A prestigious analyst believes that both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will arrive on time for its launch, putting its price between $ 450 and $ 499.
The economic impact of the coronavirus crisis on various industries remains to be seen, and the video game crisis, although not as affected as others, will be no exception. Veteran analyst Piers Harding-Rolls has spoken about how this pandemic will harm the sector, who has published a report on how it can also affect sales of next-generation consoles, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
While video games are not the sector hardest hit by the current health crisis and imminent economic, since the compulsory confinement in a large number of countries has increased their consumption, it is unanimous the fact that the purchasing power of video game users it will decline in the coming times. This will affect, of course, those initial sales of PS5 and Xbox Series X, although according to Harding Rolls, it will do so even more well into 2021, when users with doubts have even more due to the economic situation. What's more, he believes that the fact that both consoles will be backward compatible in one way or another – how PS5 will be confirmed, without going any further – will make many players continue to enjoy the future catalog of intergenerational games, without having the need to checkout for a new console.
"The fact is that the video game sector is, in a way, proof of this recession, since it is true that during confinement people place a lot of value on playing," says Harding Rolls. "However, by 2020, segmenting the industry into two generations reveals that it will affect it in different ways."
The new consoles will arrive on time
Harding Rolls expects that both PS5 and Xbox Series X will see the light around the month of November of this same year, which assumes that there will be no supply problems, and places the price of both consoles between 450 and 499 dollars . Furthermore, he believes that the impact of the coronavirus on video game development is only a short-term problem.
"The introduction of teleworking has caused problems in the video game development schedule and there have been a good number of delays in launching near these crisis dates," he begins explaining. "The games scheduled for the end of 2020, as well as the games that are part of the launch catalog of the new consoles, are not expected to be at risk of being delayed as well, due to the ability to make up for lost time in the coming years." months ”.
Meanwhile, not only Harding Rolls, but many of the leading analysts in the video game market believe that both consoles will arrive on time for their planned launch later this year, and that at most, there may be a shortage of units due to some distribution problem. However, everyone agrees that both Sony and Microsoft have sufficient infrastructure not to be affected.
