Console buyers once expected the price to drop steadily across a generation. That expectation was built on a manufacturing pattern that no longer holds reliably.
Price cuts were funded by shrinking chips
Consoles used to be revised repeatedly during their lives, with the main processors rebuilt on newer manufacturing processes that made them physically smaller and cheaper.
Smaller chips also used less power, which allowed smaller power supplies, simpler cooling and smaller cases, so the savings compounded well beyond the chip itself.
Those revisions arrived on a predictable cadence, and each one created room to reduce the retail price without changing the machine from the player's perspective.
Manufacturing improvements arrive more slowly now
Newer processes take longer to develop, cost far more to use, and deliver smaller improvements in density and efficiency than earlier transitions did.
Moving a console chip to a new process is therefore an expensive project with an uncertain payoff, and it may not reduce cost at all in the early years of that process.
Mid-generation revisions still happen, but they tend to reduce size modestly rather than transform the cost structure.
Other components have stopped getting cheaper too
Memory and storage prices move with global demand rather than with any console's schedule, and demand from other sectors has been strong and persistent.
Consoles now ship with far more of both than earlier generations, so those components represent a larger share of the total cost and a larger exposure to price movement.
Shipping, packaging and component logistics have also become more expensive, and none of those costs decline with manufacturing maturity.
The business model absorbed the change
Platform holders accept thin hardware margins because the return comes from software and services, so a price cut is a marketing decision rather than a passing-on of savings.
When savings do not arrive, the choice becomes holding the price or deepening a loss on every unit, and the second is only justified when a competitor forces it.
Bundles and temporary promotions have largely replaced permanent cuts, since they move units without resetting the price the platform can charge afterwards.
Mid-generation models changed the shape of the ladder
Rather than one machine getting cheaper, generations now offer several tiers at once, with a reduced model and an enhanced one sold alongside each other.
That structure serves buyers at different budgets while keeping the top price intact, which is commercially preferable to reducing everything.
The practical result for a buyer is that waiting rewards patience less than it once did, and that the cheapest route into a generation is now a different model rather than a later date.