The moment many feared would come following Xbox’s recent, wide-ranging price hikes of its consoles and games has arrived – Sony has officially announced that it’s raising the price of the PlayStation 5 console in the US.
The platform holder revealed the new prices on Wednesday, which go in effect today, August 21.
All PlayStation 5 console models are going up by $50. Here are the new prices:
- PlayStation 5 – $549.99.
- PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – $499.99.
- PlayStation 5 Pro – $749.99.
PlayStation, of course, technically had its own set of price hikes recently, having raised the price of the PS5 console in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand just this past April. However, Sony has always been cautious not raise prices in the United States, as it’s the market where it has the biggest competition in Xbox.
In 2022, two years after this current generation of consoles launched, Sony raised the price of the PlayStation 5 in Canada, Mexico, UK, Europe, Australia, China, and Japan. The United States has always been spared when it came to these price hikes.
However, with Xbox now raising prices in the US, Sony has likely been emboldened to do the same – even if it took a while for it to get there.
It also doesn’t help that tariffs on goods imported from China and various other manufacturing centres in Asia, which the US has recently imposed, have themselves raised the cost of each unit. As it’s often the case, companies will then pass that added cost on to the consumer.
Even though the tariffs imposed by the US government are meant to influence the country’s relationship with its trade partners, they’ve had wide-reaching effects beyond the borders of the United States. Japanese companies, for instance, had their stocks quickly tumble after the initial tariffs were announced in April, and Nintendo had to delay the Switch 2 pre-orders in the US and Canada very quickly after the console was announced.
Even setting aside the impact of tariffs, this is all highly unprecedented. Consoles typically go down in price the deeper into their respective generations they get. The idea that consoles, which launched five years ago, haven’t dropped in price, but have in fact became more expensive, does not bode well for the growth prospects of the industry.