Sony rumored to lower PS6 price using 1TB SSD and smaller than PS5 game sizes

The latest PS5 price increase has sparked fears about the financial burden of next-generation hardware. Some analysts project an MSRP of $1,000 or more for the PS6 and Microsoft’s Project Helix. Still, leaker Kepler_L2 has a more optimistic view of what the upcoming PlayStation console could cost.

A $700 PS6 price?

The insider surprised some followers when he predicted a $699 PS6 price on the NeoGAF forums. Based on anticipated specs, he calculated a bill of materials (BOM) of around $760. The manufacturer may subsidize the console, as it did with past systems, to make it more affordable. Nevertheless, without creative solutions, the storage and memory shortage threatens that plan.

Wccftech noticed a more recent post by Kepler_L2 that provides some insight. He believes that the cheapest version of the system will ship with a 1TB SSD and no disc drive:

It's the most obvious area to cut costs, and if PS6 SDK supports neural texture compression, game sizes could even be smaller than PS5.

The lack of an optical drive isn’t surprising, as neither the PS5 Slim Digital nor the PS5 Pro includes the add-on. Yet, Sony would need a way to control increasingly larger installations.

Neural Texture Compression could benefit the PS6

Neural Texture Compression (NTC) relies on neural networks to shrink assets before reconstruction. A GPU empowered by AI renders the textures on demand. Both AMD and Nvidia are working to implement the advancements in modern games. It’s possible that titles could see their file sizes reduced by more than 50%.

A recent Sony patent proposes another way to bring down the PS6 price and compress games. A lower-latency form of cloud streaming, a console selectively downloads assets from a server. With executables stored on local drives, the system requests more files only when required during gameplay. Players only need a 100MB package before larger files are downloaded and deleted.

It’s unclear whether either approach would be ready before the estimated late-2027 PS6 release date. If not, owners will quickly fill up the console’s SSD, with an optical drive no longer an option. Considering how the AI-driven memory shortage also may inflate storage costs throughout 2028, some fans think a delay is inevitable.