Sony Leadership Contemplating Price Hikes & Potential US Production Line for PS5

[T0@st]

A month ago, Sony increased its PlayStation 5 home console prices for EMEA and ANZ regions—affecting customers in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. At the time, industry experts surmised that company leadership was considering a similar strategy for a primary market: North America. Instead of freshly implemented 25% upward hikes for certain products/packages, reports suggested a 30% climb—for the North American market. Weeks later, company leadership has discussed this hot topic. During yesterday's (projected) earnings call with investors, top brass confirmed their consideration of "passing along" additional costs to consumers—in response to a reported/anticipated 100 billion yen (~$680 million) impact from US tariffs. They outlined a stockpile of PS5 consoles; enough units have been accumulated for roughly three months of supply—unaffected by adjusted conditions, in the States.

Despite this provision, Hiroki Totoki—Sony's president/CEO—is open to exploring alternative production avenues, in the face of looming extra charges. When asked about this matter, he replied with: "hardware can of course be produced locally, I think that would be an efficient strategy. PS5 is being manufactured in many areas, whether it is going to be manufactured in the US or not—it needs to be considered going forward." In efforts to navigate a trying situation, Nintendo has juggled its geographic manufacturing footprint—recent-ish developments have shifted away from a complete reliance on Chinese facilities. Industry insiders reckon that the bulk of US-bound Switch 2 units will be Vietnamese-made. Like Sony, Nintendo's executive team has publicly disclosed thoughts about future price hikes—maybe following the launch of its much-anticipated "next-gen" hybrid console. Earlier this month, Microsoft upped modern Xbox portfolio price tags—affecting customers across the world.



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[Neo_Morpheus]

Being a gamer for over 40 years and I have never seen a console having its original MSRP increased, especially 5 years after it launched.


We are living in a really weird timeline.

 

[Nostras]

Honestly this just sounds like your average corpospeak that boils down to "no, but with enough kickbacks we may consider it".
I'd be very surprised if they're genuinely exploring options here.

 

[Waldorf]

@Neo_Morpheus
havent seen them talking about increasing msrp, just to pass along the cost, so they can easily leave msrp pricing where it is,
and add the "tarif" as an additional item.

 

[phints]

Being a gamer for over 40 years and I have never seen a console having its original MSRP increased, especially 5 years after it launched.


We are living in a really weird timeline.

Beyond tarrifs, it was coming anyway. Look at this past 2 years of CPUs and GPUs there have been very small performance per watt increases. Moore's Law / Dennard Scaling timing is slowed and most of the industry is at the mercy of TSMC lithography. Prices are skyrocketing there and node improvements are several years apart now. Some major software/hardware advances like X3D CPUs and RTX GPUs and DLSS type tech are still awesome though so we'll see what happens next.

 

[sepheronx]

There is no way they would open up production in the US. Way too expensive. Unless it's entirely automated so no jobs anyway.

We just need more competition. Come on 3do 2.... lol

Lack of competition is just driving up prices, because they can.

 

[Waldorf]

@sepheronx
not really the problem, as other companies claim they cant pay ppl more, yet are operating with profit in countries where they are forced to pay up.
the issue is with infrastructure, even if you want to produce, where are the buildings/machines/storage/utilities like power.
its gonna be at least 1-2y before anything will be made outside of asian places/in the US.