We believed that at this point the PS5 and Xbox would be cheaper than ever. The hallucinating thing is that it is happening just the opposite

Sony has just announced that all models of their PlayStation 5 consoles will rise $ 50 in the United States. The argument that Sony has used in its statement To explain the decision is that there is a “difficult economic environment.” Or what is the same: they blame tariffs. But that is already a generalized trend … and very unreasonable.

PS5 rises around the world. It is the same that happened in April in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, when this company He also announced that prices went up for some models. In Europe, for example, the PS5 digital edition cost 499.99 euros. In the US, these increases affect all models, and the new prices will be activated as of Thursday in that country, being like this:

• PlayStation 5: 549.99 dollars (before $ 499.99)
• PlayStation 5 Digital Edition: 499.99 dollars (before $ 449.99)
• PlayStation 5 Pro: $ 749.99 (before $ 699.99)

Prices for accessories, yes, remain unchanged.

Microsoft already did the same. This movement is the same as Microsoft also with its Xbox Series S/X consoles, which They also rose in price at 50 euros In Europe and the US. Even the controls and some accessories saw their prices increased.

And of course, Nintendo. The Japanese company took a long time to end up lowering the price of the original Nintendo Switch, but the Switch 2 has given it the excuse for uprise even more Even in the games. Not only that: the economic situation has caused Nintendo that Prices upload of the original Nintendo Switch, the Lite edition and the accessories.

These data have not been met for the latest Sony and Microsoft models. In fact, the thing is totally the other way around.

Damn tariffs. Most video game consoles are manufactured in China, and tariffs have especially affected the Asian giant. That certainly makes manufacturers more expensive to manufacture and export them to be able to sell them in the US or Europe. And if they want to keep their profit margins, they end up doing something logical for them and terrible for consumers, because we are the ones who end up paying the duck.

But some manufacturing costs have dropped. The amazing thing about the situation is that both the PS5 and the Xbox Series S/X are now cheaper to manufacture (let’s not say the original switch). After five years in the market (nine in the case of the Nintendo console), the components of these consoles have dropped in price: their cost was then very high, but after all this time those components have ended up becoming almost obsolete compared to the new chips that have appeared in all this time. So what is happening?

Not everything has come down. In fact, these consoles are based on GDDR6 memory chips and NAND chips for their solid state units, and there the prices They rose strongly in 2025 and 2025 for the relative shortage of this type of chips and the focus that manufacturers are putting in HBM memories for AI accelerators such as those of Nvidia. To this are added other costs not directly related to the material invoice (BOM), such as logistics, manufacturing energy, or marketing.

The dollar loses bellows. But it is also the green ticket has lost value in front of the euro and other currencies. After 80 years being the pillar of the world economy, US tariffs They are starting to destroy it And that also translates into the price increases of everything. Including consoles.

Less “boxes” are sold. Consoles manufacturers used to lose money with their models in the initial periods. The idea was always to recover those losses of plenty with the sale of physical games, but the rise of the sale of digital editions, the free-to-play games and the subscriptions have made the distribution of value change. For Sony or Microsoft the solution is simple: if we no longer recover so much value with the games, we upload the price of the hardware.

But all that already happened before. The truth is that the situation is in many cases analogous to which it was lived with the PS4 and the Xbox One for example. These consoles ended up falling in a remarkable price over the years, but here a perfect storm has been created. One in which inflation, dollar weakness, tariffs and new video game access models have caused the worst result for users: more expensive consoles.

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