Sony have announced price increase for the PlayStation family of consoles around the world, detailing the hikes for Europe, Japan, and the United States. While price increases have not been detailed for other regions – Asia, Australasia, Canada or South America – they note that “for all other territories, please check with your local retailer or direct.playstation.com where it is available.”
“With continued pressures in the global economic landscape, we’ve made the decision to increase the prices of PS5, PS5 Pro, and PlayStation Portal remote player, globally,” writes Isabelle Tomatis, Vice President, Global Marketing, on the PS Blog.
“We know that price changes impact our community, and after careful evaluation, we found this was a necessary step to ensure we can continue delivering innovative, high-quality gaming experiences to players worldwide.The updated recommended retail prices for PS5 consoles are effective starting April 2, 2026.”
The news prices are as follows:
U.S.
- PS5 – $649.99
- PS5 Digital Edition – $599.99
- PS5 Pro – $899.99
U.K.
- PS5 – £569.99
- PS5 Digital Edition – £519.99
- PS5 Pro – £789.99
Europe
- PS5 – €649.99
- PS5 Digital Edition – €599.99
- PS5 Pro – €899.99
Japan
- PS5 – ¥97,980
- PS5 Digital Edition – ¥89,980
- PS5 Pro – ¥137,980
The PlayStation Portal price will change to the following:
- U.S. – $249.99
- U.K. – £219.99
- Europe – €249.99
- Japan – ¥39,980
In the UK this means a price rise of ÂŁ90 on all three PS5 consoles, and ÂŁ20 on the PlayStation Portal. This is the third price hike in Europe and the second in the United States, all of which have gone against past trends when the current gen console has seen price cuts during its lifetime as components and manufacturing processes have become cheaper.
This time around the cost of almost every element of the PS5 has increased due to market forces, from supply chain difficulties through the semiconductor shortages through the pandemic, to the general inflation seen in the years that followed (fuelled by the war in Ukraine), and now with AI companies pre-ordering supply for memory, hard drives and GPUs through the end of 2025 and early 2026. It was recently revealed that this year’s allocation of Solid State Drives had already been sold.
While Microsoft has announced Project Helix for their next generation, Sony have not even hinted at a PS6 yet, and I would expect they will not do that for quite a while. While there’s a few generational improvements to CPU and GPU that get more out of the same die space, making a meaningful jump over the PS5 Pro would likely cost as much, if not more. And that’s before considering that bills and the general cost of living is about to soar thanks to the USA’s war with Iran – an £800+ console won’t be near the top of anyone’s list.
UPDATE: Eurogamer have spoken to analyst Piers Harding-Rolls how has said he expects Microsoft and Nintendo to follow suit.
“The supply chain shock of the elongated increase in memory and storage prices – both essential for console hardware – means that there is some inevitability to the PlayStation hardware price increases announced by Sony today. It is likely that Sony had price protections for its components for a set period and this may well have come to an end,” Harding-Rolls said. “With no sign of prices easing largely due to demand for AI infrastructure, Sony will have made the move to protect its slim hardware margins. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Microsoft and Nintendo followed suit in the not-too-distant future.”
Source: PS Blog
It’s interesting to see how the pricing landscape is shifting for the PlayStation consoles. This move certainly reflects the current market dynamics. It’ll be intriguing to see how fans respond to these changes.