Sony raises PlayStation 5 prices in U.S. as tariffs start to hit
While Sony didn’t attribute the increase to Trump’s tariffs, consumer companies have been warning for months that higher prices are on the way.
/ Source: CNBC
PlayStation 5 game consoles will cost $50 more in the U.S. starting this week, Sony announced on Wednesday.
The price for an entry-level PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will increase from $450 to $500, and a PlayStation 5 with a disc drive is going up to $550 from $500. Sony’s high-end PlayStation 5 Pro will cost $750, up from $700. The PlayStation 5 was first released in 2020.
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced in April went into effect earlier this month on most countries. The U.S. currently has a 30% tariff on imports from China, and higher tariffs on goods from the world’s second-largest economy are currently “paused,” according to the administration. Sony’s home country of Japan was hit with a 15% tariff.
While Sony didn’t attribute the increase to Trump’s tariffs, consumer companies have been warning for months that higher prices are on the way.
“Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment,” Sony said in its blog post.
The company said that retail prices for console accessories such as controllers haven’t changed.
Earlier this month, Sony officials said the company was working on supply chain diversification to combat U.S. tariffs, and said that the console hardware it sells in the U.S. is produced outside of China.
“It is difficult to speak to our hardware pricing strategy as that has implications for our future competitive strategy,” ” Sony officials said, according to a translated transcript of a call with financial analysts posted on its website. “But we intend to take a flexible approach to such decision-making by monitoring consumer price sensitivity as we think about total full-year segment profits, lifetime value, manufacturing, units sold in, and our content sales potential.”
In May, Microsoft raised the price of its Xbox video game consoles. Nintendo delayed pre-orders of its Switch 2 by a few weeks in April, attributing the delay to tariffs. Although Nintendo did not raise the price of its new consoles, it hiked the price of the original Switch earlier this month.
