Why is it not possible to build a PC that delivers the same performance as a PS5 at the same cost? What are we missing?
In: Technology
PS5 (at least the digital version) isn’t selling at a loss and hasn’t been for some time.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-5-ps5-loss-profit
Economies of scale drive a lot of this.
One part of it is that the software that runs on the PS5 only has to be optimised for that *very specific* set of hardware.
So it can be better optimised, as no time has to be wasted optimising for a broad spectrum of machines.
It was possible at the launch of the PS5. Prices for parts have gotten weird. If you’re willing to buy used, it is absolutely possible.
Graphics card inflation.
Before covid, GPU prices were tier-based and stayed roughly the same from generation to generation.
Nowadays, price is based on performance, so the midrange cards of this generation cost about the same as the high range cards of the last generation.
Volume, Sony buys a shit ton of processors, ram, storage, etc. from the manufacturer while we can only buy retail which increases the cost. Also consoles usually have really low margins and sometime they have been sold at a loss
even beyond subsidies, which are huge, a console is a single-framework of hardware for at least 5 years. everything is custom built to a certain spec, that can be made in volume over time, with the OS and peripherals all vertically integrated (and standard testing hardware for developers). all these things drive cost per unit down, and also increase the walled garden value of the unit (you can’t build your own PS5!) so as soon as it gets down to a certain level of price, and the features are good enough, it’s also more profitable long term than any individual PC maker could hope to make.
PC’s come with a lot of unnecessary features fir straight up gaming. And no economie of scale.
Playstation uses proprietary parts. It’s a purpose built machine with a board that’s more of a big gpu/processor hybrid rather than a computer that uses off the shelf parts that are intended to do more than one thing. It used to be possible actually that a 500$ pc would outperform a contemporary console but pc part prices, especially gpus, have gone off the rails
A PS5 has extremely standardized hardware, so software developed for it can be more specifically optimized instead of generally optimized, so right there consoles are always going to have a tiny edge.
But, even if you buy the exact same pieces as a games console (you can’t they usually have proprietary hardware that can legally only be sold by them) you would have to pay the rate for 1, while Sony is buying them by the thousands if not tens of thousands.
Normally, when you buy in bulk, the unit cost goes down as absolute cost goes up.
Say they pay $1,000,000 for 20,000 of a part. They just need to factor in $50 of cost to a PS5. But you would need to spend like $100 to $200 for the same thing.
On top of the hardware answers.
Software and know what hardware you have to play with is another huge factor. You can squeeze some pretty incredible performance from older hardware if you spend the time optimizing for it.
But windows PCs (for example) need to handle a million variables of system configurations. So within its code. Is a lot of fail safe and checking code that inherently slows things down. But ensures the system runs across lots of devices.
While a company like Nintendo can get by on using last generation hardware. And maximize the efficiency of the parts so that they work better together.
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