Sony Jacks PS5 Price in Response to Trump Tax
Six-year-old console now costs $70 more
Effective immediately, 14th April, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has decreed that its aging baseline PS5 will cost more due to a global “backdrop of a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates”. US President Donald Trump has spent the past few months threatening, imposing, then retracting import taxes (“tariffs” in American-English) on countries, seemingly at random, which is having a predictably chaotic effect on international markets.
In response, with what we imagine to be a heavy heart, Sony has “made the tough decision to raise the recommended retail price of the PlayStation 5 console”. In select markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Australia and New Zealand, the price of both digital and disc drive versions of the PS5 is set to rise quite dramatically. The silver lining to this particular cloud is that the cost of standalone disc drives is set to decrease. Yay?
In our beloved parliamentary democracy of Australia, that’s a pretty savage price rise of $70 AUD, $749.95 for the Digital Edition, up from $679.95. Meanwhile, the Disc Edition is getting a smaller hike of $30 AUD to $829.95, up from $799.95. The price of the PS5 Pro remains unchanged at the already steep $1,199.95.
Europeans are being hit with a €50 markup, and Brits, £40, which is a pretty tough pill to swallow, and we imagine that sales of Sony’s consoles will likely decrease proportionately. SIE has to protect itself, and the Japanese Yen has been struggling for some time now, so with Trump’s tax hitting everything out of China (such as the components required for PS5), a price rise was inevitable.
We hope you like the current console generation because it’s here to stay. With the economic insanity of the current White House administration seeping, like sewage, into neighboring economies, we predict a return to the bad old days of the PS3, along with everything that entails (like a recession).