Japan Hit with Yet Another PS5 Price Increase

PS5 Pro probably won't be less than 699$, right?

Dread to think what the Pro is going to cost.

Today's price increase is down to "the recent challenging external environment, including the current fluctuations in the global economic situation, and the impact it will have on our business,"

No. Today's price increase is to ensure that the price of the Pro doesn't look so bad by comparison...

Usually the console price goes down after 3-4 years if previous gens are anything to go by, yet this gen console prices are going up, subscription prices are going up, last gen is being supported longer and lay offs galore. Probably the worst gen so far in my opinion.

@WhiteRabbit Yeah these price increases definitely suck but this to bring it inline with the prices elsewhere because the Japanese yen is in a terrible state. I'm pretty sure this is the real reason we haven't seen the Switch 2 yet. Nintendo are holding out, hoping it bounces back because they don't want it to be too expensive at launch in Japan.

Greed in any language is still greed.

Freeloading Japanese gamers finally paying what the rest of us pay.

Is this in order to announce the PRO at 799?

PS5 PRO is definitely not going to cost less than $650

With that price in mind, how can the PRO increase the total sales of PS5?

Wont be long till there is a plus increase.

MS has done it so sony will follow

This is a sign of things to come with Xbox gradually going downhill. No reason not to make a good profit on hardware when there's not much competition out there.

Also, by their reasoning for the increase, does this mean that they're still making PSVR2's?

Kind of amusing to watch this, and then recall CMA’s arguments to block ActiBlizz acquisition, to prevent MS doing something similar.

I think this confirms predictions that PS5 is past its peak sales, and Sony is trying to squeeze as much as it can from falling volumes. Still, sucks to see 60% inflation over 4 years.

It's not good but at the same time Japan is truly not in good shape despite what the Nikkei indicates. Small and medium company employees have seen wages stagnate. The Japanese PS5 are being scalped and sold in China because it is cheaper and not region locked especially with Wukong fever.

I hope japan does stabalise the Yen soon so companies won't be able to make excuses for these silly decisions.

@Fartingale Have you seen Japanese wages? People here are struggling. For most people the ps5 is now way too expensive

And people still think a PS5 Pro will still come in for around $500 mark when y can't even reduce the price of the PS5. That after this generation launched with $500 console instead of targeting the $300 'console' price point we have come to expect...

This is more an indication of rising costs and exchange rates that mean they can't sell it for 'less'. With increased costs of Shipping the consoles globally for example, that cost is passed onto the customer and all the raw materials aren't getting cheaper either.

This is the first Console generation I can recall though that has had price increases. Its not just Sony - but also Microsoft recently raised prices in Japan because of these factors.

Wow, jacking up prices across the board again in Japan just a few days after nerfing the PS Stars program. Sony sure knows how to generate goodwill in their homeland of late! I get that the yen has weakened but that is one severe price hike…

My thoughts on this is that it's happening in Japan so it doesn't really matter to me. Something for the Japanese to get upset about. I have no idea about the Japanese economy and what companies like MS and Sony (both raising prices there) are doing, and why.

In NZ the rrp is 899, or 560 usd, I imagine sales have dropped as our economy isn't great at the mo.

I saw commentary on the Japan increase that it may be because Chinese scalpers are trying to get consoles because of Black Myths success

Hopefully the Japanese will realise that their PS4/Pro models play 90% of the games and vote with their wallets.

New Sony just get worse and worse...

If you've spent any time in Japan you know that this is abhorrently expensive. Things in general are very cheap in Japan, and salaries are relatively low, so this is the equivalent of the PS5 being $800 thereabouts in the west.

Sony need to sort it out, I understand hardware is sold at a loss but I suppose they're not making enough software to cover it.

I usually tolerate this s**t because business is business but this will only hurt them

@Vivisapprentice which is really quite funny because a lot of the stores in Hong Kong are having pretty sizeable discounts (50-70 USD appx) because of how many people want it right now.

@riceNpea as a consumer it isn't our job to care about the business unless it affects us/our region. I feel for Japanese consumers but I also think if it is negatively received they'll vote with their wallets obviously and go to competitors like PC or Xbox.

Not really bothered if Pro is £500, £600...it's gonna be used for the next 4 years at least as a step-up over the base model.

Sorry if you can't afford it. And if you don't want it, then it doesn't matter to you what it costs.

I do get the feeling that the PS5 Pro wont sell well with al the price increases, and the very very long support of games still coming out on PS4/PS5.

Current generation haven’t felt like a “new” generation at this point.

Yet more evidence that the ps5 pro is completely unecessary. Who will be able to justify buying one at whatever price it finally launches at. Economic situation around the world isn't getting any better is it.

Better that Sony focus on optimising titles for release on the current PS5 imo, and look to delivering a larger technical leap for a likely PS6

I'm sure nintendo is looking very closely at this. If they can undercut the base PS5 with Switch 2 they are already onto a winner

@breakneck exactly that. All this ire over here against Sony because of a price hike in Japan is a bit silly, especially when they are not alone in doing it and the Yen is in a bad state. But I guess the comments aren't going to 'like' themselves 😊

@Dr_ENT financial suicide if it costs that much. They could easily price it at 549.

Wow that’s suck sony. Im stick with my OG fat ps5. Cant imagine what the pro will cost? Gaming hobby is getting ridiculous day by day

That's not gonna help. Nintendo beats them up in Japan already.

More death bringing to this all ready increasing worst generation ever.
I would not mind just if this if we actually got some quality AAA games like in last generation.

I mean just look at sw outlaws about 77 meta.
Microsoft last year with their big three all low scores.
And Sony studios does 2024 exist.

Let’s see what Astro Bot brings.

Then all the big wonder why consoles and games sales are down. Actually produce something that is actually worth the price.

Xbox hardware so low in Europe
PS5 down 5 million compared to PS4 same time line.
Nintendo low sales due to well overdue replacement.

This is pretty insane.. Sony has lost it. They aren't even hiding the fact that this is out of greed.

Has it even been confirmed the PS5 pro will have a disc drive?

If so, I still think we are looking at £550 - £650 ($650 - $750), and with this latest news probably towards the top end of that.

Mind you, we may be looking at longer than previously thought for PS6, because if they cant get the PS5 price down, no way will we be seeing a PS6 in 3 ish yrs without it costing way more than PS5 launch.

Whilst I agree that Sony will likely increase the price of Plus sometime soon, @PsBoxSwitchOwner, Microsoft actually followed Sony in increasing the price of their consoles, and their games, and the price of the subscription services. Sony did it first on each occasion. I think the difference is that Sony can 'afford' to do it, whereas it is more of a risk for Microsoft. Microsoft will always come in for more criticism, warranted or not, even if Sony are doing precisely the same thing...

Cool.more games is definitely be coming to ps5.word up son

@Fiendish-Beaver yep Sony did it first on the original increases.

Since then we have seen MS increase price in Japan, then GP. Sony has now increased price in Japan, so I expect a plus rise.

One does it then it gives the other ‘permission’ to follow suit.

Absolutely right, @PsBoxSwitchOwner, though I think Microsoft have pretty much thrown in the towel in Japan in particular...

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony hold off on the Pro launch until 2025 like Nintendo did to let the Japanese economy sort itself out a bit.

So, it’s not crazy to think the new Nintendo console is coming at $499, as rumors could suggest.

@Rob_230
"Better that Sony focus on optimising titles for release on the current PS5 imo, and look to delivering a larger technical leap for a likely PS6"

I agree that PS5 games in general need much (much) better optimising, but it is not Sony - their games are always top of the pile in terms of technicals and optimisation. Its the 3rd parties that need to seriously get a grip on this.

Unfortunately, the larger the technical leap for PS6, and the sooner it arrives, the (much) higher the cost will be - they have to time a launch with the tech they are using for it becoming affordable (and thus slightly dated) or we will be looking at £700+ PS6 consoles.

Fascinating we’re four years in and the system costs are flat or rising. It’s a great time to be a gamer — but this industry is not healthy.

Which throws the whole "competition is good" argument out of the window. Nintendo is responsible for the vast majority of sales in Japan, yet Sony still increased the price.

In other words, even if MS were doing better worldwide and thus Sony had more competition, it wouldn't change prices much at all.

@darylb24 I think if any more proof was needed, it's that PlayStation don't care about Japan any more.
Unfortunately, they seem to be an American company who are only catering to Americans and they are the only region to not have any price rises.

I just hope Nintendo come out with a corker of a "Switch 2" to shake up the console market.

Increase the price so they can reduce it later and make it look like a bigger decrease

Really feel like Japan is in trouble. I’ve been living here for 14 years, and the prices increases of everyday items of the past 2 years are first I’ve seen, and they are HUGE. Meanwhile, wages are barely rising.
PS5 disc version released at ¥55,000 (including tax) so to see its price rise 50% is absolutely unprecedented.
Very unusual times which don’t bode well for the future.

@sanderson72 They got the console dirt cheap I payed that on the release in euros. 😬

@UltimateOtaku91 facts.

I remember that for SNES, the quality of games significantly improved between launch and the end of the era with the N64, as the developers were mastering the technology. For PS5, the best technical games I’ve seen are from the previous generation. We are at a saddle point where we get a diminishing return. I still don’t believe that a PS5 Pro is going to be released, that just doesn’t make sense.

Money devaluation is no joke, I think it was either Brazil or Argentina, one of them has the PS5 costing around $1000.

@MrMagic Yeah every major currency was gaining a lot on the Yen, then the bank of Japan intervened and we had that crash a couple of weeks ago on the global markets caused by the first great AI bust. Yen rates are still very good for everyone apart from Japan, despite them falling.

13k is a lot of money though. Thats more or less two recent-ish games.

Either way this doesn't look good, and you only need to look at the armchair experts already posting to show how this is going to be perceived by the majority (wrongly)

Man that's a low blow. Not that long ago I can remember the waffle about digital only games will cost less because of the savings from less manufacturing processes ,look how that turned out eh.

@OldGamer999 What three games are you referring to? I’m guessing it’s these and wonder what is low about them?

HiFi Rush - 87
Starfield - 83
Forza Motorsport - 84

An average score of 84.7 seems pretty good to me.

I remember not long ago when Sony was a primarily EXPORT company that thrived at their peak when the Yen was at its worst. Yay, globalism!

Nobody wants to hear Phil Spencer is right about anything, not even Xbox fans anymore, but day by day, I do think he's proven right that the whole console business model is imploding. If they can't continue to make performant hardware at a level that consumers and developers expect, at a price that people are willing to pay and at which they can profit from, and sell in sufficient market volume so as to sell sufficient software units across it, the entire ecosystem model has collapsed. What we have with PS5 is inadequate hardware performing below what developers expect with performance compromises consumers don't want, at a price consumers don't seem readily willing to pay, which is already a price the companies can't afford to make sufficient profit from at current BoM. What's left? Consoles either need to get way more expensive and target an enthusiast market otherwise already covered by PC, way cheaper and compete with the phone/Nintendo market, or just vanish. Microsoft bet on it vanishing, Nintendo seems to try to stay low and keep with phones, and Sony seems to be toggling between making no profits and relying on brand power, trying to jack prices until it starts matching PC. None of it seems sustainable.

As is with the current trajectory of hardware manufacture and pricing, I dont' think the console market can endure pushing tech anymore. That's best left to PC. Console needs to rethink from the basics and follow Nintendo's "withered technology" of basically making separate games from the PC world and selling old hardware. New hardware upgrades too little too rarely at too high a cost to use it to build cheap consoles people buy. But one generation needs to be the sacrifice to roll the tech barrier back a decade. A meaningful PS6 at current hardware pace couldn't be both affordable and a meaningful upgrade until, honestly 2030 or so. They can't get the costs of a 2019 design to be affordable to make, profit from, and still reach consumers readily in 2024. How are they going to market something much BETTER than that, for the same or lower price unless they wait another 6 years at LEAST?

@Shepherd_Tallon I would be shocked if it were anything less than $700, I just float "$600" when talking about it to keep from triggering some people. I would not be shocked if it were over $700 TBH. If the base console is $550 outside the US, and the Pro isn't at least $150 more than the base model, I doubt the Pro is worth buying at all for the bare bones upgrade it would offer.

PSVR2 might be the only thing that saves a price that makes it a joke, as they saw how much sales increased when prices are low. Maybe adjust the strategy.

@naruball Sony's competing alone in Japan and they know it. Nintendo's market even in Japan is a different market. With Xbox basically not competing in Japan at all, it's just PC vs Sony. Thing is the Japanese console market isn't really THAT robust even with Sony alone. Take out all the units shipped to China and elsewhere, and it's pretty niche.

Reminder:
Capitalism works fine and dandy, just not in our favour. And the marketing blabla about how "the recent challenging external environment, including the current fluctuations in the global economic situation, and the impact it will have on our business,"?
Who even still believes this crap?!

@riceNpea there was this german economist living in London back then, Morx? Merx? He had some thesis about all of this

@NEStalgia I don't know. Even if that's the case to an extent, the fact that they're not selling well (software or hardware) and still decide to increase the price is very telling imo.

@naruball In this case I think what we see is the effect of competition though. XBox raised their Japan price, and a few weeks later, Sony follows. If Xbox price cut in Japan, I don't think we'd see Sony raising prices now. So it really is a look at what competition does, even where Xbox is no competition at all in Japan. Imagine what Sony does to price if Xbox were to exit entirely.....

@NEStalgia I mean, doesn't xbox sell close to nothing in Japan? I just don't see Sony considering it a competitor at all.

@naruball Entirely true, and it's not sufficiently a competitor, but I also don't think they want to be more expensive than it to encourage a change for any reason. I.E. I don't think Sony wants to raise it's price much above Xbox and separate itself in a way that could create an opening at all. Once XB raised price, it gave Sony the clearance to join. In that sense, I do think there's an amount of competitive pressure on pricing, even if Xbox sells like 1 a week. It's still present. Similarly, despite selling low in Europe, if Xbox just up and quit hardware, I'd expect EU price hikes to follow quickly. And a huge hike in the US.

Ridiculous. Regardless of the way the Yen is. Customers may or may not care for them, or may not be able to buy them but they want money THAT BAD and make it even harder to buy one. XD

If they actually offered more smaller games or better balanced their money for their western games development they wouldn't have this problem or asked for more money from 3rd parties/MTX/PS store purchases, etc or made less stupid mistakes.

They push for Asian studios and we see them appear but they seem to have given up on Japan yet the Yen changes and yet they want more money. That's really encouraging Sony/PlayStation. Whatever the case of Chinese, Korean, etc audiences though of studio support and sales too I guess.

Japanese games seem to be doing fair, doesn't change much if some of us regardless of region audiences/game releases are waiting for console prices, don't care for the console or other factors. I don't care about the console anyway.

They ask for too much money for their profit margins. They are pathetic.

They could try more PC, or a PS+ cloud streaming TV app on Sony TVs? I know same company different departments don't always work well together but still. They want different options for audiences they could.

Whatever they are doing with mobile games too no idea compared to remote play on people's phones.

@Dr_ENT folks in Canada are expecting it to cost 799 CAD, which with tax is going to range from 900 to 1000. At this point, if these companies keep doing this, console will flat out die because no one wants to buy a console that costs more than a PC of equal specs. Sony is flying very close to the sun.

For anyone confused as to why tax would equal nearly 1/8 of the console price, in Ontario sales tax is 13% because of an aboriginal tax that was intended to support indigenous reserves and heritage sites. It was scrapped years ago but they just left it in. Some retail spaces still list both taxes separately and cause confusion as a result.

Raising the price of the PSVR2 sure ain't the best idea. 😂