Sony’s PS5 price hikes prove that this console generation is far from over. good.

If you have Holding off on purchasing a PlayStation 5 in hopes of lower prices, bad news: the cost of each model of Sony’s all-in-one console has risen dramatically.

It’s a move that breaks with decades of tradition (or at least consumer expectations) and is undoubtedly a blow to anyone hoping for a discount, five years on from the current generation of consoles. However, it is also a sign that the current generation is likely to stick around for a while – which is the case maybe Which is good for the industry and players alike.

Historically, at this point in the console generation, existing hardware sees significant discounts. For example, the PS4, which launched for $400 in 2013, was selling for $300 by 2018, a 25 percent decline. Even if the hardware results in a loss, it is a pricing path that is usually profitable for manufacturers and customers alike. Production and component costs typically decline over the course of half a decade, allowing companies to reduce retail prices, often along with reduced hardware revisions. At the same time, gamers who didn’t catch on at the console’s launch have a cheaper entry point and years of games to catch up on. But this generation was not typical at all.

Generational distortions

The AI ​​bubble has seen the prices of random access memory (RAM) and solid state drive (SSD) storage skyrocket in the past few months, impacting the entire global technology sector. Sony as a whole has been hit hard by this, with the recent announcement of the suspension of its memory card business, while PlayStation’s corner of the fiefdom has just confirmed long-running rumors of price increases for its family of consoles.

The new MSRPs went into effect on April 2, and there is no certainty that they represent significant increases. The “entry-level” PS5 Digital Edition console — the one that doesn’t have a disc drive — is the hardest hit, jumping to $600. That’s $100 higher than the previous US retail price (which was already high after a previous spike in August 2025, driven by Trump’s tariffs) and 50 percent higher than the launch price of $400 in 2020.

The price of the base PS5 with a disc drive has risen 30 percent from its original price of $500, and now costs $650, while the price of the PS5 Pro is “only” up about 29 percent from its launch price of $700, setting buyers back $900 — though it also doesn’t come with a disc drive, so prepare to pay another $80 to play physical games or Blu-ray movies. Elsewhere, the value of PlayStation Portal, Sony’s handheld device that allows users to stream games from their PS5 or the cloud, also increased by $50, from $200 to $250.

PlayStation is not alone in increasing its prices. Xbox has increased its hardware and GamePass subscription costs several times in 2025, eventually raising the MSRP of the high-end 2TB Xbox Series The Switch 2 dodged a tariff-induced price hike at launch, but it’s also said to be “considering raising the price of that device in 2026,” according to Bloomberg — and the same report suggests that Sony may delay the inevitable PlayStation 6 release to 2029, all because of an AI-induced parts crunch.

Even Valve’s portable Steam Deck isn’t immune – while prices have risen so far only in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the manufacturer has announced that the original 256GB LCD model (the cheapest) “is no longer in production, and once sold will no longer be available” while the newer OLED models, available with 512GB or 1TB of storage, “may be intermittently unavailable in some regions due to memory and storage shortages”.