Sony Says PS5 Price Will Be 'Appealing' Given Its Advanced Features And AMD Hardware

For those that are into console gaming (versus the clearly superior PC gaming experience), the revelation of the hardware details behind the upcoming PlayStation 5 gaming console were incredibly exciting. As we learned from PlayStation hardware chief Mark Cerny, the PlayStation 5 will be powered by an octa-core AMD Zen 2-based Ryzen processor that is backed by a Radeon Navi GPU.

Cerny also revealed that the SoC will have a dedicated 3D audio hardware along with a super-fast SSD that offers superior performance to anything that that is currently available on the consumer market. Oh, and we can't forget that that due to it having a similar architecture, the PlayStation 5 will be backwards compatible with PlayStation 4 games -- bazinga!

Given all of crazy-good hardware that will be under the hood, many are expecting that the PlayStation 5 will debut with an astronomical price tag that will limit its appeal to only the most diehard early adopters. However, Cerny is being a bit cagey about how the PlayStation will be priced, which is expected giving that the console won't even debut this year. Peter Rubin of Wired, who sat down with Cerny for the original PS5 interview, offered some extended commentary between the two regarding price.

Rubin asked Cerny about the price range that we could expect for the PlayStation 5, to which he responded, "I believe that we will be able to release it at an SRP [suggested retail price] that will be appealing to gamers in light of its advanced feature set."

When pushed further to explain if this means that the PlayStation 5 will cost more than the current PlayStation 4 Pro, Cerny only added "That's about all I can say about it."

The original PlayStation 4 debuted at the $399 price point when it first debuted in late 2013. Likewise, the higher-performance PlayStation 4 Pro bowed at the same price point when it launched later in 2016. Some commenters in the Twitter thread seem to think that Sony will likely price that PlayStation 5 at $499, which seems highly likely given the hardware that will be under the hood. The Ryzen/Navi hardware plus what will likely be a high-performance 1TB to 2TB SSD for storage is bound to drive costs up. 

With that being said, we've still got quite a way to go before the PlayStation 5 is actually released, and we're bound to hear more pricing details before the official launch. If previous rumors are correct, the console should arrive some time in 2020 to do battle with the next-generation Xbox from Microsoft.