At the PS5 presentation on Thursday, a dizzying array of next-generation titles were announced. We don't know the price of the PS5, and Sony's continued silence on the matter is starting to worry us a bit.

Amazon made people a little nervous earlier this week when it posted a price of £599.99 (~$760), but the company later explained that it was just a placeholder and did not necessarily reflect the actual price. But don't breathe an immediate sigh of relief. Because another retailer is offering a surprisingly similar reservation price.

Play-Asia's PlayStation 5 listing, now with the price removed, temporarily showed a pre-order price of $699.99. On the bright side, this is about $60 less than the previous listing and is for a disc-based model. So even if accurate, the digital-only model should be cheaper.

But the point remains that it is a big "if," and it is very possible that Play Asia fell into the exact same trap as Amazon and mistakenly set the takeout price. Interestingly, the DualSense wireless controllers still have a price, with Play Asia selling them for $80 apiece.

So is $700 a realistic price for the PS5? Troublingly, both opinions are persuasive.

Proponents will tell you to simply calculate it with the components we know about: an 825GB SSD costs $150, a Blu-ray drive costs $100, and the closest thing to a PC graphics card is around $350. we're not even talking CPU, mainboard, RAM, gamepad. I haven't even mentioned it, and it's already $600.

But--and this is a big "but"--Sony knows all too well how important pricing has been in the recent console wars. Clearly correlation is not the same as causation, and other factors were at play in each generation, but the fact that Sony undercut Microsoft by some distance on both the PS2 and PS4 speaks volumes.

Finally, with the PS3, which Sony "lost" in the console wars, the pricing was reversed: the 20GB Xbox 360 came in at $399.99, while the 20GB PS4 was $499.99. Microsoft then doubly captured the market with its inexpensive "Core Pack," which sold for $299 without a hard drive. [So economists would be surprised if Sony launched a new game console for $700 - a foregone conclusion, especially in the midst of a global pandemic, mass unemployment, and the recession that followed.

So is the PS5 really 40% more expensive than the PS3, and launching in a much more recessionary situation? But the mystery surrounding the price of the Xbox Series X and the PS5 will continue for the foreseeable future. No one wants to be the first to show their hand and potentially give their opponents their first next-generation win.