Microsoft has shared a few thoughts about Sony’s next consoles during its ongoing trial with the FTC, and it seems to believe that the PS5 Slim is releasing as early as this year, for $399.99. This would make the PS5 Slim the same price as the PS5 Digital Edition, a cheaper version of the console that lacks a disc drive. Microsoft also believes that a PS5 Pro is coming in the future.
The FTC contends that Xbox and PlayStation constitute a market of two because they are offered at a similar price. That is unpersuasive. To begin with, [t]he Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a price differential alone is insufficient to infer two separate product markets.” HDC Med., Inc. v. Minntech Corp., 474 F.3d 543, 547 (8th Cir. 2007). Equally important, the FTC’s analysis considers only the high-end models of Xbox (Series X) and PlayStation (Standard Edition), thereby ignoring the differentiation within Xbox’s console lines. In fact, the entry-level versions of the current Xbox and Switch are offered at the same price point ($299.99), and the Xbox Series S is sold for $50 less than the Switch OLED model ($349.99). PlayStation likewise sells a less expensive Digital Edition for $399.99, and is expected to release a PlayStation 5 Slim later this year at the same reduced price point.
Performance. Xbox and PlayStation are also differentiated on performance. The less expensive Xbox Series S has less GPU processing power, system memory, and internal storage and renders images at a lower resolution than the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. PlayStation, meanwhile, currently offers two different versions of the PlayStation 5—one with a Blu-Ray player for physical media (Standard) and one without (Digital)—and is anticipated to release further differentiated Pro and Slim models in the near future.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →So if there is a pro model, next year, that will also lack a disc drive right?
What will be the price of a disc drive-less pro model — $600 ??
Redesigned base PS4 and the PS4 Pro both appeared about 3 years after the launch of the PS4, so yeah, we would be coming up on the time for a PS5 Slim and PS5 Pro.
Seems pretty sh1tty to call it the "Pro" model without an optical disc drive. I can see the PS5 Slim not coming with a disc drive though. That will definitely help slim it down.
I take it they read the plans on Office 365, or on MS teams.
There was a rumor that they were going to make the disc drive external.
Which I think is a good idea - you don't have 2 system SKUs to produce, and those that want a drive can get one easily enough. I'm actually mildly offended that any old USB-based BD drive won't work on these systems.
Oh huh, interesting. I wonder if the drive would be usable elsewhere too. For example, the HD-DVD drive for X360 works fine on PC. Not that I need a BD drive on PC, already got one, cuz I'm a weird and I have two optical drives (DVD burner brought over from previous system, and BD burner I got as a berfday gift one year). I rarely use physical media for movies/shows, I prefer BD rips.