PS5 Dynamic Pricing Impacts New PS Store Black Friday Offers, Roughly $5 Variations in Prices

The future is here! Can't wait for 2028.

Got to love the all digital future!

I cannot fathom how this is even remotely legal.

If I opened a store and charged people different prices based on, say, race, height, gender, intelligence, affluence etc I’d be met with catastrophic legal ramifications before I could blink. This is the very definition of discrimination; you either charge everyone the exact same price or you discriminate (discounts based off tenure/active subscriptions etc notwithstanding).

They show as free on the store I’m using

Dynamic pricing has taken full effect and I don't see any discounts because Sony is aware of my wealth.

Let me guess, nobody will save any money because of dynamic pricing.

I thought losing physical was meant to be a good thing, oh wait that was all corporate rubbish to squeeze our money even more,

Screw this kind of thing. It sucks.

Imma just stop buying games on ps store. There. Problem solved.

@get2sammyb Didn't Sky or BT do something similar where new customers were getting better deals then existing ones? Not defending this btw

And suddenly, you feel like being on an oriental bazaar, with the suspicion that the merchant asks a higher price from you than from everyone else.

You truly can’t hate Sony enough at this point.

They will never get another digital dime from me. Ever.

I actually do not really understand the issue or already lingering outrage with this. Who is forcing anyone to buy anything anyway? There is also no lack of tranparency in my opinion but a lack of self-information and self-accountability on the user side of things, if anything.

Man they keep taking the L’s.. even me thats always been a PS + Nintendo guy is contemplating PC even though I hate to ***** around with drivers and tweaking setting. God damn it Sony

Hopefully all the digital fans enjoy the future they’ve created for themselves 😄

Astro bot costs £42.59 for me. Thanks, Obama!

Sorry, Andy Burnham, I guess?

Psprices.com has the discounts and alternate discounts.
Can lookup the game there to see if you are being offered the standard discount or not.
I've got Speedball on my wishlist, standard discount is £17.49, my account has offer of £10.24.
Will probably buy it this time. Ive bought games before at a discount and psprices.com was indicating it was one of these alternate discounts

@Balaam_ That's a pretty elementary conflation of two entirely different meanings of discrimination. Discrimination simply means treating people differently; it doesn't automatically make that treatment illegal, immoral, or economically irrational. You're conflating price differentiation based on protected characteristics with ordinary market segmentation based on demand and willingness to pay. By that logic, virtually every sale, coupon, loyalty program, and negotiated price is discriminatory.

I don't think dynamic pricing is good for a companies image, if one person wins then another loses. For me it's not the price it's the principle and just like their staggered Plus+ approach dynamic pricing is another decision that needs to be walked back. Ticketmaster are a perfect example of what can happen when dynamic pricing backfires.

The Oasis Reunion Tour turned into an absolute sheep storm of backlash for the company. Customers were furious after they had to wait in virtual queues for hours and by the time they reached the checkouts the prices had doubled and tripled. It was so bad that they ended up being investigated by the European Consumer Protection Body and UK antitrust regulators. Regardless I'll continue to keep buying physical until there is no other available option.

@Balaam_ it is not allowed in physical stores indeed. You must show the price and that will count for all people entering the store.

Sony will argue though that every (e)store is different, with their own prices. Which is nuts of course…

Best way to abuse this is having 10+ accounts and get the best deal for all. And Sony can say they have 10+ extra active users to their shareholders.

@GirlVersusGame if one person wins and the other looses, then the house will still always win.

If Sony could implement lootboxes on their store they would.

@ECharles When they’re selling an essentially unlimited item (an indefinite-term digital rental) for different prices to different people based on unknown/unrevealed criteria, that most definitely IS just a tinge immoral.

Defending this is just strange to me.

I have been a gamer since the NES, had almost every system, last couple of gens I've skipped MS and stuck with PS and a Switch. Never played PC.

Last year I bought a Legion Go S 1ze, Steam is great, easy to use, tons of discounts, the system is literally just a Linux PC and I can do everything on it. I can see a PC future for me if Sony keeps being this gross.

I have two ps accounts. One I've had for years and it's my main and the other I set up two years ago for game sharing. On my main account I had an offer of 60% off Jurassic World Evo 3, priced at £19.99. On my secondary account it was 30% off at £34.99. That's quite the difference there 🫪

I don't care what they charge for games. I tell my wife i have no money and she buys them. I am a disgrace. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

@ECharles The fact that you even had to explain that in the first place to him lol

They'll probably offer me Wolverine at £5 🤣.

I recall an article here a while back talking about how due to the price the PS6 is going to launch at that console will likely sell less than PS5, therefore getting more revenue from the most enfranchised fans will be a key part of making up for selling fewer consoles.

I wonder how big a part dynamic pricing will play in doing this.

Sony's dynamic pricing led to my own dynamic purchasing policy. I dynamically stopped buying from Sony and dynamically adopted another ecosystem.

This is such a scam and it’s so bizarre to read some still trying to justify it.

I’d really like to know how things are decided. I’m sure some meta analysis can be done. Do people get better deals if they never buy day 1 for example? or if they only buy when a price hits its lowest ever rather than in any random sale? What are the criteria? How much money have in your wallet?

I don't want Sony to fail with their maximum monetisation strategy, therefore I fully support this egregious practice.

@dskatter Transparency is a different issue and agree it's important. Otherwise, price differentiation is a good thing for consumers. For example, an anime game might sell for $70 in Japan because demand is particularly strong there, but $50 in the U.S. because consumers are less willing to pay the higher price. The publisher can capture more revenue in Japan while making the game more affordable to American consumers. The benefit is that one universal price might leave money on the table in Japan while pricing out potential customers in America. Differential pricing allows the company to serve both markets rather than treating their different demand conditions as identical. P.S. Do you find it immoral when your grandparent gets a movie discount because of their age even though you are seeing the same movie? Or a veteran discount?

@helloim_anthony The amount of thumbs that comment received is even more disturbing. lol

@Friendly Even then, physical stores do it all the time. Supermarkets, for example, will have a "normal" price and a loyalty card price, such as Clubcard or Nectar prices.

They're annoying because the loyalty card prices are what the business can definitely afford to charge based on their cost price and the normal prices are just inflated. It's the same with new customer prices. The lifetime value of the new customer far outweighs the discount they give but it's a bit of a kick in the teeth to the customer that has been loyal to the company for years.

Happened to me in the Halloween sale with Days Gone Remaster upgrade usually £10 showed me £4 when I was scrolling but when I went in to buy it it was £10

Here in the UK the big supermarkets like Tescos and Sainsburys do dynamic pricing.
So im sure its easy enough for companies to do legally
Although need to sign up for their loyalty programmes first so technically agreeing to their t&Cs. Once signed up you may be offered additional discounts beyond the standard loyalty card discounts based on your spending habits.

It’s funny but I was literally just about to buy A Fisherman’s Tale 2 and Kandagawa Jet Girls, and I delayed to see if I was being ripped off by not getting it as cheaply as others. Sony will lose some sales that way if this becomes more widely known.

Their argument is you don't own the game your lease it and they can charge whatever they want and all that *****

Microsoft does this with “Just for You” sales that seem to be based on your interests. The difference is that those are happening outside of regular sales. Charging two different prices during an advertised sale like Black Friday is stupid and only going to aggravate those who aren’t getting the lower prices. Not a good look. At all.

I'll buy the games physically anyway where - checks... yep - with one exception where the physical edition hasn't even been released yet, all the ones I might've picked up are cheaper on Amazon anyway, so...

I must have the “better” account because I have the lower price for all three

@get2sammyb saying to loyal customers and big spenders that others are getting a better deal because they don’t spend as much might not be the best idea.

Maybe people should start to create multiple accounts/profiles so they can spread their spending and then get the better offers.

Like I said, it's not just killing off physical discs, it's forcing people to go digital where enshittification lies.

• "Dynamic" (surveillance) pricing - right now it's just a few discounts but later it will be used for everything and you'll be charged what they think you'll be willing to pay based on the data they collected, exchanged and processed about you
• PS+ subscription discounts - not for current subscribers
• Refunds - not available
• You bought a digital movie - tough luck, our license ended so we're taking it away from you just like that with a blog post and no refund
• we promised our shareholders to milk our playerbase dry so here, have some ads

Dystopia.

Now it's only $5.
Because you still have discs as alternative.

Just wait to see prices after 2028.

Well, if they’re offering me discounts that aren’t to my liking, then they won’t get my money until later, when the discounts eventually improve. But it looks like nothing from my wish list is on this sale anyway.

@ECharles You’re completely (or purposefully) misunderstanding the issue here. You’re throwing different regions in the mix when it’s blindingly obvious we’re talking about people in the SAME REGION getting different prices.

Your response is completely irrelevant to the actual topic.