Tech giant Sony has announced that the PlayStation 5 will get a modest price increase in multiple regions, including Europe, the UK, and Australia, with both digital-only and disc-based consoles affected depending on the country.
The announcement was made late at night on Sunday European time via the PlayStation Blog, where the company revealed that Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand would all be seeing increases to the recommended retail price of the PS5. Europe and the UK are only seeing an increase on the Digital Edition PS5, while Australia and New Zealand are both seeing increases on the Standard Edition console with the disc drive. Prices in the Middle East and Africa are also being increased, but Sony has not revealed how big of an increase it will be in those regions.
Customers queue up at a counter of an electronics store in Sydney on November 12, 2020.
Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images
Sony says the price hikes are the result of a “challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates.”
The announced price increase is somewhat modest – about $50 USD for the Digital Edition PS5 and about $20 USD for the Standard Edition – but has immediately seen blowback from PlayStation fans in affected regions. It left an especially sour taste in some fans’ mouths given that the console has already seen a price increase in those regions in late 2022, and in Australia at least the price of PlayStation Plus was increased by a few dollars each month just days ago.
At the time of writing, no price increase for the PS5 has been announced for North America or Asia, the latter of which has been subject to increases in the past and was also hit with an increase to PS Plus prices somewhat recently.
The announcement comes after Nintendo was forced to delay preorders for the Switch 2 in the US, citing the need to assess “the impact of tariffs” introduced on goods from a number of countries by the Trump administration. A new date for preorder availability has not yet been announced by Nintendo, although the company says it still intends to release the Switch 2 on June 5, 2025 as planned.
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