The popular industry analyst says that Sony will not see that many sales of the cheaper PlayStation 5 version.

„I think Sony blew it with that because as far as we can tell, the cost of making a PlayStation 5 is 450 dollars, so they are breaking even on the 500-dollar version, but losing 40 or so on the digital version. A disc drive isn’t worth that much. So they’re losing 40 dollars, but they gain six more per digital game than they would gain otherwise. So you would have to buy a lot of games to cover up the loss, and I just think it’s unlikely many will buy that many games,” Pachter told GameRant. So they want to get more sales via the PlayStation Store to cut manufacturing out of the equation.

„I don’t think many consumers will want to save the money, I think most would rather have the disc drive on hand so they have the option to take their game to their friend’s house or trade it in or whatever. So I think they blew it with the [PlayStation 5] Digital Edition, but it’s hard to tell early numbers, because it’s all sold out anyway, and we don’t know how many of each they made. But I think over the long run, they’ll sell and make fewer digital editions,” he added.

With the PlayStation 5 Standard Edition, retailers have said that they had more to pre-order for this version, meaning the players still want to utilise the second-hand market (which both Sony and Microsoft want to kill – the latter has the 300-dollar Xbox Series S for that).

The PlayStation 5 Standard Edition (500 USD/EUR) and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition (400 USD/EUR) will launch on November 12 in America and a week later in Europe, respectively.

Source: GameRant