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If yesterday’s PS5 Pro reveal is any indication, PlayStation needs competition from Xbox now more than ever. Since its heavy losses during the PS4/Xbox One generation, Microsoft has slowly been withdrawing from the console race, choosing instead to establish itself as the world’s biggest game publisher. And without a true competitor, the PS6 era is going to suffer.
Lack of competition from Xbox gives PlayStation too much of a free hand
A lot has already been said about the PS5 Pro’s price, so I’ll save our readers another analysis on that. But one particular statement from a veteran analyst has been making rounds, and it’s worth paying attention to.
“The lack of competition means it is an easier decision for Sony to run with a higher price point to protect its existing margins,” Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis wrote of the PS5 Pro. Harding-Rolls pointed out that unlike the PS5 Pro, PS4 Pro had a mid-gen competitor in Xbox One X.
When Sony announced its first ever PS5 price increase, many noticed that the U.S. was the only market that remained unscathed. Nearly every region including Europe was hit with a price hike. Coincidentally, the U.S. is the only region where the PS5 has faced any meaningful competition from Xbox Series X|S.
Things have only gone downhill for the Xbox since, and with Microsoft beginning to release some of its exclusives on PlayStation, the console market has practically been handed over to Sony on a gold platter.
I’m not saying that the PS5 Pro’s price was entirely determined by lack of competition, but I don’t think Harding-Rolls is wrong when says that it had a role to play in Sony’s decision-making process. And if PS6 has virtually no competition from Xbox, one can only imagine the free hand Sony will have to make decisions with unsavory outcomes for console gamers.