After over 50,000 votes, the results are in: 41 percent of Digital Foundry viewers on YouTube are willing to pay $699, $799 or even more for a PlayStation 6 console. That's $200 more than the launch price of the PlayStation 5 Disc Edition back in 2020, and $300 more than the PS5 Digital.
At the time of writing, our YouTube poll reveals that the most popular maximum price category for respondents is $599, which attracted 34 percent of the vote, while 25 percent would only pay $499. That would be a bargain for a next-gen PlayStation console, given that the current PS5 Disc costs $549 at most retailers, due to post-pandemic inflation and recent rises in flash memory costs.
It's interesting to contrast these results with a similar poll we ran on Wednesday for website readers and Patreon supporters. This poll had only 711 respondents, but that smaller crowd was willing to pay noticeably more for PS6. At the time of writing, a 51 percent majority ticked the $699 or $799+ options, with corresponding smaller 28 percent and 21 percent results for $599 and $499 respectively.
These higher figures better line up with bill of materials estimates from the likes of Moore's Law Is Dead and Kepler_L2, who see the console costing Sony around $750 to make each unit, even with a rumoured smaller design that minimises chassis, cooling and shipping costs.
One common theme repeated in the (more than 1000) comments on the YouTube poll was that pricing was highly dependent on the new machine's capabilities. Would it vastly outperform PS5 and PS5 Pro? What about backwards capability? Would it come with an optical drive? What about launching alongside a PlayStation handheld? And in terms of games, would it have exclusive titles, or would we see the same kind of extended launch cross-gen period that has characterised the current console generation?
All of these factors affect the calculus significantly, and I could easily see myself changing my answer based on what we learn from continuing rumours, the actual eventual announcement and then the first proper reviews of the new hardware.
Still, we're likely years away from getting some concrete answers, so for now all we can do is wait, speculate, and argue our pet theories in the comments. Have fun.