Sony/MS Yesterday, Sony announced that it would implement a price increase for the PS5 in several regions outside the US, citing inflation and other economic indicators: “We are seeing high global inflation rates, as well as adverse exchange rate trends, affecting consumers and putting pressure on many industries,” Sony said. “Based on these difficult economic conditions, SIE has taken the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price (RRP) of the PlayStation 5 in selected markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific ( APAC), Latin America. (LATAM), as well as in Canada”. The price increase is different in all of the regions listed, but generally results in a price increase of around $50 USD on both the digital and disc models. So global inflation isn’t just affecting Sony and PlayStation but everyone, so of course other companies follow suit, right? Not exactly. The only hardware we’ve seen go up in price for vaguely similar reasons is the Meta and its Quest headphones. But Nintendo has previously said it has no plans to raise Switch prices, and now, when asked about its response to Sony’s move from Windows Central, Microsoft was pretty clear about what was going on with the Xbox. “We are constantly evaluating our business to provide our fans with great gaming options. The suggested retail price of Xbox Series S remains at $299 (£250, €300) Xbox Series X is $499 (£450, €500). PS5 Sony While it’s not impossible that Xbox won’t raise prices down the road, I’m not sure they’d say anything at all if this was a short-term plan. So why is Sony alone in the console space as the only one doing this? Sony, although a big company, is still dwarfed by Microsoft, with a market cap of $100 billion vs. $2 trillion, with a company able to damage a hardware offering for some time if necessary, while Sony is hit harder by economic factors like this. Sony also believes that demand is so high for the PS5, which still sells instantly with every refresh, that a price increase won’t mean a drop in sales or cause them to miss their targets. In a normal generation, that might not be true, but the rarity of the PS5 is legendary at this point, and Sony sees an opportunity here, clearly. That said, the counter-argument here is that Sony made the PS5 profitable incredibly quickly after launch, and now the first time economic forces cause it to slip, their response is to pass those costs directly onto consumers, who rub some people the wrong way. I can see that argument I guess, but I’m also not exactly going to see Microsoft as benevolent for not doing this just because it has more money than God to burn. This probably isn’t the last time we’ll see weird things like this in the industry in these weird times, but it also doesn’t feel entirely ungrateful for Sony, the champion behind raising the prices of its video games from $60 to $70, because simply they thought they could. So we’ll see how that plays out over time. Update: Now Nintendo has posted a new comment about how it also isn’t raising prices, due to inflation or other issues: Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content collection newsletter, God Rolls. Take my science fiction novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
