Sony is increasing the price of the PlayStation 5, according to recent leaks — it’s advisable to treat leaks skeptically — indicating that the price increase may not extend to the PlayStation 6. Consumers may actually experience the reverse scenario, where the PS6 achieves a lower or comparable price by compromising some of its performance capabilities. Sony officials mentioned during an earnings call that they haven’t determined a specific launch date for the upcoming console, leaving everything undecided.
However, it’s probable that the memory shortage won’t be resolved by the time the next-generation console is released, and the most effective way to lower prices would be to trim some hardware components, reducing the memory bus and overall video RAM. Before anyone becomes overly excited, this information was shared by an AMD insider known as KeplerL2 on the Neogaf forums, and Sony has provided no official information or statements publicly. While previous leaks indicated that the PS6 would feature a 30GB RAM configuration, the latest ones propose that it could drop to 24GB of VRAM with a 128-bit memory bus to keep costs in check.
KeplerL2 claims that implementing these adjustments “would result in a $60 BOM reduction,” without any major changes in GDDR7 memory prices, and would deliver “a yield boost for the SoC by enabling the harvesting of MC (memory controller) defects.” Supposedly, no alterations to the APU would be required to accomplish this; simply “disabling one memory controller” would yield the desired effects.