PlayStation gamers in North America may have been aghast at the $ 699 launch price of the PlayStation 5 Pro. But, they may not even realize how much worse the situation is outside of their country.
As revealed by columnist Gearoid Reidy in a new article for Bloomberg, the PlayStation 5 Pro’s price when it releases this year will be ¥119,980. In 2020, the original PlayStation 5 launched in Japan for ¥43,978.
In Reidy’s words:
“It’s the first time for a PlayStation console to cost over ¥100,000, a psychologically important barrier in a nation where prices and salaries alike have long been largely flat.
It’s nearly three times what the PS4 Pro cost when it went on sale in November 2016, and, of course, salaries have not tripled in that time. Recent gains to make up for inflation have yet to significantly move the needle.”
Reidy goes on to explain that other regions are also experiencing an unprecedented high when it comes to the PlayStation 5 Pro price where they live. But of course, there’s something particularly obnoxious about this happening in Japan, the country where PlayStation itself comes from.
While Reidy and many others explain that this partly comes from the economic situation in Japan, this is where we want to point out a few things some of our readers may not realize. For starters, it’s actually quite important that much of the video game industry is centered in America.
It’s where many of the biggest game companies reside, but what is relevant here is it is also one of the biggest markets in the world. It’s definitely the biggest market for PlayStation, and that stands in stark contrast to how less of a market share it has in its native Japan.
Subsequently, even if Americans bristle at the $ 699 price point, they definitely still feel the privilege of being in America. Not only is Sony prioritizing them over other gaming markets, but outside of games, America really has managed their economy in this pandemic better than other countries and regions. That’s especially true of Europe, UK, Japan, and the other gaming markets.
Most importantly, even if American gamers don’t see why they should care about PlayStation 5 Pro prices outside their country, it definitely affects them too. Sony definitely expects most PlayStation 5 buyers to come from America, and they are definitely looking to sell the console to the richer gamers in this market.
As we noted in a prior article, consumers have power to guide the industry, even if they don’t always feel it. And they wield that power most not when they harass people in the industry, or make long threads on social networks, but by their own purchasing decisions.
