Comment by cactus2093 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cactus2093 | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like I'm missing something - how is Sony able to sell this for so cheap considering how good the specs seem to be?

The GPU looks perhaps about on par with something like the RTX 2060 which is $350 on its own. Looking briefly online, a mid-tier pre built PCs with similar specs (this GPU, 8-core CPU, 16GB RAM, fast NVME drive) like this Dell XPS costs $1350 [0]. Granted the CPU on the PS5 is probably worse than on that machine, but it's still pretty solid at a 3.5Ghz Zen2.

Not to mention if you you wanted a Mac with similar specs, you really can't compare directly because they don't sell a consumer desktop machine, but you could easily pay $3000 for an iMac with similar specs (plus the screen obviously).

[0] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/xps-deskto...

Same as other comments they most likely sell at a loss, but do remember, they buy these components in bulk so it will be nowhere near the consumer price for the same/similar thing. Manufacturers know that PlayStation sells a lot of consoles, so they’re willing to drop prices to have that long stream of income spread over many years.

As explained in other comments, Sony doesn't make money from the console but from the games, the accessories and the services. The console in this case is a loss leader : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

I still can't possibly see them competing against Atari without the power of the blockchain [1].

[1] https://atarichain.com/

XBox Series X gpu is even more powerful and I think they are more like RTX 2070 class GPUs. They make money on subscriptions and games and probably just selling hardware without profit.

It's not unheard of for proprietary consoles to be heavily subsidized by the manufacturer to penetrate the market.

It doesn't take selling very many games to the customer to turn a profit.

They are able to subsidise part of the hardware cost since they'll make money back over time on game sales, subscriptions, etc.

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