Next-gen Xbox price isn't quite what we expected

Gaming as a hobby is only getting more expensive, and it wasn’t exactly a cheap pastime to begin with.

These days, a new AAA release can set you back a whopping £70 - and that’s just one single release.

Many of us acquire several in a year although, of course, not all of them are costly AAAs.

A console, which we need to play those games, will cost you anything from £200 to £600 depending on which you choose.

And let’s not forget subscription services, which are often required to access our console’s online services.

Those can cost upwards of £100 a year.

It doesn’t exactly fill us with joy then to hear that next-gen consoles could be even pricier than their current-gen counterparts.

Dredge is now available on PlayStation Plus’ extra tier. Take a look at the game in action below.

As reported by Yahoo, insider Kepler_L2 recently briefly alluded to the PlayStation 5’s successor’s price tags.

“Cost per transistor has remained flat through FinFETs and will go up with GAAFETs/CFETs,” they wrote.

“The days of free cost savings with die shrinks are over and things will only get worse. Future consoles will either have increasingly smaller performance gains or significantly higher prices.”

If some of that jargon has left you feeling mildly baffled, worry not.

Sony’s COO Hiroki Totoki previously revealed the PlayStation 5’s components have actually risen in price since the console was launched.

This makes it nigh impossible to decrease the PS5’s cost to consumers as the increase in the cost of components is already lessening Sony’s gains.

What Kepler is pointing out is that this problem isn’t exactly going to go away with the PlayStation 6, if that’s what it’s called.

With this in mind, Sony will then have to choose whether to price the PS6 similarly to that of the PS5 to please consumers, and accept smaller gains, or they will have to increase the price of the console beyond the RRP of the PS5.

Business is business so you can’t help but feel that the latter option is more likely.

With the PlayStation 5 in the fourth year of its likely six-to-seven year life cycle, perhaps now is the best time to start saving.

This somewhat exacerbates the rumour that Xbox’s new-gen console will be the cheaper of the two options.

YouTuber Red Gaming Tech previously claimed that the console would be powered by a Zen 5 CPU, releasing earlier than the PS6.

The belief is that this component is slightly cheaper to acquire than whatever it is that Sony is hoping to use for the PS6.

Of course, do take all of this with a pinch of salt for now.