I agree with their PS5 prices, but not their Series prices, particularly Series S. Mainly because I strongly doubt Series S would have a disc drive; there's no point for it to include one if they're already making other efforts to reduce the cost by scaling back on the GPU. And since they likely know they can't sell Series S at a profit or break-even point, there's no better way to hook a Series S purchaser into the ecosystem than by forcing them to go all-digital.
Sony's basically taking the exact same approach in that regard with PS5 Digital, but the likelihood they're pricing that at $399 means a $349 Series S is just a horrible value proposition. Even $299 might be pushing it, so I can see them taking an aggressive loss-leading strategy on Series S @ $249.99 and recouping that through Gamepass subscriptions. Meanwhile they can price Series X at either $499 or even $449, though they'd be losing money on the latter (it really comes down to how aggressive they want to be, though they wouldn't be losing a lot of money on $449 Series X. Not as much as they would on $249 Series S, anyway).
They could also offer Series S through some type of subscription model, but that would be pretty hard to do through brick-and-mortar stores. Possibly through their own website, say you subscribe to a two-year locked subscription of Gamepass with xCloud (and maybe even Live) rolled in, and you basically get a "free" Series S. As long as you keep to your payments you can keep it in use. The payments would already be heavily reduced since the purchase of the console bakes into the cost, though, so maybe something like $5 a month with the first six months providing full, free access. Would brick-and-mortar retailers be okay with MS offering that type of option online through their website, without a way for retailers to do the same? Because that could perhaps result in frustration with some retailers unable to provide that type of offer.
There's not much point in them offering a similar option for Series X, IMHO. I guess they could if they wanted.
What if MS has 3 SKUs? Would be a real kicker, Series X , 449 Series X Digital, 399 and Series S 249.
maybe that’s why the keep saying family of devices .
the series X design just works without a drive present .
If that's what they're doing it would throw a curveball or two, that is for sure. I don't know how possible it would be to have Series X at $449 and a Digital Series X at $399, though. It may not provide enough incentive in the price bracket to drive people to the Digital Series X, most would probably just pick up the disc version if available.
Also with three models that means they now have to work out production logistics for three different products instead of just two, and figure out the split allocation of manufacture for them. Might over-complicate things doing that right off the bat.