Sony has quietly increase the price of its PlayStation controllers in the U.S., marking a concerning departure from what is usual regarding pricing strategy, with gamers puzzled by this surprising turn of events.
As industry insider Wario64 first spotted and Video Games Chronicle noted, the price bump pushes major retailers like Best Buy, Target, and GameStop to $75 per DualSense controller (up from its typical price of up inferred in March 2020).
The Sony price hike wasn’t limited to regular retailers — even on its own PlayStation Direct Store prices were adjusted, making it clear that this isn’t just a temporary skimp.
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It continued a broader trend released by Sony of higher prices for its PlayStation products in the U.S. over the last couple of years When Sony introduced the new, slimmer PlayStation 5 models last year, some theorized that they would be cheaper to produce than their bulkier counterparts.
But of course that was nothing like what happened: the small PS5 with a disc drive stayed the same price and all the digital-only versions came out cheaper than before but $50 more expensive than the PS5 bulimic little sister.
The gaming community did not take kindly to this. The price hikes have been met with some frustration from the public given that many feel they are not being offered a good enough reason to upgrade from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5. Analytics firm Ampere agreed and even reported that as of June this year around half the latest GTAV players in its consumer tracking data are still playing on PS4.
For Sony’s part, signs are even worse in its native Japan where this generation has seen PlayStation products raised for the third time over; they truly face an uphill battle as trying economic conditions head their way across the region.
The big jumps in prices have isolated gamers and, at this point, it appears that a vast majority of PlayStation users decided to cling onto their PS4s rather than make the jump to a new system.
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That brings PlayStation 4 shipments to an impressive 117.2 million units, and the newest console PS5 stands at a mere 61.8 million shipped as of figures last updated today (24th November). Nonetheless, the fact that PSN including 116m regular active users remains suggests there is a significant number of gamers who have not made the switch to process.
This hesitance to switch could be down to several factors, from personal economic pressures on the part of consumers to increasing apathy for this particular console generation.
At the heart of this dissatisfaction is a lackluster 4K 60 FPS gaming revolution that developers have all too often overlooked in favor of advancing graphics and ray tracing instead. And so, a lot of PS5 games have not shown super-thrilling performance improvements with their new patches — something that has left some people on the older PS4 side feeling vindicated in holding off upgrading.
These consumer decisions are reverberating throughout the gaming industry and have been a factor in years of persistent layoffs. So it would appear that Sony is turning to the old trusty price increases are here balance everything out with their existing loyal customer base as new models of TV technology get more competitive in 2021.
But this approach could easily backfire — it runs the risk of antagonizing gamers who are wary about buying into next-gen at this point.
The ultimate question remains — Is this Sony swallowed-up glitch we’re all experiencing just a minor setback and hiccup in the great journey of PlayStation, or is this now really the beginning of the gaming landscape as it so truly used to be?
And with Sony and Microsoft both seemingly deliberately holding back before the next generation of consoles does a better job fulfilling their promises, that may become an increasingly common stance among gamers when confronted by this fairly mundane set. Whether this is a move people like or further separation from its player base remains to be seen.
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