Still waiting for that Pro version before I buy one. This is not unexpected, so many goods and services are increasing in price as inflation soars across several continents. Heck; I bought butter yesterday and it's up almost 50% in a year-and-a half.

Ah so that brings the list to (before tax)

Australia US 455 US 508 ($559 after 10% tax)
Canada US 501 ($566 after 13% tax)
China US 464 ($525 after 13% tax)
Europe US 458 ($550 after 20% tax the average, Andorra is as low as 4.5%, Denmark 25%)
Japan US 441
Mexico US 538 ($625 after 16% tax)
UK US 472 ($566 after 20% tax)

So now it's only Mexico where it's more expensive than in the US, which might be because of higher import duties.

Lol Nintendo just re-assured they won't raise the price. They already did with the OLED model.... After 5 years and still no price reductions.

MS' deep pockets are only getting deeper with the value of the dollar outpacing everything else, thus no need to raise. Plus their biggest market is in the strongest currency. For MS now is the time to spend their dollars.

@Mummelman Same here. Things that were 1 dollar before the pandemic are now 1.25 or 1.33 even. Everything that was priced at 6$ is now 7$. Meat has gone up more. My favorite smoked garlic honey sausages are now 16$ instead of $12. Strawberries now cost $5.50 instead of $4 for a box. Compared to before the pandemic I now pay 20 to 30% more for groceries.

A 4% price hike for the ps5 is still bad but compared to everything else not terrible. Electricity, Internet, Netflix (went up 1.50 again to 16.50 for standard plan), all more expensive. The same laptop is now $100 more, 700 instead of 600, 16% increase. Bad times.

This is just speculation, but since MS may have paid for extra chip production, helping to keep shelves full and keep sales momentum up, isn't it possible that Sony finally ponied up and did the same, though very quietly? So far anyway perhaps?

Sony can easily justify upping the PS5 price somewhat based on (years of) demand, plus hardcore scalping hikes.
If Sony can increase supply while doing so in this case, who's losing, really?

* "While this price increase is a necessity given the current global economic environment and its impact on SIE’s business, our top priority continues to be improving the PS5 supply situation so that as many players as possible can experience everything that PS5 offers and what’s still to come."

As for the XB response, yes, MS has decided to mostly compete this gen using non gaming related banked cash. It's real nice until that stops, because it will eventually stop, one way or another.

Wait, wasn't the PS5 already turning a profit at $499 a year ago? A price increase doesn't seem like that much of a "necessity", as they say. I'd guess it's more to do with Sony wanting the PS5 hardware to not be sold at a loss anywhere at this point.

Yes, the Series S is the exception. Now if they've paid for even more production on top of that advantage anyway?

Game Pass says it all. MS will subsidize like $100 billion if they must, to compete with XB. Sony in it's entirety is only worth like double that.

Chip demand has increased a lot and (future) production is behind a bit as well, which just makes it worse.

(Remember) there were plenty of articles about next gen pricing being $499 or $599?

More of them were rumors that Sony really rather wanted PS5 to be $599 so they could make a few bucks from the hardware right from launch like PS4. Series X being $499 probably made the decision for Sony.

In retrospect, they should've charged $599 at launch regardless. It would've made little difference in terms of sales, and would've made it a much easier choice to buy more chip production, leading to less of a supply problem.

Actually, Nvidia has been desperately trying to get out of some TSMC contracts as they have way too much silicon in storage. It has also more than been rumoured that Apple is trying to cut orders due to significantly decreasing forecast numbers. (Obviously TSMC is simply sticking to contracts, as they want their factories to run at max capacity in order to be profitable. The penalties for cancelling fab times are HUGE).

A common misconception seems to be that "Chip shortage = not enough gpus/cpus". This is far from correct. Gpu and cpu chips are just a small part of "Chips".

What's odd to me was that Sony just last year was bragging to their investors about how they were no longer taking a loss on the the disc based PS5. They were very quickly turning a profit on it. So you would think Sony would be able to ride out the inflation storm. It's not just the PlayStation though. Other Sony electronics have increased in price. So this was most likely more a Sony decision rather than a Jim Ryan decision.

It would've been great if Sony could've at least thrown in a 6 month to a year PS+ subscription or bundle a digital game like Ratchet & Clank or Returnal as a way to ease the pain in those markets.

Well considering I keep missing the preorders, doesn't bother me

That was before prices went up, this year chip prices are going up by 10-20%. Of course they have contracts in place, yet they're likely up for renegotiation and fuel prices have gone up a lot as well. Any profit Sony was making on the digital version is likely gone.

It's not just Sony electronics that have increased in price
https://epsnews.com/2022/06/16/component-prices-continue-to-rise-so-prepare-now/

On average, electronic component prices rose by 5-40% in the past quarter. Lead times for these components have also increased.

STMicroelectronics Asia Pacific has notified its distributors about price increases for all its product lines in the second quarter of 2022. NXP is expected to increase all product prices by 15 percent, effective July 14. Bookings are backlogged to 2023. And Intel is expected to increase its pricing by 7-10 percent across all server CPUs in Q4.

During the summer, higher price tags may cause electronics prices to increase even more later this year. According to CNBC, the world’s biggest chip foundries, including TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, are considering price hikes due to inflation and the rising cost of chemicals and other raw materials. The price increases will help offset these costs, drive ongoing initiatives like reshoring, and help the foundries keep on target for growth this year.

Foundries have already increased their prices by 10-20 percent in the past year. However, due to the ongoing shortage of semiconductors, chip foundries have a great deal of freedom when it comes to pricing. When supply is limited, electronics manufacturers and other businesses that depend on semiconductors (like automakers) will take what they can get.

With a few exceptions, it’s likely that electronics and components prices will rise so long as manufacturers face uncertainty around labor, supply and logistics. It may not be until well into 2023 that electronic price increases begin to slow down.


We could ban crypto mining, that will free up a lot of chips...