Playstation 5 is (maybe) a real thing that is (maybe) happening

[ThornGhost]

I didn't see another PS5 thread, so here we go!

Sony is now taking sign ups to be entered into a lottery to get a chance to pre-order a PS5 as long as supplies last. So that's something, if only barely.

Apparently applicants will be chosen "based on previous interests and PlayStation activities", whatever that means. There's a form where you can drop your PSN name to be considered, so I dunno. I dropped my name in, so we'll see.

 

[lincolnic]

They still haven't announced a price for this yet, right? I'll probably get a PS5 eventually, but I'm not that interested in paying an unknown amount of money to be an early adopter.

 

[Phantoon]

Does anybody know what the price of this thing is supposed to be? No way I'd preorder something like that without it.

 

[Becksworth]

Did Sony employ a lottery system with the PS4’s release? Could just be that let’s them gather more user data than a first come first serve pre order system would, or the fact they haven’t announced the dang price point yet, but it also gives me the impression that their launch stock isn’t what they were hoping it would be.

Especially if they are looking at applicants PSN usage. Perhaps they want to prioritize people who stream or do a lot of sharing on social media to give a larger impression of sales.

 

[chady]

My take on the PSN usage thing is that they aren't going to have a ton of systems to sell, and they would prefer to sell them to people who are going to play them and not to scalpers.

 

[ThornGhost]

The lotto (or selection or whatever) doesn't force you to pre-order, it will only give you a priority chance to pre-order from Sony themselves. You wouldn't be on the hook for any money if you decide you don't want it.

I'd say the top of the bell curve of probable prices for the PS5 is between $499-$599, with quite possibly the digital-only version hitting that $499 with the optical drive model being $599. This is based on a lot of fuzzy things, including the Series X price floating around $599 due to some data mining of a sweepstakes price value total and estimated hardware costs. That would give some justification for each next gen system, with the Series S sitting at some sub-$499 price ($399-$450?) to serve as the cheapest and lowest power entry into that generation, the PS5 digital-only edition at $499 which gets you the full power of the next gen but without an expensive but often-requested accessory and then $599 being the "true" price of the all-in next gen experience for both players.

 

[TheSL]

I'm going to guess the driveless version will probably be $400 (matching PS4's launch) to try and to incentivize people to go without it.

 

[Droewyn]

Did Sony employ a lottery system with the PS4’s release? Could just be that let’s them gather more user data than a first come first serve pre order system would, or the fact they haven’t announced the dang price point yet, but it also gives me the impression that their launch stock isn’t what they were hoping it would be.

Especially if they are looking at applicants PSN usage. Perhaps they want to prioritize people who stream or do a lot of sharing on social media to give a larger impression of sales.

Don't think so; I just preordered mine on Amazon five minutes after the E3 Sony showcase where they unveiled it.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Having the marketing engines start their launch campaigns without either MS or Sony revealing the pricing tells me they are going to be hella expensive.

 

[Phantoon]

They might be waiting for the other to commit to a mistake. Historically undercutting has worked very well for Sony (although I think it's more likely it's just because they're eye wateringly expensive in reality)

 

[TheSL]

Yeah, the minute they announced $600 as the price for PS3 I feel like all the wind came out of their sales. And that was *before* an economic downturn.