Sony has announced some stunning price increases for their game consoles and accessories in Japan.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Sony says that these price changes are happening because of:
“recent challenging external environment, including the current fluctuations in the global economic situation, and the impact it will have on our business”.
We’ll break down each price increase for you, in yen and its value in US dollars, below.
- Standard PlayStation 5 With Disc, from ¥66,980 ($460), to ¥79,980 ($550).
- PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, from ¥59,980 ($415) to ¥72,980 ($505).
- DualSense Controller, from ¥ 9,480 ($ 65) to ¥ 11,480 ($80)
- DualSense Controller, from ¥ 9,980 ($68) to ¥ 11,980) ($83)
- PlayStation Portal, from ¥29,980 ($205) to ¥34,980 ($240)
Other steep new prices include the DualSense Edge now coming at ¥ 34,980 ($ 240), and the PlayStation VR2, now costing ¥89,980 ($ 620). You do not have to use your imagination to see the staggering and sudden the increase in these prices are. The news has created a hubbub online as well. Several English speaking residents in Japan have shared insights on how it looks where they are.
Both Genki_Jpn and Dr. Serkan Toto have shared pictures revealing that PlayStation 5 consoles are already sold out in their local gaming stores. Genki also shared a theory that this could be happening because of Japanese PlayStation 5 stocks being bought up by Chinese gamers last week, in the fallout of Black Myth Wukong’s release. We thought this was interesting enough to share, but it’s hard to substantiate. YouTuber Gaijin Hunter, AKA Adam Evanko, shared a perspective that is closer to the ground. He said this on Twitter:
“Wages haven’t changed so when the ps5 sold for 50,000 yen it was essentially like $500 for us here in terms of impact on our wallet. So when consoles become nearly 80,000 yen that’s like $800 even if the exchange rate says $550. This pain is felt all around the world not just JP”
So, those prices estimated above by Video Games Chronicle may be a one-to-one currency equivalency between the Japanese yen to US dollar, but they don’t reflect how much it actually costs for Japanese gamers. Adam alludes to the weak exchange rate of the Japanese yen to the dollar, and that creates a misleading picture of what Japanese gamers are actually paying.
Now, it isn’t clear how rumors of an upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro factor into this. It’s possible that if Sony wasn’t as harmed by the “recent challenging external environment”, they would not have had to increase prices, and they could have waited for the PlayStation 5 Pro’s release to raise their profit margins back up. But as things stand, it seems that Japanese gamers can also expect a considerably high price for the console when it launches in their country.
We certainly hope that Sony won’t be making these price changes worldwide as well, but this is a situation that does affect every video game company. Last October, Valve launched regional pricing for Steam, with games now being sold in each country or region on their respective currency. When it got implemented, games suddenly became unreasonably expensive in some parts of the world. PC Gamer reported that Stardew Valley’s price shot up by 2900 % in Argentina.
Perhaps this is why Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda predicted that the Switch 2 could cost as much as $ 499. We certainly don’t want to see video games get so expensive that a significant number of gamers get priced out of the hobby. Hopefully, we can see things turn around for the industry sooner rather than later. It certainly looks like we can’t wait on the likes of Grand Theft Auto 6 anymore.
