My apologies if this thread veers too far into crazy theory territory. If mods deem this thread unnecessary, then please lock. I am just peering into the tea leaves a bit.
Anyway, as I have been mulling this over since the really surprising reveal that the $399 PS4 Pro would not be carrying a UHD player and not matching the $299 base Xbox One S as the preeminent 4K console / HD video consumption device, it made me think of Microsoft's decision to sidestep Blu-Ray at a time when that format eclipsed the ill-fated HDDVD format. At the time, if I recall correctly, Microsoft noted that the future emphasis would be on video streaming anyway. And the 360 was a capable 1080p streamer.
Now Sony codeveloped Blu-Ray with a consortium and have had a hand at advancing its storage capacity. But I imagine any royalties they receive are not too much split so many ways. They do, however, fully own PSN. (Which they raised the price of PS Plus for as well) And all profits derived therein. Sony has openly admitted that they see network services as a major growth area. Now if I expected the PS4 Pro to be my media player for a 4K set I am not thinking of buying a 4K Blu-Ray, I'm better off buying that digital copy and streaming in 4K. My purchasing behavior, even slightly, is altered. Netflix (got that 4K shout out by Andrew House), Plex, and a lot of streaming services have made me use disk drives less and less. So I am in that bracket of consumer that uses less and less physical media and with the Pro I have less incentive to buy that UHD disk.
Games are another area that Sony would see further profits from digital sales. Here we are with the Pro and a standard 1 TB hard drive. If you wanted to stop going to Gamestop and go all digital it is a bit easier to do that too.
All in all, I just feel that Sony, a company notorious for front loading its tech with proprietary formats or formats they want to push (Vita Memory cards, Blu-Ray on PS3, etc.),
didn't do so this time. And that might be telling. They are considering the demographic for the PS4 Pro carefully and interpreted what they think are the features most appropriate for "premium" customers who are 4K set owners and / or hardcore gamers. They assume you want the most out of that HD or UHD TV (4K, HDR), they assume you have good enough or great internet and care about high grade network capabilities (5Ghz AC Wi-Fi) and they assume you need enough space for a very large collection of content (1 TB HDD), and finally, that purchasers won't care about UHD Blu-Rays. If you did, you'd probably be leaning toward a dedicated player or the One S.
Edit: Here is an interesting cost breakdown for the Xbox One S found by Gaffer family_guy with analysis by IHS Markit. It is just food for though as we have no idea what the cost was to source Pro components at this time and if this was just a production cost proposition to keep the price at $399.
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