We still have a year to go until the release of the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5, but analysts are already predicting what the price of these various consoles will be. One analyst in particular from Kantan Games, speculates the Xbox Series X price will be around $499 on release.
Considering the greater technology that this new generation of games will be launching as, it goes without saying that they’ll likely be more expensive than consoles this past generation were on their own first debut.
While there’s no specific price actually given out for the Xbox Series X yet, $499 seems like a fairly reasonable price point for it, especially since the Xbox One X was given a similar price on its launch. This price is in stark contrast to the Playstation 5, which is apparently going to be marked down for ease of access.
The Xbox Series X price needs to be determined very carefully in light of that fact. Making the X too expensive, even if it is a more powerful console than the Playstation 5, might end up driving players away and towards the cheaper Playstation 5.
That’s not even getting into what both consoles are capable of. Microsoft stretched too far this generation by trying to market the Xbox One as a multimedia center that played games rather than a game console, complete with a large number of privacy-violating and otherwise unpopular mechanics that caused it to consistently lag behind the Playstation 4.
The Playstation 4 in the meantime had none of those issues and also was not only more powerful graphically, but also had many more exclusive games than the Xbox One. A situation like that may pop up this generation as well, though we won’t know until both consoles show their capabilities.
Both of the consoles are supposedly going to be releasing in the holiday season of this year.