Jim Ryan: PS5 Price Was Decided in Early 2020 Before the Lockdowns - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 June 2021 / 3,064 Views
PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan in an interview with EDGE magazine (and transcribed by GamingBolt) was asked if the pandemic affected the price of the PlayStation 5. Ryan said the pandemic did not change the price of the next-generation console as it was set in early 2020 before the lockdowns.
"Our preferred pricing was determined early in this calendar year, pre-lockdown. And we just got on and executed with what we wanted to do," said Ryan.
The goal from the start was to launch the PlayStation 5 at the same price as the PlayStation 4 did in 2013. The PS4 launched at $399, while the PS5 Digital Edition is priced at $399 and the PS5 with a disc-drive is priced at $499.
"No, no, it didn’t [change], no. We’ve been able to launch PlayStation 5 at $399, €399, with all the horsepower and the feature set that the console has, at the same price that we launched PS4 back in 2013," he added.
"That was important for us, and we’re very happy that we’ve been able to do that. $399 worked very well for us last time round and we’d like it to work very well for us this time round, too."
VGChartz last month released estimated sales for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The PS5 sold an estimated 2.1 million to 2.5 million units worldwide when you combine its two launch days. The two next-generation consoles from Microsoft sold an estimated 1.1 million to 1.4 million units worldwide in its first 24 hours.
The PS5 is now available worldwide.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
Sony had operation "nimble." PS5 price would've been adjusted accordingly depending on the price Microsoft launched Series X and S at. I do believe Mr. Jim Ryan on this piece though ... As iffy as that man can be.
That was my understanding, they had their 399 price set and was just monitoring competitor to ensure they had a good pricepoint competitively.
This nonsense again. There are no pre launch panic price reductions.
PS5 is more high end than PS4 back then, so a price tag of 399 $ is really impressive. I wonder if it's true that Sony loses 30 $ with each SKU of the Digital Edition.
This would be the minimum. The drive itself only cost about 30 bucks, so if they shaved 100 from the price of the full edition, they have 70 cost disparity between them. If PS5 is sold at break even (I would guess it is very close to it) then Digital is sold at 70 bucks loss. And considering the cuts on Series S are besides a weaker GPU (that shouldn't even make 100 less costier) a smaller SSD and a little less RAM I would bet Series S lose even more money than PS5 Digital.
but can only get them at double them prices
Jim Lying
