As we enter into a new generation of consoles this week, there is a lot to be excited about. There’s new tech and new games, even if a lot of those games are cross-generational titles, and just in general the air of newness after 7 years of the previous systems. However, a bit of a bitter pill that we’ve been forced to swallow is that prices are now going up. It looks to be the standard now that a $10 USD price bump will be happening (with varying other bumps happening in other regions). While Sony wasn’t the first to announced their first party PS5-only titles would be going up, as the market leader and lead platform holder, when that domino fell, it became an inevitability that the majority would follow shortly after. Apparently, however, Sony was looking at going beyond even that at one point.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, not only was Sony all in on the idea of a price hike, at one point they were considering going even further than the $69.99 that looks to the new standard. Apparently, a price hike has been something that has been discussed among higher executives for a long time, with many feeling it was overdue because of things like inflation and rising game development costs.
While some publishers have been little more cagey about the eventually hike, it seems $69.99 is the standard in the US, with more varying price increases in other regions such as Europe and Asia. It’s obviously been a somewhat polarizing issue, with arguments for the hike being rising game costs that are countered with the fact that game sales in general are far more than what they were just a few years ago as well as stagnate wages throughout many countries. Either way you feel about it, seems at this point it’s inevitable.