apple probably was losing money on the old Apple TV with old 4gb ram and 64gb storage in low volumes anyway and they probably would have to pay even more going forward. the upgrade seems to make sense from supply chain standpoint to standardise storage and chips across devices.

If anything apple is probably bring value to new buyers of Apple TV in this market. At 299$ you are getting hardware that will last quite some time as opposed to a 200$ device that might cost maybe 250$ in six months and give you lot less hardware capabilities.

Apples services division broke records for revenue so there’s a way to look at the TV hardware as a kind of loss leader for subscriptions

But everything is way more expensive than it was a year ago. Nothing escapes this inflation we are going through