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Why Are PS4 Games Cheaper Than Xbox One?

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If you were to go out and perform an evaluative study about what games people prefer to buy and why, you’ll find more than a few people (a whole lot, actually), proclaiming their interest in buying games belonging to the Playstation and specifically the PS4. 

Many factors combine and contribute to support the recent rise in sales that have been prominent within the Playstation realm, but before diving into some of these factors, it is a good idea for us to establish the main contributing factor to Playstation games’ success over those of its competitors, including the likes of Microsoft’s Xbox One. 

This main factor is PRICE!

So why are PS4 games cheaper than Xbox One games?

Playstation games can be sold for cheaper because the amount of games that are produced for the Playstation can be DOUBLE of what is produced for the Xbox because twice as many PS4s were sold than Xbox Ones. Since twice as many games can be sold then Playstation can afford to make a little less money per game and still outsell Xbox by a large margin. 

It is much cheaper to produce an additional 100,000 games than it is to produce the first 100,000. Also the more ram materials that Playstation purchases or makes such as discs, cases, artwork, etc. the cheaper per item it is. This is called the economy of scale.

The more items that are produced the cheaper the cost is per item so since Playstation has twice as many consoles sold then they are likely to sell twice as many games as Xbox as well which in turn allows them to either make more money per game or reduce the price and stay cheaper than Xbox games. 

When games on both consoles are released they are normally released at the same price but as games begin to age the prices for PS4 games will normally drop faster and be lower than Xbox. That is because Playstation can sell games cheaper than Xbox because they pay less per game when they make twice as many of them! 

There are a few other reasons that the prices of PS4 are cheaper. We will discuss those in depth next. 

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Imports

This placement of market price is decided because of sellers from different countries importing games from other countries because more people tend to own a PS4 than an Xbox (due to its painstakingly high-quality features- which we will discuss later on).

As more games are imported, more games are now for sale within the market. Consequently, the increase in the supply of PS4 games in a country reduces the relative price of the product immediately. It is simple supply and demand. 

As per basic economics, supply and price are inversely proportional to each other, i.e, an increase in the supply of a product would lead to a lower price while its decrease would consecutively increase the given price of the product (which in turn, would decrease the demand for it, but this is not a economics class, so never mind).

Relationally, fewer people import Xbox games because Xbox game owners across the world are fewer in numbers, and this means that every game imported would have to be sold at a higher price since less of them will be sold. 

Moreover, there is also the contributing factor that the PS4 console has been widely launched across the globe, while the demand for the Xbox One, is generally low due to some hardware issues propagated within the final selling products, provides no incentive for imports and sales.

However, it is elementary that we figure out the exact reasons, apart from constantly changing market dynamics, and find out what causes the increasing demand of the Playstation 4 while the Xbox One’s sales graph remains flat and stagnant, and why this leads to the availability of cheap games despite high import pricing technology.

Launch and Demand

Demand is significantly determined by the product quality- and the Playstation 4 does not fail in delivering to its user exactly what features they need and want. The PS4 launch was celebrated with new integration technology and high-quality, efficient equipment that made people crave more.

In comparison, the Xbox One had a relatively terrible, unsuccessful launch, and Microsoft further failed to support the product launch through a lack of exclusives (as the Playstation 4 fully gifted its users with).

The terrible launch was facilitated on the foundation by which Microsoft not only cut off its previous gaming retailers, but it also failed to recognize its target audience, consequently this resulted in a skyrocketing of the Xbox One’s prices right out of the gate and reduced sales considerably.

What particularly triggered the consumer market and its large and monumental shift of buyers over to the Playstation 4 is the fact that the Xbox launched with just a one-day difference before the launch of Playstation 4, and obviously, this gave the PS4 the golden opportunity to completely remodel its branding and marketing strategy to be more appealing to buyers.

While the depressing condition of the Xbox’s launch might explain plenty in terms of demand, Microsoft failed once again to be the face of its game studio. If you were to chance across the Xbox One game studio, one peek would be informative enough in showing you that every game from its top ten lists, except one, can also be played on the Playstation 4.

Cost of Manufacture

Moreover, the Xbox One also partnered up with Kinect, which was already an expensive model to design your product through. Unfortunately for Microsoft, this forced them to price their product at a higher price due to the additional costs incurred through their collaboration with Kinect.

Apart from there simply being extra costs, these prices also surpassed that of its rivals, and led to its customers shifting their focus on to the PlayStation 4, which gave them the same build up and features at a similar high-quality range without costing as much.

Games

On the other hand, funnily enough, seven out of ten games roff of Sony’s top ten Playstation 4 games list remain unavailable within Xbox’s game studio up to this day. This easily gives out the implication that perhaps the Xbox games have not been doing as well as Sony’s, which have generated hit after hit within the gaming industry.

Besides the availability of many games, in addition to that the Xbox games being available on the PS4 makes it a favorable choice among the masses- resulting in a growth in the Playstation 4 fanbase. This led to a large amount of hype and sales figures among the Playstation 4 games as they not only came plentifully but also came cheap (which is more than what we can say about the Xbox One.)

If Xbox had taken into account the game studio situation right after the already terrible launch- it could’ve undoubtedly reined its horses in and achieved a manageable amount of sales among its buyers. However, its revenue in designing and deficit of games instead ruined its reputation in the mind of its buyers.

Consequently, the buyers happily found solace in the high-quality service exhibited by Sony’s Playstation. In turn, this gave Sony just the right amount of confidence to lower the prices of its games on the market.

Conclusion

There are a variety of reasons why Playstation 4 games are cheaper than Xbox One games. Mostly it is because so many more Playstation consoles have been sold so Playstation has a much larger amount of built in demand than Xbox does. Because of this extra demand Playstation can produce far more quantities of games which in turn makes each of those games cheaper to make and they can sell them at cheaper prices. 

Price isn’t the only reason to choose a PS4 over an Xbox as there are many other reasons that people have chosen the Playstation console rather than an Xbox. A few of those reasons are mentioned in the video below.