It’s a move that breaks decades of tradition (or at least consumer expectations) and is undoubtedly a blow to anyone hoping for a five-year reprieve in the current console generation. However, it is also a sign that the current generation is likely to stick around for quite some time—and that Perhaps This is a good thing for both the industry and the players.
Historically, at this point in a console generation, existing hardware is heavily discounted. For example, the PS4, which launched in 2013 for $400, was retailing for $300 by 2018, a 25 percent decrease. Even if hardware is at a loss, this is a pricing trajectory that is generally beneficial to manufacturers and customers. Production and component costs would generally have declined over that half decade, allowing companies to drop retail prices, often with a reduction in hardware modifications. Plus, players who didn’t win at the console’s launch now have a cheaper entry point and the chance to play the game for years. But this generation has been anything but typical.
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RAM and SSD storage prices have been skyrocketing over the past few months due to the AI bubble, which is impacting the entire global tech sector. Sony as a whole has been hit hard by this, recently announcing that it is suspending its memory card business, while the manor’s PlayStation corner has confirmed long-standing rumors of price increases for its console family.
The new MSRPs went into effect on April 2, and there’s no sugarcoating that they represent a significant increase. The “entry-level” Digital Edition PS5 console – the one without a disc drive – is the worst affected, reaching $600. That’s $100 more than its previous U.S. retail price (which was already up after an earlier increase in August 2025 due to Trump’s tariffs) and 50 percent more than its $400 launch price in 2020.
The base PS5 with a disc drive is up 30 percent from its original $500 price, now priced at $650, while the PS5 Pro is “only” up about 29 percent from its $700 launch price, which will set buyers back $900 — though it also doesn’t come with a disc drive, so be prepared to spend an extra $80 to play physical games or Blu-ray movies. Elsewhere, PlayStation Portal, Sony’s handheld that allows users to stream games from their PS5 or the cloud, has also increased by $50, from $200 to $250.
PlayStation isn’t alone in raising its prices. Xbox multiplies the cost of its hardware and GamePass subscriptions in 2025, eventually leading to a top-end 2-TB Xbox Series According to Bloomberg, the Switch 2 avoided a tariff-induced price increase at launch, but is reportedly “considering raising the price of that device in 2026”, and the same report suggests Sony is delaying the inevitable PlayStation 6 to 2029 due to an AI-induced parts crisis. Could.
Even Valve’s handheld Steam Deck is not untouched – while prices have so far only increased in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the manufacturer has announced that the original 256GB, LCD-screen model (the cheapest) is “no longer in production, and will no longer be available once sold out,” while the new OLED model, available with 512GB or 1TB of storage, “may be intermittently out of stock in some regions due to memory and storage issues.” Can” decrease.”
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