As the price of the current gen consoles continues to rise, the cost of manufacturing the PS6 may already be out of control, with a potential retail price of up to £1,000.
There are multiple reasons that video games hardware is more expensive now than it used to be, but the most significant is that the price of memory and hard drives has sharply increased, as the components are bought up and used for AI data centres instead.
This has impacted everything from mobile phones to laptops, and video game consoles and gaming PCs are no different. It’s why the Steam Machine is so prohibitively expensive, despite Valve’s original intentions, and why Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft keep increasing the prices of their current generation devices – with Microsoft warning that they will continue to do so.
There’s nothing any of these companies can do about the issue, with even Apple recently being forced to raise prices, but it will naturally impact the price of the next gen consoles, including Microsoft’s Project Helix and the PlayStation 6. In fact, a reliable leaker claims that the component prices for the PlayStation 6 have increased by $200 (£150) in just the last few months.
Insider KeplerL2 has repeatedly proven accurate when it comes to video game hardware and last week suggested that the PlayStation 6 was still on schedule to release in 2027, despite the fact that Sony has only barely acknowledged it’s currently working on a next gen console.
In late March, KeplerL2 said that he estimated that PlayStation 6’s BOM (bill of materials, i.e. the raw components needed to make the console) at around $760 (£575).
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
When asked, on forum NeoGAF, whether he thought that estimate was still accurate, KeplerL2 answered by saying, ‘BOM went up by ~$200 since I made that post.’ So a new total of around $960 (£730).
Although £730 is just the raw materials – not including research and development, manufacturing, marketing, and other costs – traditionally Sony and Microsoft (but not usually Nintendo) have sold their consoles at a loss. As you can imagine, that’s not something they like to talk about but in recent years there has been a move away from subsidising hardware – hence all the recent price increases.
As such, it’s hard to predict how much the PlayStation 6 might cost, but with a BOM of roughly $960, you’re probably looking at a console that costs well over $1,000 (£750). Given the current price of the PS5 Pro, the PlayStation 6 could be closer to £1,000 in the UK.
The worst thing is, the component costs are still rising, and the scarcity of memory is not expected to lessen for at least five years, and are unlikely to ever fall back to previous levels.
That may explain why Sony is keen to get the PlayStation 6 out the door as soon as possible, because even if it does launch in late 2027 the cost of components is only going to increase further in the next year – not to mention over the course of the console’s lifetime.
After recently getting a price rise, the £790 PS5 Pro is currently the most expensive video game console ever made but it’s only aimed at hardcore gamers and accounts for only around 13% of overall PlayStation 5 sales.
A console that would be even more expensive for the base model is clearly not a mass market device but unless they want to take a massive loss on the hardware Sony (and Microsoft and Valve) have little choice if they want to release new hardware in the current market.
This create an enormous problem for all hardware manufacturers (although Nintendo are perhaps lucky that they launched the Switch 2 before things got really bad), not least because the law of diminishing graphical returns makes it unlikely that the PlayStation 6 and Project Helix could different any significant improvement to justify the sky high price tag.
How Sony is going to respond to these problems remains to be seen but it’s going to make the problems they’ve endured (and created) this generation seem like a mere hiccup in comparison.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
