At the end of August this year, Sony officially announced that due to the international economic environment, the price of PS5 in some areas will be adjusted, while the price of China's host has been increased by 400 blocks, the current official price of the digital version of the host is 3499 yuan, and the price of the optical drive version that can be inserted into the disc is as high as 4299 yuan. As soon as the news came out, domestic players have sighed: the current console players are really too difficult.
In fact, PS5 not only in the country price increase, many parts of the world are also facing a similar situation, including Europe, the United Kingdom and Japan, the price of this new generation of consoles have risen, so it seems that Sony wants to raise the price of its own products on a global scale.
For this price increase, players are naturally complaining, but while complaining, an indisputable fact is still in front of them: even if the price increase is announced, Sony's PS5 is still the best choice for most console players, and it is difficult to find a replacement.
Sony, the "heinous crime", is this time overturning or making hemp?
PS5 price increase news came out, the game circle immediately sounded the voice of singing Sony, in the eyes of many people, now Sony wants to rely on the price increase to cut the player's leeks, basically equivalent to seeking its own death, because its unyielding competitor Microsoft XBOX is catching up, which can be described as menacing.
The most eye-catching performance of XBOX in the past two years is the launch of the XGP membership subscription service that players like to hear, players only need to subscribe to XGP members to play a large number of games in the game library for free, and even many first-time games will join XGP at the first time of release, so that many players can start for free. It is also such a strong membership subscription service, Microsoft XBOX's popularity in the past two years has also continued to rise, and its appeal to players is also increasing.
In the face of this situation, Sony has also taken corresponding actions, and the new PS PLUS membership subscription system recently launched in the first half of this year has followed XGP's free game library. However, during the period when the new membership service was just launched, Sony was badly evaluated by a large number of players because of its lack of sincerity in the free game lineup and the "price difference" storm, which looked like a self-defeating look.
In addition to the controversial new membership service, Sony has a lot of magical operations of "backstabbing" players during this time, including a large number of exclusive game landing PCs, game version upgrades requiring payment, etc., which have made many players dissatisfied. On this basis, with Microsoft's announcement of the acquisition of Blizzard, the game industry has continued to appear that Sony began to decline, and this PS5 announcement of price increases makes such a statement more credible in the eyes of many, and the sharp decline in Sony's US stock market at the end of August seems to reflect this.
However, the price increase of Sony PS5 will not make it lose its current dominant position in the market, because the new generation of consoles XBOX Series X of rival Microsoft has been affected by chip shortages, production has not improved, and the host is currently in short supply worldwide, and XBOX President Spencer estimates that this situation is likely to continue until 2023.
Since the new crown epidemic, such a situation has become very common in the console industry, affected not only Microsoft, Nintendo's new models have been repeatedly postponed to sell, and Sony PS5 has not been able to stand alone, the premium phenomenon caused by the shortage of goods in the country has not improved until recently, while the Japanese region is more serious, and physical stores even need customers to bring their own PS4 to buy PS5.
However, the supply dilemma faced by the PS5 seems to have a trend to break through. On the one hand, Sony said that it will strive to improve the market supply of hosts, and industry sources also revealed that the supply of consoles in the second half of the year will be very considerable; On the other hand, the PS5 also launched a new model in September, and the industry speculated that the new model with a thinner and lighter model would reduce the production cost of the main engine, which would undoubtedly increase the production volume of the PS5.
Competitor production is insufficient, their own host prices rise, production costs reduced, these factors so that Sony PS5 is likely to usher in a substantial increase in sales in the short term, foreign media also speculate that the next Sony PS division revenue will be quite considerable. In this way, although the PS5 price increase makes players complain, the contribution of this price increase to the sales of consoles in the second half of the year cannot be ignored.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to the increase in the price of the console, a new trend in recent times has made it worse for players' wallets, because the prices of many of Sony's game products are also getting higher and higher.
While consoles are expensive, games are more expensive
Now Sony's most anticipated game products are the upcoming release of "God of War 5: Twilight of the Gods", as the latest game of the next era of the "God of War" series IP, its status in the minds of players is quite high, which can be described as a lot of expectations.
The price of the game is the price of the game, and the pricing of God of War 5: Twilight of the Gods in the PSN Hong Kong service is also very "powerful", the PS5 standard version costs 568 Hong Kong dollars, while the digital deluxe version is as high as 628 Hong Kong dollars. In addition to this, the game has a collector's edition with many physical items, which costs a staggering £180 (about 1438 yuan).
Sony PS veterans should be able to feel the increase in the price of the game, after all, in 2018, the launch price of the standard version of "God of War 4" released on the PS4 platform is less than 400 Hong Kong dollars, and the price of the deluxe version is 468 Hong Kong dollars, which can only buy the most basic PS4 standard version of the new series today.
Despite the high price, the enthusiasm of console players has not diminished, and although the game has not yet been released, the popularity and admiration of a large number of players has reflected the popularity of the new game, and game producers even need to repeatedly ensure that they will not jump tickets to calm the restless players who are waiting.
God of War 5: Twilight of the Gods clearly has a good reputation base among the player base, while The Last Survivor: Part I, also a Sony first-party game, does not have such treatment.
As a remake of the PS classic exclusive game "The Last Survivor", the release price of "The Last Survivor: Part 1" is also quite high, and the standard version of the game in the Hong Kong clothing store is priced at 568 Hong Kong dollars. Such a high price made the game questioned by many players before it was released, because even the ordinary version of the orthodox sequel "The Last Survivor 2" was only 468 Hong Kong dollars at the beginning, while the release price of "The Last Survivor: Part I", which was suspected of "fried cold rice", was raised to a new level.
After the official release of "The Last Survivor: Part I", the high price has indeed become the focus of criticism from players, on the rating site Metacritic, the game's user rating is currently only 5.9 points, and the vast majority of players who give bad reviews think that the game's content is sorry for its pricing.
Overall, whether it is God of War 5: Twilight of the Gods or The Last Survivor: Part I, both of the new Sony first-party games have increased in price compared to their predecessors, which also conveys the message that most of Sony's games in the future may be released at higher prices, and players using PS consoles will have to face the fact that in the future they will play games with more beautiful graphics and better quality, but pay a higher price.
What is really worrying should be the long line of Sony PS
Even if the recent Sony often makes "riot operations" that cause players to be dissatisfied, while criticizing and ridicule, players have to admit that many of Sony's actions have indeed brought a lot of benefits at the moment. Exclusive games landed on the PC and quickly made it to the best-seller list, and the "Director's Cut" and "Enhanced Version" that needed to be upgraded for a fee allowed players who already owned the game to spend again... Even the new PS PLUS, which was criticized at the beginning, has greatly increased the number of member subscriptions on the PS platform after it was launched.
In this way, the price increase of the PS5 should soon show its benefits, and the sales of the host are likely to be raised, but this does not mean that there is no hidden danger in the price increase of the host, and in this price increase storm, the dissatisfaction of the player is also a negative impact that cannot be ignored.
The PS5, which has been on the market for nearly two years, does not seem to have a high current holding rate in the global market. In June, Sony released the news that the PS5 has sold 20 million units worldwide, which is still a big gap compared with the PS4 of the previous generation of consoles with total sales of more than 110 million, and Sony estimated in a briefing this year that the PS5 will take four years to exceed this sales.
In this way, there should be quite a few console players who have not yet started the PS5, and this price increase is likely to make these players choose to continue to wait and see. At the same time, Sony's series of initiatives are itself reducing the attractiveness of new consoles to a wide range of players, including the higher price of first-party games and the landing of platform-exclusive games on the PC.
These "backstabbing" behaviors for console players, although in the short term, are likely to bring more revenue to Sony PS, but this is at the cost of players' support for their own platform, which may not soon bring any negative impact, but the player's accumulated dissatisfaction is still a disadvantage for the long-term development of PS5, and it is unknown whether it will become a major hidden danger in the future.
While Sony continues to push away players, Microsoft is secretly making efforts. In addition to the increasingly powerful lineup of XGP free games, Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard is bound to enhance XBOX's voice in the console industry, and what shakes Sony PS users the most is that classic platforms such as "Persona 5" will also join Microsoft XGP in the future.
Although due to the problem of shipments, Microsoft's new generation of console XBOX Series X sales are not high, it is difficult to compete with Sony PS5 in the short term, but it is undeniable that whether in the game lineup or the payment mechanism, Microsoft's XBOX is becoming more attractive to players day by day, and this is naturally a matter of vigilance for Sony PS, which is constantly damaged by reputation.
In this protracted console war, Sony is still the dominant side, with a deep foundation in terms of console game lineups and user markets, but many of its recent operational strategies may be at the expense of years of accumulation. From a long-term perspective, the catch-up competitor Microsoft is gradually narrowing the gap with Sony, and over time, the situation of the console war may also usher in a big change, which deserves our long-term attention.