Sony Won’t Raise PS5 Price Despite Rising RAM Costs, Software and Services to Cover the Gap
Memory prices have been going up because of supply problems and high demand in the tech market, forcing hardware companies to either cover the extra cost themselves or pass it on to customers — and this is becoming a serious problem for many companies, including Sony.
During a recent earnings call, Sony’s CFO Lin Tao addressed the situation directly, explaining how these rising costs could potentially affect the price of the PlayStation 5.
Sony Has a Strategy to Avoid Raising the Price of PlayStation 5
She explained that the company has already secured the minimum amount of memory needed for the entire year. In the future, Sony plans to continue negotiating with different suppliers to ensure there is enough stock to meet customer demand. The company also aims to reduce the impact of higher memory costs by focusing on making more money from its existing user base, especially through software sales and network services.
She said, “We intend to minimize the impact of the increased memory costs on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the installed base to date and striving to further expand our software and network services revenue.”
Given recent software sales, this strategy could work. Total software sales for PS5 and PlayStation 4 reached 97.2 million units, an increase of 1.3 million compared to the same quarter last year. Digital downloads also grew by 2% and now represent 76% of total sales. Monthly active users on PlayStation Network rose to 132 million, up from 129 million during the same period last year.
Other moves by Sony seem to support this plan. For example, the company launched a digital-only PlayStation 5 model in Japan at a lower price. This helps grow the number of console owners, which in turn increases revenue from game sales and online services.
It remains to be seen whether these efforts will be enough to deal with the sharp increase in RAM and storage costs.
In other news, PS6 could be delayed to 2028 or 2029 as Sony reviews its plans, while Nintendo may increase the Switch 2 price this year.
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