on the ComicBook Forum.
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