PS5, PS5 Pro price hikes announced as Sony blames economic pressures
If you spent $500 on a PlayStation 5 at launch in 2020, you can take some solace in knowing that's the cheapest one of those things will ever get.
Sony announced on the PlayStation Blog that PS5 consoles are getting price increases in basically every major global market, including the U.S., effective April 2. In the blog post, Sony vaguely blamed current economic conditions for the price hikes, which any eagle-eyed reader will recognize as Sony most likely pointing the finger at both Donald Trump's tariff policies and the global AI arms race that's driving up prices for all electronics.
The new prices in USD are as follows:
Base PS5: $649.99
PS5 Digital Edition: $599.99
PS5 Pro: $899.99
This price hike, combined with another PlayStation price hike that took place last August, means these devices all cost anywhere from $150 to $200 more than they did at launch. The PlayStation Portal device also got a price jump to $249.99 as part of this announcement. Separately, Xbox consoles also increased in price last year. So far, the Nintendo Switch 2 has been unaffected by this, but that console has only been on the market for a little less than a year. It would not be a shock to see Nintendo join in on this trend at some point.
It's definitely worth noting that this is far from normal in the world of video game hardware. For my entire life, the price of consoles has gone down over time, not up. Companies usually release cheaper hardware revisions as a console's lifespan goes on, so more and more people can get in on the fun. Thanks to tariffs and AI, however, that seems to no longer be the case.