Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
PlayStation (Games) Sony Hardware

Sony is Raising PlayStation 5 Prices Again, Between $100 and $150 (arstechnica.com) 45

Posted by EditorDavid from the small-console-ation dept.
Memory and storage shortages and price hikes have "steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech," reports Ars Technica.

"Today's bad news comes from Sony, which is raising prices for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US just eight months after their last price hike." The drive-less Digital Edition will increase from $500 to $600; the base PS5 with an optical drive will increase from $550 to $650; and the PS5 Pro is going up from $750 to a whopping $900. At the beginning of 2025, these consoles cost $450, $500, and $700, respectively...

RAM and flash memory chips are in short supply primarily because of demand from AI data centers — memory manufacturers have shifted more production toward making the kind of memory found in AI accelerators like Nvidia's H200, leaving less for the consumer market. And the situation is unlikely to improve any time soon, barring a major shift in demand from the AI industry.

Sony is Raising PlayStation 5 Prices Again, Between $100 and $150 More | Reply

Sony is Raising PlayStation 5 Prices Again, Between $100 and $150

Comments Filter:

  • That's a bold strategy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Saturday March 28, 2026 @05:13PM (#66066608) Homepage

    It's a 5-year-old gaming console at this point. I'd imagine by now there's a decent supply of used ones available.

    Personally, aside from a Nintendo Switch that I was given as a gift (and it's basically obsolete at this point), I'm team PC Master Race when it comes to gaming. If you're buying a console you may as well just take your money outside and light it on fire.

  • I'd Totally Pay (Score:3)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Saturday March 28, 2026 @05:24PM (#66066618)

    I'd totally pay $100 to $150 for a Playstation.

    Anymore than that and Sony Playstation is a hard pass.

  • This is getting into Mac territory... (Score:3)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Saturday March 28, 2026 @05:25PM (#66066624)

    For this price, I can buy a Mac and go into Mac gaming... ...oh wait.

    But still, when console prices wind up this high, it only will hurt the software sellers because fewer people will be buying consoles, diminishing the audience of their games.

    I would say SOE is eating their seed corn. You want inexpensive consoles so you can sell stuff for them. Basic razor and blade marketing.

    • For this price, I can buy a Mac and go into Mac gaming... ...oh wait.

      Chips are not only more expensive, their supply is unstable and unreliable. It impacts everyone who buys computer components. Apple has more leverage than Sony, but trust me, you'll see the same level of price increases from Apple, probably this year and every year until this horrible AI bubble pops. It's fucking surreal to want to buy devices early to save money. All my life...you wait to buy something, it goes down in price and gets better. Now we just pay more for the exact same performance every ye

      • Exactly. It was since the 1980s where you could wait, and something that was needed would get a price cut. Now, we are getting the same performance, except increased prices and less reliability. Due to tariffs, I had to FOMO a bunch of upgraded, which I'm glad I did, because they are now 2x the price.

        IMHO, this pricing hardware to oblivion isn't going to help the hardware guys. It just means the apps that run on that platform wither to no consumers buying them, and some other platform, perhaps Chinese R

      • Apple has far more leverage than anyone else. I suspect that they will get good pricing for a long time to come. Probably everybody suspects that AI is a bubble that will end and would be hesitant to force Apple to look elsewhere. Elsewhere includes building their own fabs... they don't do this because the margins aren't big enough, but if prices rise, they might and existing fabs will lose Apple as a customer forever. Apple is one of the few companies that would really be capable of pulling off something l

        • Probably everybody suspects that AI is a bubble that will end and would be hesitant to force Apple to look elsewhere. Elsewhere includes building their own fabs... they don't do this because the margins aren't big enough, but if prices rise, they might and existing fabs will lose Apple as a customer forever. Apple is one of the few companies that would really be capable of pulling off something like that. Vertical integration is their specialty - why not a little higher? The ones with the fabs likely know this, or are at least a bit afraid of it.

          OK, so they make their own fabs. Aren't the components in short supply? Aren't they paying more for ASML machines?...etching chemicals?...high-end silicon? It's like the Strait of Hormuz closing...the USA is now an oil exporter, so we're not impacted, right?...nope!!!...because everyone who is impacted is now buying from the USA and our gas prices went up nearly as much as everyone else's. OK, so Apple can make their own chips?....what's to stop them from jacking up the price since the market is willing

      • until this horrible AI bubble pops

        So, five months.

  • They did it overnight. It was done across all retailers so it was coordinated. I doubt you can find a retailer that isn't selling it for the increased price now even though obviously it's the same old stock that you could have bought last week for $100 or $150 cheaper.

    It's amazing how quick they can reprice things to screw us consumers over.
  • Watch, if this component pricing craziness ever goes back to normal, Sony will keep the price raised and it won't ever go down. Your best bet is to buy used. $900 for a what, 5 year old, console? Hard pass.

  • Thank you, AI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Saturday March 28, 2026 @08:24PM (#66066854)
    This is pure bullshit. It's a 5.5 year old console and priced more than it was during introduction! OK, so Sony is overcharging me...well, so is everyone else. Every device is going up in cost, purely due to us subsidizing this LLM circular economy. Fuck every LLM provider. I want useful devices, like consoles, laptops, phones, and tablets...without shortage pricing...not your useless LLMs that can't even generate code that compiles, Claude 4.6 opus/sonnet. This week, I used it like 10x...EVERY fucking attempt was a failure..."why did I get this exception?"...failure..."update this json schema to validate across 3 fields"...failure. "Update this code to the latest version of Spring"....failure. "Change this legacy for loop into a lambda"...failure...didn't even compile and hallucinated methods that don't exist.

    I have to listen to employers AI-washing their failures and convincing the industry they can lay us all off.

    I have to pay a lot more for any device I want...with the prospect that things aren't getting better any time soon.

    So far, I am not seeing any tangible benefits to these technologies, yet lots of suffering.

    This bubble can't pop fast enough.

    I know AI will someday be useful, but it's been nothing but a curse. Instead of getting slow, steady progress, we're getting fever-pitched investment that's not paying off, disrupting the job market, and now making it a lot harder to buy useful technology. Fuck these guys. I am sick of paying for their stupidity.

    • This isn't just AI. Since launch $100 would be accounted for due to inflation alone. Add to that Trump's tariff war which would have added over $100, and then add AI on top of that, and AI looks like the least of the actual contribution to price rise (it's not, to be clear AI = bad and hardware prices are out of control).

      Also reminder that there's no connection between hardware price, and time in the console war. Consoles have never been priced according to hardware prices as (other than Nintendo) everyone

      • This isn't just AI. Since launch $100 would be accounted for due to inflation alone. Add to that Trump's tariff war which would have added over $100, and then add AI on top of that, and AI looks like the least of the actual contribution to price rise (it's not, to be clear AI = bad and hardware prices are out of control).

        Also reminder that there's no connection between hardware price, and time in the console war. Consoles have never been priced according to hardware prices as (other than Nintendo) everyone else produced them as a loss leader to sell games.

        If you were correct, then this wouldn't apply to laptops and open-market RAM and storage. Consoles are not the concern...the fact that I have to pay a fuckton extra for SSDs and RAM and devices of all sort, even those not subsidized as a loss-leader, is the concern. I don't even want a PS5, but this does apply to everything I do want to buy in the next year that draws electricity.

        This is a problem, well-documented, by the fact that the major AI vendors are buying all they can...it's a basic market probl

      • > Trump's tariff war

        Don't forget trump's ACTUAL war. I've had six figures scooped out of my retirement accounts and burned to ash since he decided to do at least ONE traditionally republican thing and launch us into yet another middle-eastern quagmire. The rest of the country is seeing the gas prices they used to attack California for. And it seems that the media is just now finally waking up to the fact that there's a shit ton of OTHER things that we make out of petroleum that are about to start to s

    • Fuck these guys. I am sick of paying for their stupidity.

      Can we interest you in paying for our greed instead? Shareholders are people too.

  • Who the fuck cares? It's a game console. Change vendors....start reading books, etc.....

  • Well no Switch 2 or PS5 for me. Going to stick with my Switch 1 until things settle down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Well no Switch 2 or PS5 for me. Going to stick with my Switch 1 until things settle down.

      The Switch 2 is probably one you might want to get sooner rather than later (i.e., before Nintendo jacks up the price - they haven't yet).

      Even if all you do with it is play Switch 1 games as memory bandwidth problems with the Switch 1 meant many games were stuck at sub-30 FPS and basically unplayable. The Switch 2 runs them at a buttery smooth 60 FPS locked which turns your games into something actually fun to play.

      It's

    • Buy the S2 now, while they're still working through their existing backlog of stock.

      I bought a PS5Pro when the word 'tariffs' was first dropped, and I'm glad I did.

  • And I'm sure this move has absolutely nothing to do with the upcoming GTA6 release this fall.

    • And I'm sure this move has absolutely nothing to do with the upcoming GTA6 release this fall.

      Bold gouge while assuming GTA6 is going to actually release this fall.

      I would normally be measuring the release of GTA6 in Grand Theft units, but since that's too hypo-ironic I'm forced to measure it in Nukem units instead. I'd estimate we still have another 2.7 Nukem Forevers to go until someone can actually commit grand theft at the GameStop register at midnight circa Christmas Eve 2028 when the game finally drops for a mere $1,199**.

      ** NOTE: It is a felony in all 50 States to sell or purchase GTA6 witho

  • PS5 is a mandatory purchase so it's all good. Oh wait.

    Must the whole of society be taxed to feed the greed of AI investors? AFaF

  • The PS3 was $600USD back in Nov 2006. That's the equivalent of $972USD in 2026.

    You could say, Sony is going 20 years into the past for pricing.
    • You're comparing the cost of the PS3 at launch with the current cost of a PS5 which is 5+ years old. According to articles on Google, the PS3 was available five years into its launch for $250 for the 160GB model and $300 for the 320GB model, which would be about $360 and $433 after adjusting for inflation from 11/2011 (five years after the PS3 launch).

Slashdot Top Deals

"It ain't over until it's over." -- Casey Stengel

Close