Ever since its launch almost two years ago (!), the PlayStation 5 has been notoriously difficult to buy. Thanks to a combined mess of stock shortages (as a result of the world’s lack of semiconductors) and scalpers buying out so much of that already limited stock, grabbing one of Sony’s new-gen consoles hasn’t been as easy as just adding one to your cart and waiting for the delivery - we’re talking stock alerts, waiting in 40-minute-long online queues only to be met with no stock at the end of it, and repeat.
This wife managed to get her husband an elusive PS5, and his reaction was priceless - take a look below.
Things seemed to be looking up, with promises that shortages could ease by 2024 (still a fair wait), but the situation just took another turn for the worse. As reported by Kotaku, Sony has just raised the price of the PS5 in almost every major PlayStation-selling region. The price changes are effective immediately, except for in Japan, where the console will increase in cost from 15 September.
In the UK, the Disc edition will now cost you £479.99 (up from £449.99), and the Digital edition is £389.99 (up from £359.99). Meanwhile in Europe, it now costs €549.99 for the Disc edition (up from €499.99) and €449.99 for the Digital edition (from €399.99).
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To quickly run through the rest, also affected are Australia (Disc edition now costs AUD $799.95, Digital is AUD $649.95), Canada (CAD $649.99 for Disc, CAD $519.99 for Digital), Mexico (Disc is now MXN $14,999, Digital is MXN $12,499), China (¥4,299 yuan for Disc, ¥3,499 yuan for Digital), and Japan (¥60,478 yen for Disc, and ¥49,478 yen for Digital, both including tax). Thanks to Kotaku for those figures.
You might have noticed that missing from that list is the US - it seems that gamers there have gotten away with it. Sony have described the price increase as “a necessity given the current global economic environment”.
Topics: PlayStation 5, PlayStation, Sony