PS5s
It was a wild hour more or less yesterday. Credible rumors had stated that Sony was going to reveal the price and release date of the PS5 at 3:30 p.m., and there was a time when I really thought they were going to do it. It’s kind of weird getting this ginned for the consumer electronics part pricing strategy, but that’s the world of video games for you. It turned out to be in vain, and the clock passed without any new news. Sooner or later one of these rumors will turn out to be true. Just not this one.
However, we are gradually making progress towards possible pre-orders. The placeholder listing pages have been running for a while, and are now everywhere. Here is the Amazon USA page, which some said was published yesterday, but appears to be older than that. You can see similar pages for Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and more. There’s nothing quite as interesting about them except the fact that both Sony and the associated retailers wanted you to be excited about the PS5.
The main question for the revelation right now is: sooner or later? Microsoft has a large showcase of first-party games slated for July 23, and while we don’t expect to see pricing details at that event, Sony could still steal some thunder by announcing earlier and opening pre-orders. We assume that stocks will be limited in any kind of pre-order, both because that’s how things always go and because the company is reportedly producing less PS5 than PS4, which were sold out for months. That could push some concerned consumers to make the jump and order one before Microsoft has a chance to respond.
However, I was a little surprised by yesterday’s rumors, because I still don’t think we know the prices of any of these things before August. For a long time it seemed that Sony hadn’t even decided on a price, and as far as we know, that might be the case.
It’s about who goes first, and has been for a while. Arguably, the most important information that any of the companies can have when setting the price of their console is what they cannot have: the number of the competition. So the company that goes first can open pre-orders first, and the company that goes second can use that information to craft a response.
It is an interesting type of cat and mouse game, although all the most interesting parts take place behind closed doors. Sooner or later, however, they will have to tell us what is happening.
